“You were pretty out of it,” Walden said.
“I know where you found me. I remember that. But not a lot else.”
“You were about to get yourself beat up good.”
“What was I doing?”
Walden shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. There’s still coffee. Should be hot. You should have some.”
“Yeah, I guess,” he mumbled, and disappeared back into the house. Walden went in after him, poured him some coffee.
“Just black,” Victor said, taking the mug from Walden. “I feel kinda like shit.”
“You look kinda like shit.”
Victor grinned, took a sip.
“Victor, I know this is none of my business, but I’m gonna put my oar in anyway.”
“Yeah, sure, whatever,” he said.
“You’re a bright guy. I mean, you always were. Good at school. You picked up stuff fast. Good with your hands, as I recall. Mechanically inclined, but book-smart, too.”
“A real whiz kid,” he said, nodding.
“What I’m saying is, you’ve got something to offer. You have skills. There’s got to be someone in town here who could use those. But you have to stop getting wasted every night.”
“You been spying on me?”
“No, I’m just—I’m making an assumption. But tell me I’m wrong.”
Victor set his coffee on the counter. “Why aren’t you upset?”
“Excuse me?”
“I don’t get it. Why aren’t you a mess like I am? She was your fucking daughter.”
Walden came at him like a cannonball. He grabbed the man by his jacket, yanked him close to his face, then threw him up against the counter. Victor’s head flung back, hit the upper cupboards, rattled dishes. But Walden wasn’t finished. He grabbed hold of Victor again with everything he had, and this time threw him down onto the floor.
He was some three decades older than Victor, but Walden had no trouble throwing the man around. Maybe it helped that he was angry, and Victor was hungover.
“Never!” Walden shouted. “Never say that!” He brought back a leg and kicked Victor in the thigh. The younger man pulled in on himself, put his hands up over his head in case Walden’s shoe connected with him there next.
“I’m sorry! Jesus! I’m sorry!”
“You think you’re the only one who grieves?” Walden said, still shouting. “Goddamn your arrogance, you little shit.”
“Okay! I didn’t mean it!”
Walden collapsed into a kitchen chair, rested his arms on the table, and worked on catching his breath. Slowly Victor got to his feet, pulled out a chair on the other side of the table, and sat down.
“I was out of line,” he said.
Walden’s hands were shaking.
“Really. That was wrong. I should never have said anything like that. You’re a good man. I know you miss her. You’ve always been good to me. What you did for me last night, bringing me here, I appreciate that. That was real decent of you.”
Walden looked at his hands, put one over the other to stop the trembling. Slowly he spoke.
“I had Beth,” he said. Victor looked at him, not sure what he meant by that, so he waited. Walden continued. “I had Beth, so I had to hold it together. She went to pieces. She was never really able to move on. What would have happened to her; who would have looked after her if I went to the bar every night to feel sorry for myself? Where would she have been then?”
He lifted his hand and pointed an accusing finger at Victor. “I couldn’t be as selfish as you. I couldn’t drown my sorrows the way you have. I had responsibilities, and I met them.”
“I had nobody to be responsible for,” Victor said. “So what difference did it make what I did?”
“What difference?” Walden asked. “Are you asking what’s the point?”
“Is there one? What about you? Now that your wife is gone? Now that you’ve lost the person—the people—who were most important to you, what’s the fucking point?”
“We honor them,” Walden said.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“When you do what you do, you shame Olivia.”
“What? I don’t get that. I don’t get that at all.”
“People see you and they think, What kind of man is he? Can’t make anything of himself. Full of self-pity. They wonder, What was Olivia thinking, that she’d spend the rest of her life with this man? What you do, the way you act, it diminishes Olivia. Makes people think less of her.”
“That’s horseshit. People aren’t entitled to grieve?”
“Of course they are. For a period. But then you have to show people what you’re made of. Show people what Olivia saw in you in the first place. So people know she was a good judge of character. It’s all about character.”
Victor appeared to be thinking about that. “I don’t know. What about you? How do you honor her? How do you honor Olivia? And Beth?”
“I’m finding my own way to do that,” Walden said. He looked away, out the window. “You should go,” he said.
“Okay,” Victor said, pushing back his chair.
“Of all the things you said last night, you were right about one thing.”