Lucky - Chapter 13, Part III

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[:::: Lucky, Chapter 13 – Part III ::::]

As you can expect, that trip to Brisbane was a watershed moment between Lacey, Torri and me.  In my heart, I had forgiven them years ago.  I had to if I was to give myself to Grace and our kids without regret.  And despite everything they had done to me, yes, I still loved my two older daughters.  But hurt like they caused takes time to work through, and even then, there are mental safeguards in place that you don’t know are there a lot of the time.

It was on the twelve-month anniversary of the transplant that Lacey and Torri both moved to Sydney.  With Grace’s help, I got them into a two-bedroom apartment not far from us that had modest rent for the local market. I also arranged for Torri’s role to be transferred to one of our Sydney offices, and I secured a job for Lacey in our administration pool.

They were not glamorous roles, but they did well and never expected that their relationship with me would earn them any favours.

Thankfully, their mother stayed in Brisbane, and I learned that she had become borderline violent when they told her they were moving to Sydney to be closer to me and try to repair some of their relationship.

Apparently, Daphne had ranted about cost, location, Grace and me for almost two days before Torri let her have it.  Telling her that it was largely her fault that they had lost their relationship with their father, and if Daphane wanted to have any relationship with them in the future, she had better shut up or become a bitter old crone.

Once they were settled, you could find Torri and Lacey hanging out at my place most weekends, and my younger two loved having them there. Sisters, who were adults, had a near-mythical status in their eyes as they didn’t need to ask permission for a cookie or get told to clean their rooms before watching TV.

It was almost six months after they moved that I caught Lacey out, and things changed once again.

Lacey and Torri had been watching the kids while Grace and I had an evening out.  We had gone to dinner with some friends and came home to the girls on a call with my sister, Emily, showing Thomas and Ashleigh sleeping on the couch while ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ played for the tenth time that afternoon.

After joining in the call and laughing with my sister for a few minutes, we all got the kids into their beds, Torri and Lacey said good night and headed out.

I was about to turn out the lights when I noticed one of the popcorn and candy buckets the kids had been snacking from was still in the lounge.  I knew if I didn’t clean it up, I’d be in trouble with my wife in the morning, so I grabbed it, trying not to touch the sticky residue that kids eating candy, chocolate, and popcorn create.

Walking it to the bin, I noticed our kitchen bin was overflowing and decided to take it out, knowing I would get bonus points for being an attentive husband. 

Upon opening the front door, with the trash bag in my hand, I just about walked directly into the couple sharing a good night kiss in the hall.

“Dad!” she exclaimed, dropping her hand from her beau.  I don’t know how, but without missing a beat, I shook my head, went over to the garbage chute, opened it, dumped the bag, and then turned and walked back to the front door.

“Alright, you two, come in, let's get this out of the way.”

Despite both of them being adults in their own rights, they sat together like they were teens busted for their first kiss.  It was almost funny.

“So how long?” I asked, settling into a chair and leaning forward in the imposing way that only a father about to discipline his kids can.  If I stretched my fingers, I would not have been able to maintain my composure due to the cliché.

“Almost eight months,” Lacey admitted, blushing after a moment.

“Eight,” I spied movement out of the corner of my eye. “Grace, get your big, gorgeous butt in here.”

My wife moved with practised seduction, moving in a way she knew would be alluring to me.

“Sit,” I told her, and she tried to hide the worried glance she shot the two on the couch.

“How long have you known?” I asked her.

“About three months,” she admitted. Then held up a hand. “No, they weren’t hiding it from you.  It's just…”

I closed my head and nodded.

“I get it,” I told the three of them. “Dad is always the last to know.”

I looked at the other male in the room.

“And how serious are you about my daughter?”

He swallowed and looked at Lacey, then back at me.

“I want to marry her.”

“Good,” I replied.

“Good?” the other three said in unison.

I nodded.

“Yes, good,” I said with purpose, speaking slowly and clearly.  “Matt, you’re a good guy.  Mark tells me you have been doing well in the job, and you also have a hand in family dynamics.”

He nodded, and knew what I was meaning about family dynamics.  The Brown family looked after its own, and threats were dealt with promptly and without mercy.

My eyes narrowed, and he shifted uncomfortably.

“You also know the pain that Lacey put me through. You have overheard many of the conversations we have had, and you know the amount of effort that Torri, Lacey and I have had to put in to get back to the point where we are.”

He nodded once more. I gave him a tight smile.

“And I believe my daughter has learned that lesson so well that she would never do anything like what happened to me.”

