Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 78631 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78631 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Why is he paying good money for this? Especially when we have Uncle Ryan’s wines at home for free?
Dad takes a sip of his bourbon and winces as he swallows. Then he lets out a breath. “Whew!”
“Good?” I say with sarcasm.
“Yeah, in its own way. Sometimes it’s what I need.”
I pretend to take another sip of the shitty Merlot. “Help me understand why I’m here, Dad.”
He sets his glass down. “When I was thirty-five years old, I found myself back here.”
“You met Mom when you were thirty-five.”
“Right. It was just after I met her. I needed something. I wasn’t sure what, but I found myself here, hoping I could figure it out. I was walking around this area, and I got mugged.”
I gasp.
He holds up a hand. “Obviously I lived. It wasn’t the first time I had been mugged. I often walked through the seedy area on the outskirts of the city at night, just waiting for some dumbass to try to jump me. Two times before that night I had been jumped, and two times before I had disarmed the mugger and beat the shit out of him. No one had ever called the cops on me.” He shrugs. “I didn’t care if they did. I was careful never to do any lasting damage. Plus, self-defense and all. The guy who mugged me here, though, I wanted to go back and finish the job with that one. I had to force myself not to go running back and pummel him to death.”
I swallow. “Dad…”
“I won’t lie to you, Dee. That night, I wanted to see that mugger dead. I could still feel the heat of his shitty breath on my neck. But I wasn’t crazy. I knew killing was wrong. I wasn’t a sociopath.”
I gulp down another sip of the wine, my nerves jumping. “Of course you weren’t.”
“I didn’t say that to convince you, honey,” Dad says. “I said it to myself at the time. To convince myself.”
I look away from my father. He had just returned from his military service at that time. He was bound to be a little screwed up. Still, I don’t like what I’m hearing.
“Anyway,” he continues, “it turns out I met a friendly old guy. His name was Mike, and he was sitting next to me at the bar. He asked if I had troubles. I told him he didn’t know the half of it.”
“But you’d just met Mom…”
“Right, I had. But I was dealing with some stuff. The military, seeing what I saw, can fuck a person up. This Mike was recently widowed, had worked hard in construction all his life. We were different as night and day. Anyway, I was pissed.”
“Well, sure. You got mugged.” I scan the musty bar. “What were you doing around here anyway?”
He cracks a small smile. “It’s nicer now than it was then. The area has gentrified a lot, but somehow this little dive keeps standing.”
“What happened next? With Mike, I mean.”
“He asked me what was wrong. I told him I got mugged, and he told me off. Told me I couldn’t go walking around this part of town in my expensive ostrich boots and expect not to get mugged.”
I’m still confused. So this guy was rude to my father? Why is he telling me this story?
“He said I was asking to get mugged, or I wouldn’t have come around here.” Dad laughs. “And damn, he was right.”
“Why would you want to get mugged, Dad?”
“I was messed up in the head. I had just met your mom, and I didn’t feel like I was good enough for her.”
“Dad…”
“Let me finish, Dee.” He takes another sip of bourbon. “I got pissed, said Mike didn’t know what he was talking about, and got up to leave. And he said—and I’ll remember this until the day I die—‘running away is never the answer, son.’” Another sip. “So I stayed. I stayed because I’d heard those words before, from Uncle Joe and Uncle Ryan. From others, when I decided to enlist. I looked into his watery blue gaze. They were eyes that had seen a lifetime.”
I blink. I don’t think I’ve ever heard my father talk like this.
He takes my hand, gives it a light squeeze. “He told me I needed to face whatever was troubling me, to never give up. To suck out the marrow of life, as Thoreau said.”
“Stop and smell the roses,” I say.
“To put it in a more eloquent way, yes. He said to concentrate on the good things, no matter how small. To never give up when something is worth having.” He grabs his glass off the bar and takes another sip. “So that’s why I come here, Diana. To remember the words of that wise old man—words I needed to hear at that time in my life. Words I still need to hear sometimes. And when I do, I come here. This place means the world to me, and that’s why I want to share it with you.”