Page 64 of Single Dad Problems
"And you." Me. Me me me. "The one who thinks he is so fucking charming. The man whose entire personality is making everyone laugh. You looked at the only woman who has ever made you laugh for once, and the second you weren't sure of yourself, the second the script changed, you reached for the cruelest joke in the bag. You wouldn't know a real feeling if it slapped you across your stupid handsome face and called you Daddy. I would feed you to the goats from her field trip if I thought you'd be nutritious for them, but you wouldn't be, because there's nothing to you but bad timing and a crooked smile."
She exhaled hard, the fury seeping out of her. "I am exhausted. I have been holding Callie up for days while she sleeps two hours a night and homeschools her kid and cries in my shower about selling her house and losing you three morons, thinking I can't hear her. I have been bringing her crackers and refilling her water and watching her stare at a ceiling that is not hers. I have been carrying her, while you three have been what… having your poor little pity party?"
She closed her eyes and then opened them.
"I have spent the last week," she said, quieter, "building a paper trail on that polo-wearing parasite. I have voice memos. I have emails. I have a teacher named Renata Abbott who I tracked down last week, who left this district last year under identical circumstances, who is willing to talk. I have therecording Callie was smart enough to make in his office on Friday. And I have it all documented here."
She pulled a thick manila envelope out of her shoulder bag. She handed it to Luke, with the gravity of a sergeant handing out a rifle.
"You three want to be useful," she said. "You want to be worthy of her. Here is your shot. You finish what we started. You do not text her. You do not call her. You do not, so help me god, come to my house. You do the work first. You earn the right to stand near her again. And then, and only then, you go ask her if she will have you back. Are we clear."
"Yes ma'am," Cole said.
"Yes ma'am," Luke said. He was wiping his face.
"Yes ma'am," I said. My voice was wrecked. I had never hated myself more.
Tessa looked at the three of us on the curb. Her face softened at the edges for a second.
"I cannot believe I am telling you this," she said. "She would kill me." She paused. "She is so angry. And she is so hurt. And she misses you so much she cannot breathe. You did this to her. You also have one chance to fix it. Do not blow it."
She turned and started walking back toward the side door. Stopped. Turned back.
"And Cole."
"Ma'am."
"That man. Beauford. I want him finished. The kind of finished a man does not come back from. Are we clear."
Cole's voice when it came back was the calmest and most resolute I have ever heard.
"Yes ma'am."
"Good." She opened the door. "Get up off my curb. Take your kids home. Tomorrow you start."
The door clicked shut. We sat there for a long minute, three men on a curb behind an elementary school, holding the envelope and our own shame and guilt.
"I'm going to kill him," Cole said.
"You're going to do better than that," Luke said. "You're going to put him in a box he built himself. Cole. Look at me. We're going to bury him."
"With my cousin's lawyer," I said. "I'll call him tonight. He owes me a favor from last spring."
"I'll build the package." Luke was opening the envelope already, hands shaking, the contents fanning out across his thighs. "By Sunday this guy's whole life is in a folder. By Monday he's on leave. By Tuesday I want charges."
"I'll handle the people side." Cole said. "I’ll make anyone knows what a slime ball he is talk."
We sat for another second.
"Hey," I said.
They looked at me and could probably see the emotional wreckage written across the lines of my face.
"We love her and we let her down."
"Yeah."
"Yeah."