“Dad!” Lacey exclaimed, but I held up my hand.

“So Matt, you also need to know that with all that effort, unless you have that same level of dedication, you should break up with her now.  Because if you ever do anything to hurt her, I will ensure that what happens to you will be twice as bad as what Anton would ever do, and it would be with his full backing.”

I watched the young man pale and swallow, knowing full well some of the extremes that my aging boss had gone to over the years to keep his empire and his family secure and safe.  He knew, as he was part of that defence mechanism.

 “You have my promise, sir,” Matt said, reaching out and grasping Lacey's hand like his life could end with his next breath if he didn’t.  I took that as a good sign, and it became even better when she tightly held it in return.

“Good,” I told him and stood, balancing a little more on my good foot rather than my prosthetic. I was getting tired. “Now with that out of the way, why don’t the two of you get out of here.  We can talk more over the coming days, and I will make time to spend time with both of you.”

I shook Matt's hand and hugged Lacey.  We had been doing something more and more over the months, and we sent them on their way.

Twenty minutes later, I was in bed.

“Just when I think I have you figured out, you once more amaze me, Hun,” Grace said, slipping into bed beside me, wearing nothing at all.

“How's that?” I asked as we both lay in each other's arms.

“Even though I know you still have reservations about the girls, I know you love them. You full-on threatened a kid who has been trained in hand-to-hand combat and could wipe the floor with you.  Yet you never even flinched.”

I laughed as her arm snaked over my chest and her lips reached mine.

“Sometimes, the love of a father will trump any situation, even mistrust or ninja boyfriends,” I replied.

“Mmmm, I like this man, confident, sexy.”

With that, my wife spent the next twenty minutes showing me how she loved confidently and sexily.

[:::: - ::::]

The revelation of Matt and Lacey’s relationship marked a shift in my attitude towards my older two. 

It brought back a memory of Cameron and me talking one evening, years ago.  I was struggling, and he was relating to me part of his story when he had been betrayed by his first wife, Louise.  Lousie had recently passed on, and he had told me how sad he was about it yet still struggled.

“Bruce,” he told me. “At one point, I loved that woman with a fierceness that I never expected that I would lose.  But when she walked out that door with the asshole, a door opened up that was dark and threatened to swallow me.”

I nodded. I could relate.

“How do you stop yourself?”

He shook his head and took a sip of the beer in his hand.

“I didn’t,” he replied. “Unlike you, I had support around me, then of course the accident that took Toby from us.”

I nodded. I knew the story.  Cameron and Rose had been childhood sweethearts, but circumstances pulled them apart.  Cameron ended up marrying Louise,  and Rose married Toby.  Despite their prior relationship, the four were close, and nothing would have come between them or changed until Louise walked out the door with another man.

That event spurred on another, and another, leading to Rose and Toby being in an accident where Toby lost his life and Rose her hand.  It also rekindled the romance between Cam and Rose, and they had now been happily married for years.

“But that door was there, Bruce, I saw it, I felt it.  Even after everything happened, even after Rose and I fell back in love, it was still there, and there were so many times that I felt like it would overwhelm me.”

I nodded, as someone who had not just walked through that door, but had smashed through it with speed.  I could understand.

I took a reflective sip of my own beer, and Cam did likewise.

“You have spent a huge amount of time and effort trying to get past the pain that your daughters did to you,” he told me, almost like he was reading my mind. “Yet the door still looms.”

“Yeah,” I said flatly.

Next thing, he had a hand on my arm and was looking at me intently.

“It is one thing to love them, another even to forgive them.  But Bruce, it is also yet another thing to let go and let that door fade into the background.”

I snorted, and Cameron got it. I was not scoffing at his words; rather, I was acknowledging their power and that he was entirely right.

Now Cameron and I were once again sitting in a pub, recalling that conversation, and my friend once again looked at me.

“Lacey is getting married,” he told me, leaning back. “Matt is a good guy, and you're going to be walking her down the aisle. Yet you still feel the presence of the door?”

I nodded.

Ït had largely disappeared, but when Torri and Lacey came back into my life, and by some extension Daphane, the pain came with it.  I am worried about snapping and lashing out at either one of them.”

Cameron now nodded.

“But you're aware of those feelings.  Bruce, you’re no longer living what you used to call an unlucky life.  And would bet that Torri and Lacey understand the occasional outburst.

“But what if I can’t keep it together?” I told him. “I lived for so long on the other side.”

“Then you just keep trying.  Much like I am sure that Torri and Lacey try every day to make it up to you.”

“What about Daphane? Do I forgive her?”

