Overkill(101)

“No, for marrying her.”

Zach shook his head in bafflement. “You disliked me that much? To that extent? You dismembered my life, Doug. What did I do to deserve that?”

“You corrupted my daughter.”

“I did not,” Zach said hotly. “Rebecca was well on her way to rack and ruin when we met. We never would have met if she hadn’t been out advertising the goods and trolling.”

“Oh, I know she was living wild. I got calloused knees from praying for her salvation. I held out hope for it. Then you entered her life. Your fame, your money. Hobnobbing with movie stars and rock bands, giving her access to every kind of vice.”

“I can’t deny the access,” Zach said. “But she indulged on her own, not with me, never with me.” Glutted with memories of their angry encounters over Rebecca’s substance abuse, he raked his fingers through his hair. “She showed up at one of our home games so stoned and making such a spectacle of herself, the other team wives called security and had her escorted out of the stadium.

“Do you really think I encouraged or nurtured that kind of behavior, Doug? No. It was humiliating. The drugs, the booze, the affairs she flaunted. By the time she and I split, she’d become an embarrassment, not only to me but to herself.”

Doug backed across the aisle and sat down on the armrest at the end of the pew. His torso caved in. His head hung heavily between his shoulders. “Mary told me I was wrong to hold you responsible. She and I didn’t disagree on much. We sure did about that, though. She said I was wrong to place the blame on you. But I had to blame somebody. Somebody besides myself.”

He turned his head aside and looked toward the altar, but Zach got the impression that instead of the colored window behind it, he was seeing years unwinding into the distant past.

“We named her for the Rebecca in the Bible. From her toddler days, I drilled religion into her. It didn’t take. She rebelled against it. Mocked it. The more I preached, the more disobedient she became. She defied every form of punishment, became incorrigible. By the time she got to high school, it was like her hobby was to shame us.

“When she flunked out of her first semester of junior college, we had a big blowout. That was the tipping point. She told us she’d had it with us, with our dull and dreary life. She said, ‘I’m going to do my own thing, and you can’t stop me.’ After she slammed out of the house, bags packed, Mary cried for days.”

He paused and coughed behind his fist to cover his emotion. “I loved her from the day she was born. I still do. But I… I’m not sure if I ever told her that I loved her. Not in so many words.” He wiped his nose on his sleeve.

“I’ve spent many an hour thinking back, asking myself if I shouldn’t have lectured her so hard. If I had been a little bit more bending, maybe she wouldn’t have been at that party in Atlanta, wouldn’t have been seeking a new thrill. Wouldn’t have… wouldn’t have have gotten herself choked.”

Zach waited in silence for half a minute before crossing the aisle and handing the directive down to Doug. “I won’t be sworn to secrecy about this, Doug.”

Doug took the sheet of paper and smoothed it out against his thigh, as was obvious he had many times before, fermenting in his guilt for keeping its edict to himself. “I’ll hand it over to Dr. Gilbreath.”

“You realize what that will mean?”

“Means you’ll finally be off the hook, Zach.” With his fingertip, he traced the swirly signature at the bottom of the document. “And Rebecca will do her own thing.”





Epilogue





I missed you, but it was very decent of you to stay with Doug,” Kate said as she snuggled closer to Zach. She was curled up in his lap, in his favorite chair, in front of the fireplace where a low fire burned.

“He needed a lot of help dealing with it. Dr. Gilbreath was a godsend.”

“I’m sure her compassion was genuine, but it’s also her job to render comfort. For you to stay was a kindness Doug didn’t deserve, but it was the sort of thoughtfulness I’ve come to expect from you. That is, since I’ve gotten to know you.”

“Since you’ve gotten to know me?” he said.

“Well, that first morning, I thought you were—”

“A complete ass.”

“As I had always assumed you would be.”

“What changed your mind?”

“Our first French kiss.”

He laughed, hugged her closer, and tipped her face up for a repeat of that first kiss.

During his three-week stay in New Orleans, the entire main room of his house had undergone a restoration. He’d assigned the overhaul to the original designer-decorator, who’d temporarily abandoned his current project in order to restore Zach’s home to its pre-catastrophe state.

The hardwood floor had been taken up and replaced with new, as had all the rugs. A new chandelier had been installed. Everything that hadn’t been replaced had been thoroughly cleaned.

Even so, Zach had wondered how he would feel when he returned to it. Had the events of that terrible night left a permanent taint? Would the main room forever evoke memories of what had taken place there?

But this afternoon when he’d stepped inside for the first time since his absence, sunlight was pouring in through the two-story wall of windows at the far end. Kate had been attending a flourishing orchid on the new end table. The photo of him and his parents had been reframed. Bing had been arguing with an electrician who was perfecting the range of a dimmer switch on a replacement lamp.