Page 22 of Right the Wrongs (Broken Vows #5)

Chapter Sixteen

Griffin - Present

Before I make it out of town, I’m already beating myself up.

I drive around for a couple of hours without a destination in mind, just a need to get the hell away from home.

It’s the first time since Wren and I got together that I’ve actively avoided her.

Not that she’s tried to call me. I have missed a lot of calls from Charlie, though.

I listened to one message, and he spent the entire length of the recording finding new and creative ways of calling me a dumbass.

Amazing how time changes. When Wren and I first got together, he liked to tell me on a frequent basis that I was fucking up my life, Wren’s, and Liam’s by being with her.

Now the tables have turned, and he’s telling me how much I’m screwing up by taking some time for myself.

He’s not really wrong this time, though.

I knew the moment I left the city limits that I fucked up.

Maybe if I’d told Wren that I needed some time alone, she’d be fine, but instead I accused her of harboring feelings for my son.

The really stupid part of what I said is that I haven’t believed she had feelings for him in a long time.

After the twins were born, things settled down for all of us.

Claudia and Wren became friends at least on the surface, and tension seemed to evaporate between Liam and Wren.

I didn’t expect them to become best friends, but they were at least friendly.

Oddly, the more they fought, the more I feared they might still have a thing for each other, but when they were getting along, I found it hard to even remember that they were once romantically involved.

I think most people found it hard to believe, considering they acted more like blood relatives than exes.

Then came this latest relapse, and once more, Wren’s all in her head over Liam.

I don’t know what to feel, or how I’m supposed to see what is happening right in front of me.

Hell, I’m not even sure I know what is happening right in front of me.

All I know is that my wife has been withdrawn, moody, and generally sad.

I don't think that I have done anything this time to make her feel that way.

These thoughts keep traveling around my mind while I drive around aimlessly.

Or at least I think I’m driving around without a destination until I seem to snap out of a trance as I put the car in park.

The miles of highway didn’t register, nor did the meandering streets through my hometown, but somehow I managed to drive straight to my old garage.

I still own the business and the building, but I haven’t been to this location very much in the last six months.

Julio, once a part-time worker here for Charlie and me, has been promoted to manager of the Harriston shop.

He’s had some innovative ideas. Not to the level of Wren’s with the café, but he has added detailing and some customization that Charlie and I didn’t think the local economy would support.

I guess with the advent of remote work, there have been some new people who have moved to town to take advantage of the lower cost of living here.

That has, ironically, brought an influx of cash into the local economy and raised prices slightly.

This isn’t the same town that we left almost a decade ago.

There’s still a lot of poverty here, but not quite as bad as it was when I was growing up.

A knock on my window jolts me out of the random wandering of my thoughts. Julio stands there, giving me a curious look.

“What’s going on, boss? Did we have a meeting, or did you just want to check up on me?” he asks.

“Nothing quite so rational. I got in the truck, and just found myself here,” I admit.

He nods his head a few times. “I think better when I’m working too. Something about giving my hands something to do seems to free the thoughts that get all tangled up in my head.”

I feel like a shitty boss. Julio has always been kind of on the periphery for us.

He’s a valued employee, and I genuinely like the kid, but I’m not as close to him as I am to everyone else who is a part of the garage.

Hell, Scott is only the spouse of one of the employees, and we’re closer to him than we are to Julio.

I’m coming to learn that I’m not a very observant man. That’s probably a revelation I should have had the first time I realized my son was an addict, for years, and I had turned a blind eye to it. Or when I learned that he’d been verbally, emotionally, and financially abusing his wife for years.

The thing is, even an old man like me is capable of change. I can’t expect my boy to change something so major and not follow suit. I need to become more self-aware before my obliviousness causes even more harm.

Julio jerks his head toward the garage. “C’mon, I’ve got a truck needing a routine tuneup that I haven’t gotten to because some dumb-ass kid ground the shit out of the gears of his dad’s classic Camaro, thinking he was a bad ass street racer.”

