A Bad Boy is Good to Find

chapter 18

Dear Father,

It makes me so sad that we parted on bad terms. I still feel like your little girl, even though I’m all grown up now.



An uncomfortable lump formed in Lizzie’s throat as a chill crept down her spine.



I know you don’t approve of my choice of husband, but I’m a woman now and old enough to make my own choices. He’s very kind to me. I’m sure you’d like him once you got to know him. He’s saving money and hopes to buy his own shrimp boat soon. There’s a lot of money to be made in shrimp and crabs, not that money is important to me. There’s a lot more to life than having money and holding on to it, and I do wish you understood that.

But I didn’t write to scold, just to say that I miss you and I hope one day soon we’ll be friends again.

K



Yeesh. Maybe opening these letters wasn’t such a great idea after all. A black hole had opened up in Lizzie’s stomach.

She glanced up at Con. His shoulders moved slightly with each long, slow breath. Asleep.

She spread the letters out on the floor. There were six of them altogether, and it suddenly seemed important to read them in order. By chance—or because it was on top—she’d started with the first one. She studied the postmarks and noticed with alarm that there was more than ten years between the first and the last.

Someone here had received letters for ten years and never opened them?

Her scalp prickled and goose bumps rose on her arms. Part of her wanted to gather the letters up, put them on top of the dresser and…what? Throw them away? Hand them over to Maisie?

Like someone who can’t take her eyes off a car wreck—because the car looked so much like her own—she picked up the next envelope and slit it open.



Dear Father,

I never received a reply to my last letter, so I thought I’d write again, just to let you know that things are fine with us. It’s odd to be so nearby, yet it’s as if there were a thousand miles between us. Things have been hard lately, due to a poor shrimp harvest caused by bad weather conditions and buyers refusing to pay full price for the shrimp that is caught. I don’t really understand the business but it looks like my husband will have to wait to buy his own boat. Anyway, we’re managing.

I have some wonderful news, I’m pregnant! I’m expecting my baby in spring, which is such a perfect time of year for a new life to enter the world. I just wanted to let you know that you’re going to be a grandfather.

Always your daughter,

K



Oh dear, it was going to be a sob story. Had she expected anything different? Didn’t anyone ever run off with the man they loved and live happily ever after, for crying out loud? Was that too much to ask?

Lizzie glanced back at Con. His shoulders moved slightly with the easy breaths of deep sleep.

Did she really want to see the rest of this car wreck?

She looked at the envelopes. They were all the same kind, as if taken from the same box. Who kept the same box of envelopes for ten whole years? This whole thing made her flesh crawl.

Come on, Lizzie. Maybe he gets his shrimp boat after all! Maybe he became shrimp king of the bayou and she was his queen?

She picked up the next envelope in date order. It had dirt on it, possibly from the cataclysm involving the bedpost. She brushed it off, and ripped it open with her nail file.



Dear Father,

I wonder if the magnolias bloomed well this year after all the cool weather? Did John ever paint the arbor green the way you planned? I always thought that would look so beautiful, like the honeysuckle was floating right in mid air.

Is your gout still bothering you? It’s so odd not to have talked to you in so long, and I do wonder often about how you’re doing. Two years is a long time.

My baby is so beautiful. We named him Conroy Anthony—



Lizzie heard a screeching sound in her head and black spots danced in front of her eyes. Conroy? How many Conroys could there be in this part of the world? She whipped her head around, breath coming fast, and was relieved to see Con still asleep. Now she really was prying. She read on greedily, holding her breath.



We named him Conroy Anthony after the sailor in that book I used to love when I was a girl. He has black hair just like mine and he’s just the sweetest, smartest baby. He laughed yesterday for the first time, and I’ve never heard such a beautiful sound. My husband is having to deal with the pressure of being a family man. Diapers are so expensive, and the baby will only settle when he’s cuddled up in bed next to me, which makes it hard for my husband to sleep so he has to take a drink to help him relax.

I’m sure things will settle down soon. I’d love to hear from you if you can find the time to write. You know where I am.

Your daughter,

K



There was a long gap between that letter and the next. Almost two years. Lizzie ripped it open with shaking fingers.



Dear Father,

It’s been so long since I heard from you that I suspect my letters aren’t welcome. Still, you are my father and you always will be. As a mother myself, I understand that.