This time Cameron snorted.

“Up to you,” he replied a moment later. And cast a sideways glance. “Despite her death, I still haven’t forgiven Louise.”

[:::: - ::::]

“You look very handsome, Dad,” Torri told me as she held me, straightening my tie.  I turned towards Lacey, and she nodded.

I glanced over at Grace and then, lastly, at Daphane. Grace was her namesake personified.  She was beaming and happy, getting to see me give Lacey away.  And while she had been cordial towards Daphane, that was about it.

It had been a near thing that the Daphane was even here. It felt that with every meter of recovery that my relationship with the girls gained, Daphane lost two with her daughters.

The woman before us was a shadow of the woman I had been married to.  When I saw her in the hospital, after Grace pointed out the enchantments, I could see how far she had fallen. Now the word ‘Crone’ came to mind.

Those flaws that Grace had pointed out in the hospital had been exacerbated, and with less money for beauty treatments, Daphane was a warped version of the woman I was once married to.

The word ‘Lucky’ once more came to mind as I compared the two women.

Lacey had also almost refused to invite her mother to the wedding after Daphane demanded that she run everything as the mother of the bride.

The argument had been epic, with Lacey telling her mother to shove it and never talk to her again.  It took three days of Rose and Grace speaking with her before my daughter grudgingly accepted a conversation with her mother, albeit on Grace’s phone. 

My wife had taken the initiative and called Daphane, and through three separate calls, convinced her to ‘stop being a bitch’ as this was her daughter's wedding.

Today, she sat beside my wife, if not happy, at least pretending to be.

When it was time, Grace hugged me and walked Daphane out of the bride's preparation room, but Daphane did at least take the time to hug both her daughters awkwardly before giving me a curt nod.

Once she left, I gathered my girls in my arms and felt a wall of emotion burst, and suddenly the three of us were bawling our eyes out as we hugged.

Nothing was said, yet all of our pain, angst and hurt was washed away in that moment.

When Rose came to check on us because we had not emerged, she hastily recommended that the makeup artist come back. Half an hour after the scheduled start time, I walked my daughter down the aisle.

Matt stood proudly, his eyes on his bride, and I saw adoration, yet also a fierce determination on his face.  Their courtship had been a little different, as he fell in love with the partially estranged daughter of the man he was assigned to protect.

I had sat down with him several times on a personal, as opposed to a professional capacity, and I liked him. He was intelligent, had a dry wit, knew how to keep a confidence and truly loved Lacey.

He briefly looked at me as we neared the end of the aisle, and he nodded his head ever so slightly.

When asked who gave this woman, I uttered, ‘I’d do.’  I had discussed it was Lacey, and while her mother was there, she did not want to acknowledge her in this giving with all of the angst she had with her mother.

I took my seat in the front row beside Grace, who was dressed in a beautiful, satin green dress, grasped my hand and kissed my cheek as I settled in, telling me how proud she was of me.

On the other side of me was a handicapped spot, and in a wheelchair was Anton; age was at last catching up with him, and a few months ago, he had slipped and fractured his hip.  He quickly accepted his situation. Understanding he would not be around for many more years, we had already discussed legacy and how he wanted to structure the companies when he passed.

On the other side of Grace, Daphane sat trying to rein in a negative attitude.  She still resented not being given the duties of the mother of the bride, as Grace had to take on most of them.  This was one of the arguments she had with her daughter, and Lacey never budged.

Up on the dais, beside Lacey was Tori, the matron of honour, who looked beautiful in a blue satin dress.  I could almost feel the single guys behind me giving her an appraising eye.

The ceremony went off without a hitch, and the reception, which was a small group of around fifty, enjoyed a meal and some stories about Matt and Lacey from their childhoods. 

The only cloud came when Daphane moved to take the mic and say a few words, but Grace quickly grabbed her hand and shook her head.  Daphane almost shouted, but one look at Lacey and then me and she sat back down, chastised, but unrepentant.

I felt fortunate that I never had to interact with my ex-wife directly. There was no conversation around regrets, years lost or anything like that, as I could see just by looking at her, any chat would have ended up in a screaming match, and everyone, including the Bride and Groom, worked hard to ensure that didn’t happen.

When Lacey and Matt returned from their Honeymoon three weeks later, the glow on their faces was undeniable.  Grace and I hugged them both, and I gave Matt a welcome to the family.

I saw in Lacey the exact look that I caught Grace giving me.  And I smiled, knowing that Matt was a lucky man.

[:::: End of Chapter 13 ::::]

[:::: Read Chapter 14, Part III ::::]

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