Page 9 of Right the Wrongs (Broken Vows #5)

Chapter Six

Wren - Present

The signs have been there for the last couple of weeks, but like last time, everyone has been ignoring them.

I haven’t seen Claudia’s car in the driveway for at least a week.

Natalie hasn’t been over to play with Parker.

Sticking our heads in the sand didn’t help him before, and it won’t now either.

It’s time we all say out loud what we’re all thinking. Liam is drinking again.

It doesn’t feel like my place to intervene, though. Yes, he’s part of my family. He’s my husband’s son, and that makes him my stepson through some cruel twist of fate, but it’s never going to erase the fact that first he was my husband.

We get along now, at least on the surface.

There are moments where I’m genuinely able to put the past behind me, but memories have a way of bubbling to the surface.

When it comes to my relationship with Liam, there aren’t many good ones, and even those are problematic, considering my soul mate turned out to be his father.

I thought time would make parts of our circumstances less uncomfortable.

It has and it hasn’t. You can become accustomed to something, but that doesn’t mean it ever feels normal.

There seems to be a rise and fall to the interactions between us as well.

We’ve managed to become friendly, but I don’t know that he and I can ever be friends.

I think there’s too much pain between us to ever really build a bridge to cross all that hurt. We have learned to pretend.

I don’t think it’s just me either. I can tell there are times he doesn’t want to see me.

I don’t know what causes that for him because I don’t ask.

Our marriage, hell, everything that came before Griffin slipped a ring on my finger, is buried somewhere out in the backyard.

Literally, I buried all our pictures, mementos, and even my wedding ring in a box in the backyard of the first house Griffin and I lived in here in Centralia.

I didn’t want to keep carrying him with me, and Bess, God bless her, convinced me that I could symbolically put everything behind me.

I won’t tell her this, but it kinda worked.

I’m not some kind of woo-woo person who has superstitions for everything; hell, I’m not even religious, but I do believe in the power of your mindset.

The actual ritual was more for her than for me.

But, when the past starts to push its way back into my present, I remember the physical process of burying that part of my life and shove all the shit Liam brings up back down to the abyss of my memory.

Right now, I can practically feel the rough wooden handle of the shovel in my hands. The mineral-rich smell of the soil fills my nostrils as I let myself relive cutting the blade into the earth. This time it isn’t working, but this time the past has become the present.

I look out the window over my sink as Liam walks a meandering line to his car.

I watch him stumble and drop his keys, and realize that my ability to stay the fuck out of this mess is over.

I can’t, in good conscience, let him get in the car and drive when I’m fairly certain the only coffee he’s consumed this morning has been of the Irish variety.

I grab my phone and dial Griffin as I run out the back door to try and intercept Liam before he gets in his car. The phone rings and rings. When his voicemail message kicks on, I’m not surprised. I shove the phone in my back pocket because there’s no way he’s going to get here fast enough anyway.

“Liam Andrew Hale!” I shout. “What in the actual fuck do you think you’re doing?”

He starts laughing. It’s a mocking sound I haven’t heard in almost a decade. “You do know you aren’t actually my mother, right? For that matter, you’re not my wife anymore either.”

“At the very least, I’m a friend, and I don’t want to see you wrap your car around a telephone pole. I’m pretty sure your actual wife will agree with me,” I try to reason with him.

Another maniacal laugh has him hanging on to the door, trying to stay mostly upright. “Wrong again, stepmother, dearest. My wife doesn’t give a shit about me. She took the kids and left.”

I wave my hand in the direction of his car, which is parked halfway on the driveway and halfway on the grass. “And you wanted the kids to see this, did you? Don’t you think Natalie has experienced enough of you being a drunken ass?”

“A drunken ass? Don’t hold back or anything,” he scoffs.

My eyes roll so hard I get a little dizzy. “That was me holding back, Liam.”

Liam takes a step away from the car and holds his arms out wide. The movement causes him to stumble a bit, but he manages to catch his balance before he falls. He laughs again as if any of this is funny. “By all means, lay it all on me. Give me the full, ugly truth.”