Conroy has a brother who we named after his father. He looks so different from Conroy, his hair almost white blonde and blue eyes like sapphires. Unfortunately he’s been sick. He has a cough that won’t go away and the doctor charges so much that I could only take him the once.

The shrimp harvest was poor again, or so my husband tells me, I don’t understand these things too well. I got a job myself at the local store, but with a sick baby to take care of I just couldn’t keep regular hours. My husband didn’t like me working either, he thinks a man should provide for his family. I’m sure you’d agree.

I left everything behind when I got married, and I wonder if you kept my few trinkets, like the pearl necklace from Grandmother Adele and the gold locket with Mama’s picture in it? If you could forward those to me, I’d most appreciate it.

Your daughter,

K



Lizzie’s heart was sinking lower and lower. Was this how it always happened? One minute she’s seizing freedom and true love, and the next she’s wistfully remembering old garden arbors and wanting to fondle trinkets from her old life.

Who am I kidding? She wants those things so she can sell them for cash. Lizzie had a nasty taste in her mouth. She’d sold most of her trinkets already. The only one she couldn’t bring herself to part with was the Bulova watch she’d been given on her eighteenth birthday. Right now its reassuringly familiar face read three a.m.

She picked up the fifth envelope and slit it open. It was from almost a year later.



Dear Father,

You know I wouldn’t ask for help if I didn’t truly need it. The baby is very sick. He needs a course of antibiotics that costs more than we can possibly afford. Money has been especially tight this last year and I have not been able to work with the baby sick. I’ve prayed and prayed to the blessed virgin to grant us some relief, but the troubles just seem to pile up, with my husband drinking away what little we have.

I know you said I was making a terrible mistake in my marriage, and if it wasn’t for my two beautiful boys I’d have to say you were right. I was young and romantic, as you said, and didn’t understand the harsh realities of life.

Please Father, if you could find it in your heart to send $275, either in cash, or as a postal order, in care of the Dee General Store, I’d be eternally in your debt and I promise I won’t ask for more. Please don’t send it to the house, and put my name on the envelope, not my husband’s.

Your daughter,

K



Lizzie pressed her hand to her mouth. How could anyone write such a letter? She’s asking for money from her cold hearted bastard of a father who won’t even open her letters? The thought turned her stomach. This woman sounded painfully young. She also didn’t sound too bright. Thank God I’m nothing like her at all.

The ballpoint pen was a reminder that this happened only a couple of decades ago. It had a horribly timeless ring to it.

She’d never write a “Dear Father” letter. What would she call hers though? ‘Dad’? She’d never called him Dad. And Daddy just sounded silly once you were over, say twenty-one, and your father had betrayed your trust and bankrupted you and called you a fat little nobody.

She had a sudden urge to throw up, but a few deep breaths took care of it.

One more letter. She glanced back at Con and noticed with alarm that he’d rolled over and was now facing her. His frighteningly handsome features were still relaxed in deep sleep, one arm crooked under his head and the other sprawled over the white sheet.

He wouldn’t want to see these letters. Wouldn’t want to know they existed. He’d looked at them like a nest of poisonous snakes when she first found them. Was it possible that he somehow knew?

Inhaling a jittery breath, she picked up the sixth and last letter. Same identical envelope as the others. Same neat writing in a plain, blue ballpoint pen, but everything else had changed.



Dear Mr. Milford,

You’ve ignored every letter I’ve sent, and it’s like I sent you a piece of my heart and never got it back and now it’s bled out and hollow and I don’t feel too much pain any more. I know you don’t love me, maybe you never did, and now that I’m a woman and a wife I can see that you likely didn’t love my mother either. You didn’t treat her right and I could see that even as a child. You see I’m a lot less ignorant about the relationships between women and men. Men have more power and they can use their strength to dominate, but don’t you believe that you are winning anything of value.

I’ve said a thousand rosaries for you and for my husband and for all mankind and I think they are falling on ears as deaf as yours. Thank Heaven for my two strong young sons, who are the only joy I have left in this world.

You were right that choosing my husband was a mistake, but maybe staying with a heartless, cruel man like you who can cut off his only daughter as if she never lived would have been a graver mistake.

I don’t suppose you’ve even read any of my letters and I don’t expect you’ll read this one either.

In sorrow over what has been lost,

K



And that was the last one. A chill roamed over Lizzie as she read the bitter, angry words of the last letter.

Could she really show these letters to Con?

She bit her lip and slipped the folded bit of paper back in the envelope. Maybe it was better not to know some things.

