Hawk must have felt it too because he took a stab at it. “So, Mark, how many ditches did you dig?” he asked, referring to his driving.
Mark looked at Hawk. There was almost a defiance in his expression; certainly one of distrust. I wondered at this. “None,” he said bluntly and fell silent.
Liane tried. “I didn’t get my license until I was eighteen. Dad was afraid I’d pick up strangers and give them a ride.” She smiled, and I knew she was referring to her big heart. Mark simply stared at her, as though she was unintelligible with her accent.
This angered Hawk. I knew it immediately. “Mark, Liane is to be my wife, and I expect you to treat her with respect.”
I closed my eyes. I knew it was the wrong thing to say, but it was too late. Liane jumped in, trying to make it better. “Oh, he’s just a bit shy,” she covered.
“I’m not shy,” Mark stated in a clear voice. He looked directly at Hawk. “I just don’t happen to trust you, and I don’t care whether you’re my brother or not. From what I’ve heard, you’re a psycho murderer, and we’re better off without you. No one asked you to come back.”
“Mark!” Auggie shouted, coming out of her chair. “Hawk is your brother and a member of this family. You will apologize immediately and then go to your room!”
Mark looked at Auggie with surprise. “You said yourself you didn’t know him anymore. Who changes their name? What’s he hiding? Or have you conveniently forgotten why you sent him away?” Mark dropped these bombs and then turned and took the stairs two at a time.
The silence in the room was suffocating, and Hawk stood. “Liane, I think we need to leave.”
“Hawk, no,” Auggie objected, but Hawk was pulling Liane, and they were already halfway to the door.
“It’s alright, Mother. I knew I should have stayed away. He’s right. Trust is important, and he’s not feeling it. I get that.” He opened the front door and slammed it behind them.
I looked at Auggie and saw the tears running down her face. “Why didn’t you do something?” she asked me, choking on the sobs. My mouth was hanging open in helplessness. “You just sat there and let Mark treat him like that. You didn’t stick up for him.” Auggie walked past me, and I tried to grab her arm, but she pulled it flat against her side, out of reach. She left the room and the bedroom door slammed as she retreated. She didn’t come down to dinner, and I saw Letty leave the kitchen with a tray in her hands. She didn’t look at me. It seemed I was in the dog house all the way around.
“Dad?” Marga was standing in the hallway.
“Yes?” I answered, grateful that someone was speaking to me.
“Can I go out with some friends for an hour or so?” she asked quickly, darting looks out the window as though someone would be pulling up to the house soon.
“Who?”
“Oh, just Bobby Fleener. You know his father. We’re just going for a ride.”
Every bone in my body cried out that she shouldn’t go.
“Be home in an hour,” I said, retreating into old habits. It was just simpler.
“Yes!” she squealed and was immediately out the door before I could possibly change my mind. I had no idea who Bobby Fleener was.
I walked upstairs and tried to go into our room, but the door was locked. With a sigh, I went into the guest room and laid down. I didn’t wake up until the next morning.
Auggie was at the table in the kitchen, her robe askew, a worried look on her face. “Marga never came home. Do you know where she went?”
The hair raised on the back of my neck. “Not really, she asked to go out with friends for an hour. She must have come home and gone out again, and you just didn’t see her.”
“She’s not been home, Worth. Her bed hasn’t been slept in. Her toothbrush is dry. My calls go straight to voicemail when I call. Where is she? Who did she go with?”
I was groggy and raked my brain for a name. “Bobby somebody.”
Auggie looked at me in total disgust. “Bobby somebody? You let our sixteen-year-old wildcat daughter run the roads all night with someone named Bobby somebody? What the hell kind of a parent are you?” she spat and left the room.
Disgusted with the entire situation, I grabbed my jacket and left for the office. At least there I was still respected.
I was thoughtful on my drive. I wasn’t worried about Marga. She was independent and could take care of herself. If something happened, I would have gotten a call. I made a note to check into this Bobby Fleener — I’d finally remembered his fucking last name. She said I knew his father.
I shrugged it off as soon as I arrived at the office, immersing myself in spreadsheets and forgot about the entire sour day.
Auggie, however, did not. I got hit as soon as I came through the door.
“Let me ask you a question, just for the hell of it,” she began.
“Okay,” I shrugged, oblivious.
“Is Marga home?” she asked.
I shrugged again. “I guess so.”
“You guess so?”
“Well, I assume if she hadn’t shown up, you would have called me at the office.”
“So you parent your children by assumption?”
“Well, all parents do to a certain extent. They have to unless they want to walk them on a leash. What’s this all about, Auggie? Why are you up my ass?”
“It’s so typical of you to only think of yourself and what you want, Worth. You’ve always been that way. As long as what you wanted included me, I didn’t notice I was being steered. But when it doesn’t, it becomes quite obvious.” Auggie was angrier than I could ever remember seeing her. She wasn’t screaming, but her deadly calm voice was far more lethal.
“What does that have to do with Marga?” I asked her, trying to keep her on one course of logic. She was blowing this out of proportion.
Auggie’s mouth distorted with resentful doubt. “Plenty! Number one, Marga didn’t come in until after ten o’clock this morning. Number two, she stank of booze and was slurring her speech — not to mention her clothes looked like she’d slept in them. And number three, there is no such person as Bobby somebody or the father you claim to know! I called some of her friends and none of them know of a Bobby of any last name.”
I saw black. It was an absolutely encompassing rage that I’d not felt since my father had beaten me for not filling a watering bucket, even when it was obvious by the wet soil that it had been kicked over — most likely by him. I was not angry with Marga. Teens were notorious for deceit. I was insanely furious that I’d been caught in this humiliation and in Auggie’s verbal trap.