The town might be gentrifying, but it seems there are some things that are still the same.

There’s a stretch of country road outside of town that kids hold illegal street races on.

Everyone knows about it, but we all pretend that no one knows.

Every season, the period of time after the last heavy spring rain, until the weather turns colder at the end of fall, some kid “borrows” their dad’s car and manages to do thousands of dollars of damage.

When I was a kid, I participated in that destruction, and after I grew up, that hedonistic tradition helped pay the bills.

I’m happy that he’s the one doing the repairs on the sports car now, though.

There’s way too much to mess up in my state of mind, and I’m not really in the mood to focus right now.

A tune-up, though, that’s something I could practically do in my sleep.

I take the bay that has always been mine and start setting up the tools I’ll need to change filters, spark plugs, and check the hoses, belts, and battery.

Julio turns the stereo back on to a rock station that plays music from the nineties up to today.

“Dirty Little Secret,” by All-American Rejects starts playing, and I let my mind free to take me where it’s been pulling me all day.

Griffin - Fourteen years ago

Stacks of invoices, post-it notes, and scraps of paper with notes scrawled on them litter the top of my desk. I have the unfortunate task of deciphering all of this chicken scratch that Charlie and I have written down over the last month so that I can update the books.

It’s a miracle we’re still in business, to be honest. We give most of our quotes verbally, and then collect cash or a check.

I own the building outright, or we’d probably be fucked.

The reason that I’m the one in here hunting and pecking on the keyboard rather than someone else is because Liam refuses to learn the accounting system, and Charlie is hopeless when it comes to technology. In general.

I’m not exaggerating. He once spent fifteen minutes trying to rewind a DVD. The extent of his computer skills is turning it on, and that’s about it. I doubt he could even find porn, and Charlie is usually a savant at finding sex in every possible place.

While I'm working to decipher the note on one of the grease-stained scraps of paper, I hear the music get turned down, followed by a woman's voice. Charlie is usually decent with our customers, but by now, he’s screwed just about every woman in town, so I’m always a bit apprehensive when a woman comes into the garage alone.

I probably seem like the typical douchebag grease monkey, disrespectful of women when it comes to car maintenance, but there’s been more than one blow-up over his romantic history.

Liam can be extremely charming, but there’s usually an ulterior motive for him when he puts in that kind of effort.

Every time thoughts like these come into my mind, I feel guilty.

No one wants to have negative thoughts about their child, but despite the fact that my ex-wife, Melinda wasn’t involved in raising him, I can still see some of her in our son.

Mainly in the way he is willing to manipulate people to get his way.

I try not to let my feelings about her color my feelings for him, but when I see the way he treats Wren like an accessory more than a spouse, I feel like I’ve failed him somehow, and her by extension.

I thought I was doing good by focusing all of my attention on Liam while he was growing up, but one of the unforeseen consequences is that my son has never seen a healthy relationship.

Now he’s married and hasn’t the first clue how to be in a healthy relationship.

“What is she doing here?” I growl at Liam and jerk my chin at my daughter-in-law, Wren. “You can play house on your own time, but right now I need you to get Mr. Tucker’s car finished.”

I know I’m being a dick, but the alternative is so, so much worse.

I’m sure that she thinks that I’m upset that they’re married, and I am, but that’s not why I treat her like she’s the worst thing to ever happen to my family.

No, the reason is that I can’t be in the same room with her for more than a few minutes without feeling like I’m going to hyperventilate.

As for being upset that they got married, well, my son is perfectly content where he’s at.

I’m not judging, I love owning my own business and spending my life working on cars.

It’s an honest job and provides a much-needed service to my community.

I don’t rip anyone off, and I don’t jack up my prices when I see that someone is not very knowledgeable about cars.

That has helped me build a loyal customer base that recommends me to others.