Sins of the Father
"So…you wanna tell me what's wrong?" he slurred into her ear as they began to wake.
"No," she grumbled in reply and scooted closer to the warmth of his long body.
"You will you know? Tell me? Some day you'll tell me everything," he promised presciently in his gravely sleepy voice.
"Uh-huh," she agreed without much thought.
They lay still and quiet in the twilight time between sleep and waking, secure in the knowledge that the person who mattered most to each of them felt exactly the same way. They each reasoned that alone would get them through the coming days and challenges ahead.
He waited about twenty minutes before rising and splashing water on his face and brushing his teeth. Charlie examined himself in the mirror. Clear blue eyes and a freckled fair face wearing a rust colored haze met him. He talked to himself as was his manner, "What are you doing Crews?" Get back in there and fix this, his reflection wisely counseled. He climbed back into their warm bed and gathered Dani to his chest to try again.
"Honey, tell me what's wrong," he quasi-demanded, "I promise whatever it is I won't be mad."
"You can't promise that," she said sadly wresting away from him.
Charlie almost gave up, turning away from her on his side before exhaling a long ragged sigh that broke her heart. She knew that holding back equated to lying and that she could not do to him, however painful this would be, no matter the cost. She lay behind him, molding her body to his, breasts pressed against his back, with her arm draped over his chest she pressed a tender kiss to the back of his neck.
"Charlie," she exhaled his name as though he were already gone.
He grasped her hand, kissed it and held it to his chest. They remained still again for moments stretching like the lengthening rays of sun slanting through the window.
"Tell me about your mother," she began. She felt his entire body tense as the words left her lips.
"I don't talk about her," he said tersely, "to anyone."
She pulled her hand from his and began to roll away, but he stopped her.
"Give me a minute," he warned, "this is hard for me."
She nodded against his shoulder and laid her cheek against his back.
When he began speaking again she could feel the words leave his chest as though they were ripped from it like leaves from a spring tree. "My mother was a gentle, kind and caring person," he began shakily. "She believed in me when no one else did. She believed in my innocence til the end, until it killed her," his voice broke as he delivered the hard words.
He took a deep breath and then another before continuing, "she was the person I loved most, but she had her flaws too. We all do. She stayed in a loveless marriage when it would have been easier to leave, but she stayed for me so that I wouldn't have to choose between my parents. I would have chosen her. She knew that and she didn't want my father to be alone. Thing is he never was – there was always someone else for him. And she knew it." He swallowed hard, like he was in pain but continued.
"I often wondered why she stayed, then when I went to prison I knew. She was loyal to a fault, to the end, even if it hurt," his voice broke as he finished, "my father just broke her heart. But me? I'm the one who killed her. I still hate him for it, I still blame him for it." It was a heartbreaking admission from a man who revealed nothing.
It was the unvarnished absolute truth and it left Dani utterly speechless. She could do no more than cradle her lover and kiss him gently in a million places to distract him from the pain that was so real and fresh to him.
Then Charlie asked the question that would break their morning in two, "Why?"
She cleared her throat and gave him room as he rolled to face her. His admissions were spoken to the void, it was the only way he could gut them out but to talk to her Charlie wanted to, needed to see her face, to look into her eyes. She averted them and he gently patiently thumbed her chin higher and sought her eyes asking again softly, "Why Dani?"
She could not look away, she knew she couldn't break his trust no matter the outcome, but she hesitated and instead he fished for her cause, her reason to want to delve into his personal, poignant past. "Is it because you're pregnant?"
She was shocked, "What? No!" she responded strongly.
"I wouldn't mind if you were," he ventured cautiously. "It would be okay with me. In fact I would be pretty happy, if…you know….we were gonna be parents - together. Partners for life – in everything." He looked so utterly hopeful and sweet for a moment she wished she were telling him happy news, any happy news – even that. It made her wonder when exactly the prospect of having children had changed from a definite "no" to an optimistic "someday."
Charlie broke her reverie with a soft, kiss that twisted into a heated demand as he pushed her onto her back and began to patiently and emphatically demonstrate how eager he was to make that supposing a reality.
Dani found her body responding without conscious thought and her intended confession swallowed by the rising tide of their passion. Charlie Crews wanted children – this she knew. That she did too – that her children would be his - was becoming less an imagining and more a plan.
As his hands and tongue did insufferably pleasant things to her body, Dani began to realize Rayborn was right. They would make him a grandfather. This would happen and it would happen sooner than she'd ever expected.
In the back of her brain, behind the automatic response to her willing lover was the question of whether their relationship could survive him finding out she knew about his paternity and did not tell him. It made her a willing co-conspirator in Rayborn's little plot and it pissed her off. That anger was funneled into their lovemaking and Charlie mistook it for passion; only serving to widen the swath of guilt coloring her day.
Their morning was chaotic as they juggled cars and clothes and changes of clothes and showers in an attempt to get to work – forget on time – "at all" was more the intent. On the way to the car for the trip to his house, so he could find a fresh suit, she told him, "I think I should just let this place go."
Charlie froze and spun in his tracks with a big smile on his fair face, "you mean move in with me," he clarified, "completely? No more hedging?"
"Hey," she said in a sullen tone with a smile belying her true feelings, "you the one always going on and on about getting married mister."
He crossed to her and pulled her close, "give up this thing with Rayborn. He doesn't matter to me, to us – only you do." He kissed her sweetly and Dani's guilt nearly overwhelmed her.
Charlie had no idea of his connection to Rayborn, but Rayborn was not going to let it stay that way. He would never leave them alone, never let them go and she knew it. She couldn't speak she only nodded her assent and her partner smiled. She was lying to him with her body – only the words were lacking and it was eating her up inside.