Chapter 225

Chapter 5 – Pat Lawson POV (November 19th 2014) I was still stunned silent, reeling from Ben’s questions, but thankfully Wagner took over, “Ben, I’d like to ask your dad a few questions before we move on from this point… would that be okay with you?” Amelia scoffed, Ben on the other hand, “We can talk about other things but I’m still going to live with Uncle Grant if Oakley is going to live there…” Wagner nodded, “Okay then, you said that Oakley hates your mom and Amelia, how do you feel about them? You said you loved them right? Did it not make you mad when they made changes?” Ben sighed like a grown adult in that moment, he shrugged, “it’s different I don’t remember things like Oakley I was still a baby but Oakley could remember lots of stuff about mom and since dad didn’t like to talk about her Oakley told me things.” “What kind of things?” Wagner asked and I wanted to know the answer to that too. “Well… she painted my room like trees because she didn’t want me or Oak to be afraid of the trees,” oh god. I dipped my head, remembering the quirky reasons Norine had given me when she was painting their bedroom walls. With a small smile, Ben continued, “When she laughed, Oakley said she sounded like a cat meowing and she’d cover her face, but dad said she had a beautiful laughing face…” “She could speak different languages too-” “No she couldn’t…” “Yes she could. That’s why Oakley took French at her school even though you and Sarah said she should take Spanish.” “She even knew songs before then too.” I’m still shaking my head, “How – why don’t you – I never hear you talking about your mom Ben…” He tilts his head to the side for a minute, “I can’t remember when but it was before Mom and Amelia came to live with us, I asked Oakley why only she told me things about mom, she said that it makes you sad because you think she left. So only sometimes she would tell me things, even though some are the same things over and over again.” “It doesn’t make you sad to hear about her?” Wagner asked carefully. “No… Oakley said that mom really wanted me and she was happy to be our mom. I asked her where she went. Oakley said somewhere she can’t come back from, but the only place I know you can’t come back from is Heaven. So if she’s there, that’s okay. Since dad doesn’t like to talk about her because she’s there, Oakley does.” I stood up to my feet pacing, my mind not sure what was going on, I almost wanted to pinch myself to see if this was just some type of mind warped nightmare. Secret conversations about Norine? In Heaven? Can’t come back? “Grant I need to speak to you outside,” I said stiffly, opening the door and leaving Sarah, Amelia, Ben and Wagner to continue to talk. I didn’t even wait to see if he followed me but I walked down the hall, just trying to get away from that room, my heart racing, my mind trying to keep up. Hands on my head, trying to make sense, I stop and Grant says nothing, just rests against the damn wall waiting for something, “Oakley thinks her mother is dead,” I choked out, my heart actually hurting. In ten years Norine being dead wasn’t something I had even considered, “That – that’s impossible. She left. She left us Grant,” I was sure. “She left her ring on the table, she packed… her things. She left Oakley alone for hours!” I shouted, the nurses looking at me stilling before continuing with their work. When he still said nothing after minutes I was getting antsy, “well fucking say something!” He just sighed like Ben, “Like what? I’ve been telling you from day one to investigate what happened… it didn’t make sense that she would just leave Pat and it wasn’t that she just left it was a whole series of things that didn’t make sense to me. But you were hurting, Ben was just a little newborn, you were out of your mind in grief. Different people talking convinced you she left, but the signs just didn’t point to that.” He says trying to help me see but I don’t… it’s not… dead? My heart dropped. “She left her ring. I put that on her and she never took it off… but she left that…” He heaved, looking at me in pity, “So a ring that she never took off since you put it on-” “Even when she was pregnant she wore it on a chain Grant, she left me that as a sign. We were having problems, you know I had been offered that job up in Virginia Beach, and she didn’t want to go to that big of a city…” Grant just laughed, literally bent over and laughed, but it wasn’t in humor, cold and fake, “So your woman leaves a ring where you would find it, after not wanting to move to a larger city and your first guess is that she left you? And did what? Went to that same big city she didn’t want to go to?” he asks confusing me. “If this was my Julia we were talking about, I wouldn’t handle it the way you did but you were her spouse the one person that could actually put forth effort to look for you but you were so far inside your own ass that you never did shit about it. You just became all focused in your work. Requesting more hours at the university claiming that you needed to the money to pay for child care since Norine was gone.” “She was gone!” I shouted again and he just pushed me inside a room. “Yeah but not the way you thought she was… not the way Oakley thinks she was. I told you… when you brought Sarah around… I told you that it didn’t make sense. It was like a switch in Oakley… she cried more, fused more and she was only a little girl still. Just seven years old after years of your just pushing your daughter and son aside, you just bring in some woman and her child and put them up on some sort of pedestal,” the bite in his words hitting me. “Her man left her, with a child to boot and she stuck around for that child, something Norine didn’t do? Is that what it was? You found a woman that wouldn’t do the leaving? Pushing her on them kids?” “We all stepped up, knew you were having a hard time but figured as Oakley grew older and Ben too, that you’d see what you were missing with them… Oakley was smart and I told you Grant! Told you for the things she can remember, the facts that girl can pick up and mention later in conversation at her age… no way she didn’t remember what happened that night.” “I don’t remember Uncle Grant…” he said sadly, “Then when you finally do come around, start taking interest, its not because you realize you’ve got two wonderful kids that need you, its because you met a woman that was barely holding on.” He starts pointing out my faults, my mind still on Norine and Bens’ words.