Protector - Laurel Dewey [2]
“The hell you’re sorry!” Patricia yelled. “How could you keep this letter from me? Goddamnit, didn’t you think I would eventually find out? All those nights . . . all those goddamn nights of you calling me and telling me you had to work late . . .”
“I was working,” David weakly interjected.
“I don’t think they call it ‘work’ after the second or third cocktail!”
David pulled his hands from his flushed face. “Patty, please! We’ve got to talk about this rationally.”
“Rationally? Oh, that’s rich! Suddenly you want to be rational? Why wasn’t that thought going through your head when the relationship became clear? Why didn’t you just walk away?”
“I don’t know—”
“You don’t know?” Patricia’s voice was quickly becoming hysterical. “You know what your problem is? You’re weak! Ever since you were young, you always wanted to play with the big boys, but you never fit in.”
“No. That’s not true,” David responded unconvincingly.
“It is true! You fantasized about what it would feel like to be accepted by people who lived on the edge. You got off on that fantasy. And then, that fantasy became real.”
David covered his face again. “Maybe. Maybe I did.”
“Well, you picked a helluva time to live out your fantasy!” Patricia lunged toward her husband, leaned down and forcefully pulled his hands away from his face. “When the connection was made,” she continued with a slow, angry cadence, “between the two of you and they saw the kind of close relationship you had, did you ever once consider the implications of what could happen? How it would affect us? Or Emily?” At the sound of her name, Emily crawled onto the stairway landing, staying in the darkness so her parents could not see her. Patricia spoke quietly, but there was a penetrating punctuation to each syllable. “The minute you found out what was going on, you should have walked away.”
“I know . . .” David replied in a weak voice. “But, I couldn’t.”
“Jesus!” Patricia pulled away from her husband. “How fucked up were you?”
“Oh, shit, Patty!” David’s voice raised several octaves as he nervously got up and walked across the room. “I may have been a little drunk, but I wasn’t fucked up!” David brushed back his thick brown hair with his hand. It was then that he realized his hand was shaking. His eyes fell to the floor and he spoke in a hushed voice, holding back tears. “Things were said and the more we talked, the more the trust began to build between the two of us. And then . . . I just wanted to help.”
“David, how could you throw everything away that you know is right and true and decent for a relationship that could destroy us?”
“I would never consciously do anything to hurt you or Emily!”
“You don’t think you hurt us when drink a fifth and have to stay in bed all day because you can’t cope? Because you can’t be the man you’re supposed to be?”
“That’s a low blow, Patty.”
“No, David. That’s the truth,” Patricia said tersely.
David searched for the right words. “We’re going to be okay—”
“Are you crazy?” Patricia exploded. “Didn’t you read this?” She shoved the letter in David’s face.
David slid away toward the staircase. “I don’t want to read it again!”
“No, you don’t want to see what you’ve done to us! Let’s pretend it doesn’t exist and maybe it’ll go away! Well, this is not going to go away! But I am and I’m taking Emily with me!”
Emily’s throat tightened. She watched her mother angrily shove the letter into an open wooden slot that protruded from the rear of the hallway desk. Patricia slammed the slot shut, leaving a slim corner of the notepaper exposed.
“Oh, Jesus, Patty,” David begged. “Don’t do this.”
“No more, David! Emily and I should have never come back from Moab! I should have kept driving and put as much distance between us as possible! I will not put my daughter through hell because you wanted your fifteen minutes of fame! I’m packing our bags and taking Emily to my sister in Cheyenne.”
“You can’t take her away from me! She’s my daughter, too! I love her!”
“Maybe you should have thought about that months