Pie Town - Lynne Hinton [40]
“Oh, don’t sit there and act like I’m just being irrational. You could see it bothered Alex that she didn’t come. You told me yourself he was asking about her. And you were the one who wanted to go up to Taos and get her.”
There was no response. Roger just dropped his glance away from Malene.
“Just let me be mad for a few minutes,” she said. “I deserve at least that on the boy’s birthday.”
Roger looked up and smiled. He loved Malene. He had since they were twelve years old. They had divorced not because he had stopped caring about her or because he fell in love with someone else or because, like so many other married couples, they had just drifted apart. They hadn’t even fought all that much. They divorced because they could never seem to agree on how to make their daughter face her addiction and her poor choices and get her to be somebody she would never be able to be.
Malene wanted to use the tough love angle: make Angel pay for her mistakes, make her go to prison and face the consequences of her choices. And Roger, well, Roger realized that he was always trying to save his daughter.
He used every resource available to him as sheriff to try to get his daughter opportunities to do better, to be better, to tow the line, to do the right thing—finish school, come home, get a job, take care of her child. In the end, neither strategy seemed to work. Angel had chosen her own path, and there was nothing either parent could do to force her down another one.
When Angel turned fifteen, she became somebody neither of her parents recognized. And none of Malene’s tough love antics or Roger’s attempts to arrange for her salvation—the drives from one end of New Mexico to the other to bail her out or get her cleaned up, the favors from lawmen across the state, his efforts to keep her out of prison and in a halfway house or an inpatient facility—none of it worked. Even though Roger knew Malene knew it wasn’t his fault, she needed somebody to blame. And so he let her blame him. He figured it was easier than having her blame herself, so he made the decision, not long after Alex was born, when it was clear that Malene was eaten up with anger and bitterness, that he would give her that gift. He would let her hold him responsible. He felt like he was anyway. As angry as Malene was, Roger was guilty. So he took the blame for them both. At least that was something.
The two of them sat in silence.
“The cake was good,” Roger finally said.
“It ought to have been,” she responded, willing to change the subject. “The grocery store in Socorro lost my order, and I had to drive clear up to Los Lunas to find a cake big enough to serve everybody. Ended up costing me forty dollars for the cake and sixty dollars for gas.” She shook her head. “It was supposed to have a guitar on it, but all they had at the Wal-Mart was Disney characters and monsters. I just had them write ‘Happy Birthday’ and be done with it.”
“Alex loved it. And I’ll cover the extra costs,” Roger offered. “It was worth it.”
Malene shook her head. “Nah, it’s all right. Daddy gave me some money.” She rested her arms on the table. “It was good cake, though, wasn’t it? I mean, being one I just picked up without ordering.” She leaned against her elbows. “It’s a shame we don’t have anybody baking around here anymore.”
Roger nodded. He remembered the sisters and their bakery. Everybody complained about too many pies and cakes and not enough meat and potatoes, but it was sure helpful for special occasions to have somebody in town who could bake a cake.
“You sounded good tonight,” Malene said, referring to Roger’s music. He and a group of other musicians had played and sang for about three hours.
“I couldn’t keep the strings in tune for some reason, the humidity I guess, but it was fun, and Alex seemed to enjoy the music. I think he was happy about his gift from us. He already knows a few chords, and the size of the guitar is perfect for him.” Roger was glad he had sent away for the small guitar. It worked well for someone confined to a wheelchair.
“It was much nicer