“I can’t believe he’s willing to punish Maddie for all of this. She doesn’t understand any of it.”
“Honey, he’s not trying to punish you or Maddie. He’s punishing himself and doing a damn good job at it.”
“I have to go, my dad is beeping in my ear. You can’t stop being my friend.”
“Okay, I promise.”
“Good morning,” I answered, trying to move on with my life and get back to where my dad and I used to be, when we were close.
“Come and get her,” he spoke. I could hear Maddie screaming at the top of her lungs in the background, but it was muffled and got quieter. She was being carried out by someone.
“What is wrong with her?” I asked, walking into the house to dress.
“She’s throwing a fit, because I wouldn’t let her put fruit loops in the fish aquarium. The dining room is full of guests. I don’t need them seeing my granddaughter act like this.” His comment was directed right at me, like I was the one who gave her whatever she wanted all the time. I didn’t respond and told him I was on my way.
I brought her back to the house still screaming, because I wasn’t going to reward her and let her drive the golf cart back. I did something I had never done before that day. I punished Maddie. I took her in, slid a chair away from the table, and sat her on it.
“You can’t act like that, Maddie. You’re going to sit in time-out for four minutes.”
She screamed and threw herself to the floor. I picked her up and put her back. She screamed that I was hurting her boo boo, that she had to potty, and even tried to tell me that she was going to throw up on the floor. I didn’t falter and held her accountable for the tantrum. This went on for at least twenty minutes before she realized she wasn’t going to win. I sat the timer on the microwave once she calmed, heaving in breaths from making herself hysterical, and told her she could get up when the timer dinged.
“I want my daddy,” she whimpered, quivering her bottom lip.
“Shhh,” I beckoned with my finger over my lips, reminding her that she had to sit quietly until she heard the timer. What was I supposed to say? I wanted her daddy too. No, I didn’t. Where the hell did that come from?
<><><>
And so it became Maddie and me once again. I hadn’t heard a word from Alex in almost three months, other than the monthly checks that arrived by the first of every month. I spent a lot more time with Maddie and less time working. I didn’t need much money to survive anymore. I could buy what I wanted at the grocery store. I didn’t need an extra night of waiting tables to buy Maddie a new pair of cowboy boots. My house no longer had a mortgage and the twenty-five hundred dollars a month child support was more than enough to live comfortably.
I started taking some graphic design classes on-line, Maddie started tap dance, and I filled our days as full as I could fill them. Working on my classes after Maddie went to bed helped fill my nights. I was okay as long as I stayed busy. I didn’t really talk to Regan. I guess I was afraid of hearing how he was doing. Part of me was afraid that he was still locked in his house, feeling sorry for himself, and the other part was afraid that he had moved on. It was easier to not know.
We were surviving and little by little Maddie was starting to forget him. I was proud of standing up to whoever got in my way with her. She wasn’t going back to being the evil little princess that ran the resort. I pissed off a few people along the way, including my dad, Dana, and even Jaron, but I was sticking to my guns. Bottom line, she was my child and I wasn’t going to let her act like a rotten terror anymore. I had even started making her repeat her baby talk and say complete sentences the way Alex would. She was doing great and sometimes I didn’t even have to stop her, she realized it on her own and corrected herself.
Maddie’s injury was nothing more than a splat of shiny skin on her chest and had healed up nicely with no other complications. I still had to apply the cream once a night to keep her skin soft, but that too would end with the last tube of medicine.
“What you doing?” Maddie asked, crawling to my lap as I went through my daily lesson on my laptop.
“Excuse me?” I replied, kissing her head.
“What are you doing?” she rephrased.
“Mommy is designing a game for school.”
“Daddy does that,” she reminded me.
“Sort of,” I replied not really knowing how to explain the difference.
“Where is he?” she nonchalantly asked, twisting her hair around her finger.
“Stop doing that. You make tangles in your hair. Do you want spaghetti for supper?”
“Um…” she thought. “No, me want. I want white spaghetti.”
“Chicken Alfredo?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, hop down. You get your bath and I’ll start supper.”
“I can put my animals in there?”
“If you say it right you can.”
“CAN I put my animals in the bath tub?”
“Yes,” I smiled, kissing her cheek.
I stood at the bathroom door staring at her briefly before leaving her to make supper. Some of her expressions reminded me of Alex so much. Her long lashes and dark eyes made it hard not to think about him, but we were doing it. I had back what I wanted. We were good. I had my family who seemed to be respecting my decisions with my daughter more and more, and of course Jaron. He was my rock more than once when I needed a friend. He never tried to be more than that. That part of my life had changed too. I was moving forward, not backwards and he respected that.
<><><>
I pulled the golf cart to the side of the front office when I saw his car. Nobody had that car. Alex was there. Why? What was he doing?
“Take her,” I told the office girl when I heard the yelling and commotion coming from the parking lot.
“Dad! What the hell are you doing?” I yelled, jumping between him and Alex. Alex was on the ground, wiping a bloody lip.
“He raped you?” he angrily asked, with tight fists and a rage in his eyes that I swear I’d never seen on my father before.
“NO!” I yelled, going to Alex. “Alex, what the hell are you doing?”
