He was also uneasy about the fact that he might be pissed, but he wasn’t infuriated.
His frustration was about courtesy and respect, not love and loyalty.
It wasn’t about the fact that she’d broken his heart.
It was about the fact that he simply had the right to know why she had.
Through this, he was trying to hold on to other things about Hope. Things he’d need when she eventually snapped out of her snit and became the woman who, for the rest of his life, he’d have to deal with in appropriate ways that wouldn’t make his kids uncomfortable.
Things like how she was whenever Shaw would get one of his many scrapes climbing trees, falling off his bike, skateboarding—taking care of their son and adjusting her mothering from cooing and babying to soothing and reassuring the older his boy got.
And the way her relationship changed with Corinne after she got her period. How they started to become not mother and daughter, but mother-friend/confidant and daughter, having their quiet talks in the kitchen together, giggling like best friends.
It was also how she sat beside him in that small hall with tears falling silently down her cheeks when Mamie performed in her first dance recital.
Mamie had been so little, and the girls up there were all over the place, some of them just standing and waving to their parents.
But Hope had been feeling so deeply, it spilled out on her face.
Pride, probably (because Mamie went through the routine, badly, but she was one of the few who did it).
Though he figured Hope was also realizing that was an indication that their baby was growing up and the next recital would be different, and the next, and the next, until Mamie was driving herself to dance class right before the time she drove away to meet life, and, like Hix, she loved that future for their daughter at the same time she dreaded it.
He also thought about the fact she’d never bitched that she did all the cooking.
He hated cooking, she knew that. She liked to do it up once in a while, but most of the time it was a chore.
He (and then Shaw) never gave her reason to have to take out the trash and he saw to the tending of the cars, the lawn, or if something was broken, he fixed it. But Hix knew none of that made up for her having to be in the kitchen every night. Even after she’d started working part-time for her dad when Mamie went into second grade, going full-time when their baby hit middle school, she did all the cooking.
But she never did any bitching.
Then there were their Christmas mornings.
Hope never opened her presents until the very end. Not to manipulate attention to herself, but because she was so enthralled by watching her family enjoy what they got, the holiday she always took pains to do up big for all of them, she forgot people wanted her to know she was loved too.
And there was how close she was with her mom. How she managed to still be the little girl her dad needed without making that nauseating. How she razzed her older brothers but was the first to show when someone was needed.
That had been his wife.
That had been the woman he loved.
That had been her part in the life they’d had.
He didn’t know who she was now.
But that was the woman he needed to hold on to so his kids didn’t have to negotiate awkward times at graduations, weddings, family gatherings.
He just didn’t know if she kept up with the shit she was dishing out, if he’d be able to hold on to that.
And this was no longer about what she’d done to him and their family for reasons still unknown.
It was about the fact she had no problem dragging Greta into it.
I am, Greta had said, asserting her idiocy.
Like it wasn’t his to know why she missed church, it wasn’t his to understand what change came over her in the back room of Lou’s salon, no matter how much it disturbed him.
He’d already picked her up, taken her home, slept with her, and left before he’d even walked to the bathroom to get rid of the condom she’d given him to use.
He was not that guy.
And she was not that girl.
She didn’t need any more of his shit.
He didn’t have the right to get up in hers.
But damn, on his couch, his kids under his roof, trying to get to sleep, he’d think of her mouth on him. Her hands. The feel of her hair. The hot, tight slick that had closed around him when he’d slid inside. The noises she’d made. The look on her beautiful face, her eyes staring right into his as he moved inside her.
He’d think of it and go hard.
On his couch.
His kids under his roof.
And not a day passed when not once, not a few times, but dozens of them, he’d think about her. How bad he’d wanted to laugh when she’d been so hilarious in her tizzy. How she let him in on everything just looking at him. How much it sucked things weren’t different and he couldn’t ask her out on a date, ask her about herself that time, be able to laugh when she was funny, get her to smile at him again.
And what her parting shot had meant to him.
She’s a fool.
Hope had thrown him away. Their family. Their life. He’d taken that hit, and at the time thought he’d never recover because that hit had landed in his heart. Absolutely.
But it had also shaken his manhood.
She’s a fool.
And with that, like a miracle worker, he’d recovered.
He was a trained investigator and he had been a loving husband. As both, in his mind for months he’d torn through everything with Hope to try and figure out where it’d gone wrong.
There was no evidence, no trail to follow, not one fucking thing.
She’s a fool.
Except that.
Because that was the only thing the minimal evidence there was, was leading him to.
They’d had a good life.
She’d thrown it away without fighting for it, finding some way to make whatever was going wrong, go right.
Like a fool.
So maybe that was where he was now. Where Greta had put him. Pissed he didn’t understand but no longer torn up about it.
And more, beginning to feel unsure he gave a shit anymore.
On that thought, the door opened and Shaw came through it.
“Hey, Dad,” he greeted quietly.
“Hey, kid. Fun date?” Hix asked.
“Yeah,” Shaw answered, walking in and stopping at the end of the coffee table. “Girls asleep?”
“Yup.”
“You want me to help you pull out the couch?”
“Nope.”
He watched in the light from the TV, the only light in the room, as his son’s head turned to the set then back to his dad.
“You’re watching Smokey and the Bandit?” Shaw asked.
Hix grinned up at him. “Your sister reminded me I haven’t seen it in a while.”
Shaw grinned back. “You should start using your middle initial like Sheriff Buford T. Justice. You can be Sheriff Hixon T. Drake.”
“Actually has a ring to it,” Hix joked.
Shaw chuckled, noting, “Good your middle name is Timothy and not William. Sheriff Hixon W. Drake would sound stupid.”
“Son, I called myself Sheriff Hixon T. Drake, the stupid would start there.”
Shaw chuckled again and began to move past the coffee table.
“You goin’ to bed?” Hix asked.
“Yeah,” Shaw answered.