“I’m sorry, Penny. I never meant for any of this to happen.”
“I know you didn’t, Tucker.” Her voice is soft and there’s a hint of tiredness. Glancing at my watch I see it’s almost eleven for her and should probably let her go, but this is the first time she’s answered since I left her in Vermont.
“I think you’re a brave woman. I should’ve told you that when I saw you, but my words were jumbled and everything was happening so fast. I can’t fathom being in your situation, thinking I’m gone and having to deal with Lawson. I’m going to kill him when I see him, Penelope.”
“Please don’t.”
Her simple statement takes me back. In fact, I’m confused. Why wouldn’t she want this piece of shit dead?
“Why not?” I brace myself for her reasoning.
“Because you’ll go to jail and I can’t have that.”
My heart starts to beat faster, giving me hope that someday her and I will be together again; that we’ll be a family and living the life we thought we would. So much of me wants to dissect her statement and ask her what she means, but I don’t want to force her into anything she’s not ready for.
“I’m going back to California tomorrow,” I say instead, changing the subject. “As much as I love Evan and Ryley, living here isn’t my home. Not that a place in Cali will be either, but it’s what I know. I also have a hearing next week in front of a JAG judge to get my life back. Carole, Ryley’s mom, has been working her tail off for Rask and I.”
“What are you going to do?”
“About what?” I ask in regards to her open-ended question.
“About being a SEAL?”
“I don’t know. I think I’m going to take a leave of absence and get my head straight. Maybe take up surfing or something like that. Being in the Navy is all I know.”
“Oh the women will love seeing you on a surfboard,” she says, laughing. Her comment strikes me as odd, but it’s her laughter that keeps me focused.
“There’s only one woman I care about, Penny, and that’s you.”
She shuffles the phone, or drops it. I can’t be sure. I hear her move around and finally hear a door shut.
“Tucker, I have so much to say and probably should’ve done it when you were here, but words, even now, escape me. I’m torn up. I’m confused. I feel like I’ve cheated on you and that makes me feel so dirty. When Chloe goes to school—”
I close my eyes when she refers to our daughter as Chloe. I know Ray didn’t give her that name, but for some reason the jealousy inside of me makes it seem like he did.
“Can we call her Claire, please?”
“She wants to be called Chloe. I’m respecting her wishes and you should, too. I know what her birth names means to you, but this is all she’s known.”
Penny is right, even though I can’t see past the red. My grandmother raised me after my mom overdosed. My mother never told my grandma who my father was so she stepped in. Her name was Claire McCoy and from the minute Penny and I found out we were having a girl, I wanted to call her Claire. If it weren’t for my grandmother, I probably would’ve been into drugs like my mother. I should ask Penny about my grandmother, but I already know the answer. I make a mental note to see if what I was told about my grandma dying is true or not.
“I understand,” I tell her reluctantly. “I just … I don’t know her and can only remember her from when she was a baby.”
“I know, but she needs time just as I do. To say our lives are upside down and inside out right now would be the colossal understatement of the universe. Anyway, as I was saying, when Chloe goes to school, I sit in my shower and scrub my skin until it’s raw. I can’t get clean and I don’t know how to make those feelings go away.”
The image of her ripping her skin apart kills me. Sadly, I don’t know how to make those feelings go away either because my thoughts are just as dark. Half the time when I’m alone I set my pistol out and wonder if things would be easier if I ended my life. But Penny and Claire flash before my eyes. It’s their smiles that give me hope to look past the shit storm my life as become.
I can hear Penny breathing on the other end and the thought of having her here with me, lying next to me goes right to my groin. It’s going to be a long time, if ever, before I’ll feel her like that again.
“I miss you,” I say, biting the proverbial bullet. I know she could hang up on me or tell me not to call her again. She could change her number tomorrow and I’d be shit out of luck because I wouldn’t be able to reach her, but I don’t care. She needs to know and remember that she’s my wife, regardless if she feels like she’s still married to Ray.
“Tucker—” she says breathlessly.