“I’m doing what I should have done a long time ago. I’m making it right by you.”
“Alex, stop. You don’t have to do that,” I demanded, pulling him to his feet.
“I’m sorry Mr. Bradshaw. I’m sorry for the past year, and for what I did when Whitley was just a girl. I love her, and I love my daughter more than anything on this earth,” he continued, ignoring me.
“Alex, please stop,” I begged. I couldn’t believe he was here. He was doing this? Oh my God, he was really doing this.
“YOU GET THE FUCK OF THIS PROPERTY AND DON’T YOU EVER COME BACK! YOU HEAR ME?” Dad screamed at him.
“I hear you, and I don’t blame you a bit, but I’m not leaving without Whitley and my daughter.”
Jaron grabbed my dad just in time.
“Alex, what the hell are you doing? Stop, you’re going to get yourself killed.”
“I don’t care, Whitley. I love you. I can’t live without you or Maddie. I’ve tried. I’d rather be dead than not have you in my life.”
“You stay away from my daughter and my granddaughter. I will have you thrown in jail so fast your head will spin,” my dad continued to threaten in a very loud voice, angry skewed face, and a straight finger right toward Alex’s nose.
“Dad! Stop. Just go. Jaron get him out of here,” I begged.
“DADDY!” Maddie yelled, running full force toward Alex. My dad swooped her up.
“Get him out of here, Whitley,” he ordered. Maddie looked distraught. She didn’t know what to think. Her daddy was finally there and her papaw was mad.
“I want to go to my daddy, Papaw,” Maddie said, looking at him in a peculiar manner. She was confused as much as I was.
I walked over and took her from his arms. “Oh my God, Dad. He’s not going to hurt her.”
Maddie was in her daddy’s
arms in a split second. I couldn’t help my watery eyes when I watched him with closed eyes holding her so tight. His love for her was undeniable. I turned back to my dad, wanting him to give us some time and leave us alone.
“Dad, please just go.”
“Whitley, is this shit true? He has no right to Maddie. He made you out to be the unstable one. He’s a psychopath. I don’t want neither one of you around him. He tricked you into moving in with him? Why didn’t you come to me? Why didn’t you tell me, Whitley? I would have helped you. I thought we were closer than this.”
“Dad, I will talk to you about it in a minute. Please, go,” I pleaded again.
“I’m going home with my daddy, okay, Papaw,” Maddie said, turning to face us. She knew her papaw was upset. She was trying to make it better for him.
My dad turned on his heels, jerking his arm from Jaron, and walked away.
“Jaron take Maddie for me,” I requested.
Maddie wasn’t going. She wasn’t letting go of Alex to save her life. Alex sat her down and squatted to her level. “You go with Jaron for a minute, let me talk to Mommy, and I’ll see you in a minute,” he promised, patting her on the bottom and sending her to Jaron.
Alex stood and looked at me. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say. Once again, Alex Wesson flips my world. We stood in an awkward silence staring at each other.
“Alex?” was all I could manage to get out. I had no idea what to say. For the first time since Alex had walked into our lives, I was at a loss for words. I didn’t want to scream and call him names. I wanted to run to him. When the hell did that happen?
“Come here, Whitley,” he ordered.
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. Come here.”
My feet moved on their own. I didn’t want to go to him. I didn’t want to feel his arms around me. My hands automatically moved around his neck as he pulled me close to him.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Whitley,” he whispered to my hair as my tears too flowed all on their own.
I loved him. I missed him and I missed our little family.
“Whitley, I need you. I need Maddie. Please, let me try this again.”
My words seemed to flow on their own as well. “You can’t be with other women, Alex.” I blurted. I couldn’t help it. That was what came out, that was what hurt me the most. Of all the things that he had done, seeing him with another woman after making me fall deeply in love with him was what wounded me the most.
He snickered. “There isn’t a woman on this earth that could bring me to my knees the way you have, well, maybe Maddie. I don’t want anyone but you, Whitley.”
“You let me leave, Alex. You let me take Maddie and walk right out of your life,” I accused.
Alex held my face and made me look up to him. “I hurt Maddie. I left her alone with a pan of boiling water, and then hurt her more by ripping her shirt off. I deserved for you to take her away from me. I never deserved her to begin with. She was my eye opener, Whit. You don’t know. You weren’t there. Her screams, the pain in her eyes, the shaking of her little body in my arms from excruciating pain that no little girl should ever feel was in my hands. I did that to her. I had no right. You’re a great mom, you’ve always been a great mom, and I never had the right to challenge that.”
“You didn’t have to do it that way, Alex. You didn’t have to force me to live with you to get to see Maddie. You know that.”
“I did have to, Whit. Would you have let me see her any other way?”
He was right. Had he not been dirty about it with setting me up with fallacious pictures, I would have never in a million years let him see her.
“No, I guess not.”
“Can we get past this? Will you bring Maddie and come home, Whitley? I will do whatever I have to do to make this right. I promise you that. I will never make another decision about anything without consulting with you first. Please, Whitley. Come home, I need you. I need my baby girl.”
“My dad is going to kill you. Why did you do that?”