The screeching racket of the tree frogs outside made her long to close the windows, but the nighttime air was mercifully cooler.

There was no way she could lie down and sleep with a secret like this on her conscience.

“Con.”

“Hmmmm.” His mouth shifted but his eyes didn’t open.

She gathered the letters and went to sit on the bed. She put her hand on his warm arm and shook. “Con, wake up.”

“What?” he squeezed his eyes, then cracked one open. The light was in his eyes.

“The letters, I read them.”

“So what? It’s nighttime. Tell me in the morning.” He lifted the sheet for her to get in with him.

“Con, I think they’re from your mom.”

His eyes snapped open, but not all the way, just until they were dark slits peering suspiciously at her. “Impossible.”

“I’m serious. They’re from a woman who ran away with a man her father disapproved of. She writes about naming her first son Conroy Anthony.”

“’S not me.”

“Anthony isn’t your middle name?”

“I don’t have a middle name. Conroy Beale, that’s all she wrote.”

“What was your mother’s name?”

“Rina.”

“Oh.” Her fearful excitement deflated a little. She’d been so sure. “Your brother, did he have blond hair?”

“Nope, light brownish.”

“Oh. It’s just that… otherwise the details seem to fit. She married a man who she thought was wonderful and he turned out to be a mean drunk with no money. Will you take a look at them?”

“No, I’m tired. Come to bed, Lizzie.”

“Please?” She hated the whiny tone of her voice.

“No. I don’t even want to touch those damn letters. They give me the creeps.” He slanted a suspicious glance at them where they lay in her hand.

“Can I read one to you?”

Con let out a loud sigh and pulled the sheet up over his shoulder. “If you must.”

By the time she’d finished reading them all—which didn’t take long—he was propped up on his elbow staring at her, lips parted.

“See what I mean? The details match right up.”

“Well,” he frowned, “some of them do, but like I said, my mom’s name was Rina. What’s the postmark on the envelope?”

“Breaux.”

“Shit.” Con bit his lip. That’s the nearest town to Mudbug Flats with a post office. “I don’t like this one bit.”

“You know what this means, don’t you?”

“What?”

“Your mom grew up in this house.”

Con blew out a snort. “Well, that is just impossible.”

“How? She’s writing to her father at this address. We found the letters in this bed. This was probably her father’s bedroom. It is the biggest.”

Con squirmed, like the bed suddenly grew spikes. “No, really. There’s no way my mom grew up someplace like this. She wasn’t, you know, sophisticated or smart or anything. She was just a nice woman. There’s no way…”

“If she ran away when she was very, very young, say fifteen or sixteen, then she wouldn’t necessarily seem polished and sophisticated.”

Con shook his head emphatically. “I don’t think so.”

“And, think about it, couldn’t Rina be short for say, Katherine? That would match up with the K she signs. What was her maiden name?”

Con gave her a funny look. “I don’t know what her maiden name was. But, you know, I think she did have Katherine written inside her prayer book. I asked her about it once.” He sat up, an expression of deepening alarm on his face. “And—” He stared at her, a distant look that chilled her. “She kept a lock of my brother’s hair taped inside her prayer book—he was sick a lot when he was little…” He tapped his chest, searching for a word. “He had um…respiratory infections. That lock of hair was real pale, almost white.” He stared at her, blinking.

“It’s her, isn’t it?” Lizzie bit her lip.

“She never did say where she was from. I can kind of see why if she’d made a big step down like that.” Con rubbed his hand over his mouth. “That kind of thing freaks people out. Better to keep it a secret, you know?”

“No, I don’t know. You’re the expert on secrets.” Lizzie was getting a nasty prickly sensation up and down her spine.

“She always said my father was a good man when she met him.” Con looked past her, out into the darkness outside the uncurtained window. “That he worked hard and they had big dreams. The problem was, he couldn’t make enough money so he never felt like he was worthy of her.”

Lizzie let out a breath she’d been holding for some time. “Is that why you pushed me away once I had no money of my own?” she asked quietly.

“What?” Con looked startled.

“Because you were afraid that you’d end up like your father, unable to support your family?”

“No,” Con said indignantly. “No way. I didn’t think about it like that at all. I’m nothing like my father…” His voice trailed off.

Lizzie placed her hand on his arm as strange heat flooded her chest. She looked at his face, at the confusion on his striking features. “You know, Conroy Beale, suddenly I understand you a whole lot better.”