We’re all just a web of strings, really, made up of all our thoughts and memories.

They’re all just there, tangled together, forming who we are.

It’s not our primal self, but the one we build to face the world.

Tug on any of those threads hard enough and the entire construct unravels.

I think I’ve been waiting a long time to let it all come undone.

I jab my finger in his direction. “Don’t forget that you asked me for this,” I remind him.

“You were a shit husband to me. I’ve watched you with Claudia, and for a while, I had hoped that you were growing up.

You hadn’t faced any real problems since she came along, though, so I held my judgment.

You knew pain was a trigger, but rather than ask for help, you would rather just throw up your hands and give in to your demons. ”

“You have no idea what kind of pain I’ve been in, so spare me the sanctimonious bullshit,” Liam snaps.

“I’ve had four children, you think I don’t understand pain?” I scoff.

“I wrenched my back replacing an engine, it’s not the same,” he mumbles.

“You’re fucking right, it’s not. And you think I don’t know what it’s like to throw out my back?

I picked up Parker while I was five months pregnant with the twins, and slipped a disk.

I was on bed rest for two weeks with nothing more than acetaminophen for the pain.

Then I hurt my back again in labor with the boys four months later. ”

“Do you want a fucking award? I have a disease, Wren. God, you’re the same judgmental bitch you were when we were married.”

The sound of tires squealing on the asphalt stops me from the rage-filled litany I was about to unleash. I don’t even have to turn around to know who has arrived.

The creak of the door to Griffin’s ancient truck gets Liam’s attention. He might be drunk, but he still has enough presence of mind to be wary of his father when he’s pissed. Listening to Griffin stomp through the yard between our houses, I can tell before I see his face that he’s pissed.

I pull the phone out of my back pocket and realize I didn’t connect to voicemail, but instead I’ve been on the phone with Griffin this entire time. At least now we can stop pretending that Liam isn’t spiraling out of control again.

Griff comes over, wraps his arm around me, and kisses me on the forehead. “Hey, Baby Bird, I can take over here. I’m keeping my promise; you don’t ever have to be responsible for him again.”

“I’m right here,” Liam interjects. “No one has to be responsible for me.”

Griffin is fifty-three now, to Liam’s thirty-five.

Being younger doesn’t give Liam an advantage, though.

It’s not even the drinking that makes them an uneven match.

Griffin is a couple of inches taller and has always taken better care of himself, including exercising regularly.

Basically, Griffin is a beast, and Liam is nothing more than a watered-down version of his dad.

The vein on Griff’s forehead throbs. “I really wish I didn’t have to be, son, but once again, you are screwing up your life. I’m not about to stand back and watch my son kill himself with alcohol and painkillers. We’ve gone around with this enough already.”

Griffin lets go of me, crosses the distance to Liam, and yanks the keys out of his hand.

“And if you think that I’m going to let you drive blitzed out of your mind, then you’re dumber than I thought you were.

The last thing you need added to your laundry list of fuck ups is killing someone.

You really want to be responsible for someone having to be told that their loved one is never coming home? ”

Liam’s eyes slide my way and hold for a heartbeat. He was the one home with me when I was told that my parents were in an accident. Sure, it was rain and not a drunk driver that took them away from me, but not hard to imagine what the scenario Griffin presented would look like.

He hangs his head and silently starts to cry. I turn around without saying a word and leave Griffin to comfort him. He’s right, Liam is not my responsibility anymore.

Wren - Past

Things settle back down to normal for Griffin and me, or at least as close to normal as there can be considering how we began.

I know that he goes over to Charlie’s to visit with Natalie, but I still haven’t been able to bring myself to spend time with her.

Ordinarily, as her grandpa’s wife, I would develop a relationship with her, but there’s nothing ordinary about my connection to her.

I don’t exactly like myself for the animosity I feel toward a baby. She is an innocent baby and not responsible for the circumstances that brought her into this world, but I also can’t forget. So Griffin goes alone, and I sit at home berating myself for not being able to move past this.