“I had to. Whether you come back to me or not. I had to make it right. For you. I owe you that. I wouldn’t blame you if you never talked to me again, but I owe you that.”
“He’s still going to kill you. Take Maddie back to the house. I have to go talk to him.”
“You’re coming home?”
“We’re going to talk about it. I don’t know.”
Alex kissed me and I was sure I’d just made him the happiest man on earth. He’d made me pretty happy too. Trying to hide the smile as his tongue darted between my lips was virtually impossible.
“Go to your daughter. She’s going crazy over there waiting for you,” I said, pulling away.
“Maddie, come here!” he called, squatting to one knee as she ran full force into his arms.
I walked away smiling to find my dad. Taking a deep breath, I tried to think of what to say to my dad. Nothing was coming to me, nothing at all. I hated Alex for the last year for all the lies that he had my family believing, and now I wished he’d kept them between us. My dad would never understand.
Maybe I shouldn’t try to talk to him with an ax in his hands. He was still very muscular and the muscular bulges with every swing, chopping the wood intimidated me even more.
“Dad?” I cautiously spoke. He stopped for just a second to turn and look at me with disgust. I’d only seen that look a couple of times in my life, one being when he’d found out that I was pregnant with Maddie. His little Maddie that he loved more than anything. He continued to chop the wood, ignoring me.
“Daddy, I love him.” I didn’t know what to say. Nothing I said was going to make him understand.
“How can you love him?” he asked, bringing the ax down with great angry force, leaving it stuck in the bottom stump.
“I don’t know. He’s a good man. He really is.”
“What the hell is wrong with you? He raped you. He forced you to live with him. He faked pictures of you being unfit. He tricked you into signing over custody of Maddie. He made you out to be crazy. How can you love him? GODDAMNIT WHITLEY, WAKE UP!”
I jumped when he screamed his last sentence.
“He didn’t have to come to you, Dad. He did that for me. He confessed all of that for me, not you, not Maddie, for me. He wanted to make it right. He screwed up. He screwed up a lot, but that doesn’t change the fact that I love him. Maddie loves him and he loves us. Can’t you understand that, Dad?”
“No. No, Whitley, I can’t. Do what you’re going to do, but don’t expect to have my blessing.”
“What does that mean, Dad? You don’t want to see us anymore? Are you writing us out of your life if I choose Alex?”
“You’re writing me out of your lives if you choose Alex.”
“Are you giving me an ultimatum? You don’t want to do that, Dad,” I threatened. Surely he wouldn’t write Maddie out of his life. Would he?
Taking a deep breath, I walked away after he retrieved his ax and continued his job at hand, telling me that he was done talking to me without words.
Nerves were jumping all over the place in my body as I drove the golf cart back to the house to meet Alex and Maddie; my family.
Finding the two of them packing zoo animals in a duffle bag, I smiled from the door. Maddie was on a cloud. She was so happy that her daddy was there and that she was going home.
“Can I have a monkey, Dad?” Maddie asked, placing the monkey collection in a zip lock bag before packing them away for the trip. Everything had to be kept separated. The animals couldn’t be in the same bag.
“A monkey? Hmm, I don’t think monkeys can live outside the zoo.”
“Uh-huh. They live in Africa and that’s not a zoo,” she assured him. He smiled.
“How do you know that?”
“Mommy read it in a book. His name was Jingo and he lived in Africa.”
“Okay, but we can’t have a monkey in our house. How about a little kitten?”
Maddie’
s shocked eyes turned to look at him. She needed to make sure he was serious. He was, oh lord.
“For real?” she asked.
He laughed. “We have to make sure it’s okay with Mommy first. If Mom says yes, then yes. We’ll get a kitten.”
“Mommy says yes,” I finally spoke, extremely happy that I was allowed to be part of a decision.
“Yes!” Maddie called, doing some sort of happy dance, shaking her little butt and swinging her arms.
Alex stood from his cross legged position and came to me. “You okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine. Stay here tonight.”
“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea, Whit.”
“We don’t have to go up to the resort. We’ll stay back here. We need to talk, Alex. I can’t just run home with you.”
Alex nodded. “Alright.”
We spent a quiet evening on my side of the resort. Alex grilled hotdogs and played with Maddie nonstop. She giggled so many times; happy that her dad was there and with the attention she was receiving from him. Alex stared at me with a look of pure love every chance he got. I was sure it was love. I could see it in his eyes. I stared back with a weak smile, not sure what I was doing. I wanted to go home with him. I wanted it more than anything. Should I? Did that make me weak?
Alex sat on the couch after Maddie had her bath and he grabbed a quick shower. I cleaned up the kitchen and listened to him interacting with Maddie about the book that he’d brought with him.
Why the hell was I so nervous? Oh, yeah, because Maddie was going to fall asleep and leave me alone with him, I decided as I quickly shaved my legs. Geesh, why was I shaving my legs? I should drink something. God. What the hell? This was just Alex.
Maddie deserted me quicker than I expected. She was sound asleep, already carried to her bed when I emerged from the bathroom in shorts and a t-shirt. Alex smiled and reached his hand toward me when I stopped, contemplating on what to do.