A Bad Boy is Good to Find(49)

I never received a reply to my last letter, so I thought I’d write again, just to let you know that things are fine with us. It’s odd to be so nearby, yet it’s as if there were a thousand miles between us. Things have been hard lately, due to a poor shrimp harvest caused by bad weather conditions and buyers refusing to pay full price for the shrimp that is caught. I don’t really understand the business but it looks like my husband will have to wait to buy his own boat. Anyway, we’re managing.

I have some wonderful news, I’m pregnant! I’m expecting my baby in spring, which is such a perfect time of year for a new life to enter the world. I just wanted to let you know that you’re going to be a grandfather.

Always your daughter,

K



Oh dear, it was going to be a sob story. Had she expected anything different? Didn’t anyone ever run off with the man they loved and live happily ever after, for crying out loud? Was that too much to ask?

Lizzie glanced back at Con. His shoulders moved slightly with the easy breaths of deep sleep.

Did she really want to see the rest of this car wreck?

She looked at the envelopes. They were all the same kind, as if taken from the same box. Who kept the same box of envelopes for ten whole years? This whole thing made her flesh crawl.

Come on, Lizzie. Maybe he gets his shrimp boat after all! Maybe he became shrimp king of the bayou and she was his queen?

She picked up the next envelope in date order. It had dirt on it, possibly from the cataclysm involving the bedpost. She brushed it off, and ripped it open with her nail file.



Dear Father,

I wonder if the magnolias bloomed well this year after all the cool weather? Did John ever paint the arbor green the way you planned? I always thought that would look so beautiful, like the honeysuckle was floating right in mid air.

Is your gout still bothering you? It’s so odd not to have talked to you in so long, and I do wonder often about how you’re doing. Two years is a long time.

My baby is so beautiful. We named him Conroy Anthony—



Lizzie heard a screeching sound in her head and black spots danced in front of her eyes. Conroy? How many Conroys could there be in this part of the world? She whipped her head around, breath coming fast, and was relieved to see Con still asleep. Now she really was prying. She read on greedily, holding her breath.



We named him Conroy Anthony after the sailor in that book I used to love when I was a girl. He has black hair just like mine and he’s just the sweetest, smartest baby. He laughed yesterday for the first time, and I’ve never heard such a beautiful sound. My husband is having to deal with the pressure of being a family man. Diapers are so expensive, and the baby will only settle when he’s cuddled up in bed next to me, which makes it hard for my husband to sleep so he has to take a drink to help him relax.

I’m sure things will settle down soon. I’d love to hear from you if you can find the time to write. You know where I am.

Your daughter,

K



There was a long gap between that letter and the next. Almost two years. Lizzie ripped it open with shaking fingers.



Dear Father,

It’s been so long since I heard from you that I suspect my letters aren’t welcome. Still, you are my father and you always will be. As a mother myself, I understand that.

Conroy has a brother who we named after his father. He looks so different from Conroy, his hair almost white blonde and blue eyes like sapphires. Unfortunately he’s been sick. He has a cough that won’t go away and the doctor charges so much that I could only take him the once.

The shrimp harvest was poor again, or so my husband tells me, I don’t understand these things too well. I got a job myself at the local store, but with a sick baby to take care of I just couldn’t keep regular hours. My husband didn’t like me working either, he thinks a man should provide for his family. I’m sure you’d agree.

I left everything behind when I got married, and I wonder if you kept my few trinkets, like the pearl necklace from Grandmother Adele and the gold locket with Mama’s picture in it? If you could forward those to me, I’d most appreciate it.

Your daughter,

K



Lizzie’s heart was sinking lower and lower. Was this how it always happened? One minute she’s seizing freedom and true love, and the next she’s wistfully remembering old garden arbors and wanting to fondle trinkets from her old life.

Who am I kidding? She wants those things so she can sell them for cash. Lizzie had a nasty taste in her mouth. She’d sold most of her trinkets already. The only one she couldn’t bring herself to part with was the Bulova watch she’d been given on her eighteenth birthday. Right now its reassuringly familiar face read three a.m.

She picked up the fifth envelope and slit it open. It was from almost a year later.



Dear Father,

You know I wouldn’t ask for help if I didn’t truly need it. The baby is very sick. He needs a course of antibiotics that costs more than we can possibly afford. Money has been especially tight this last year and I have not been able to work with the baby sick. I’ve prayed and prayed to the blessed virgin to grant us some relief, but the troubles just seem to pile up, with my husband drinking away what little we have.

I know you said I was making a terrible mistake in my marriage, and if it wasn’t for my two beautiful boys I’d have to say you were right. I was young and romantic, as you said, and didn’t understand the harsh realities of life.

Please Father, if you could find it in your heart to send $275, either in cash, or as a postal order, in care of the Dee General Store, I’d be eternally in your debt and I promise I won’t ask for more. Please don’t send it to the house, and put my name on the envelope, not my husband’s.

Your daughter,

K



Lizzie pressed her hand to her mouth. How could anyone write such a letter? She’s asking for money from her cold hearted bastard of a father who won’t even open her letters? The thought turned her stomach. This woman sounded painfully young. She also didn’t sound too bright. Thank God I’m nothing like her at all.

The ballpoint pen was a reminder that this happened only a couple of decades ago. It had a horribly timeless ring to it.

She’d never write a “Dear Father” letter. What would she call hers though? ‘Dad’? She’d never called him Dad. And Daddy just sounded silly once you were over, say twenty-one, and your father had betrayed your trust and bankrupted you and called you a fat little nobody.

She had a sudden urge to throw up, but a few deep breaths took care of it.

One more letter. She glanced back at Con and noticed with alarm that he’d rolled over and was now facing her. His frighteningly handsome features were still relaxed in deep sleep, one arm crooked under his head and the other sprawled over the white sheet.

He wouldn’t want to see these letters. Wouldn’t want to know they existed. He’d looked at them like a nest of poisonous snakes when she first found them. Was it possible that he somehow knew?

Inhaling a jittery breath, she picked up the sixth and last letter. Same identical envelope as the others. Same neat writing in a plain, blue ballpoint pen, but everything else had changed.