Chapter Thirty-Eight

A few mornings later, I was finally up and moving stiffly around my father’s house. Connie was hovering just enough to start annoying me when the doorbell rang the Bonanza theme. I assumed it was Billy since I wouldn’t be seeing Rae until that evening.

Instead, it was Wayne Robison. He didn’t shake my hand when I offered.

“I didn’t come over to make friends with you, just to ask you a favor.”

“Please, Wayne, know that I’d do anything in my power for none of this to have happened. And for Annie—”

“Annie was lost a long time ago. I want to ask you to not write about her. Not put her name in some newspaper for the world to judge. For the boys’ sake.”

“I’m not sure—”

“Just leave her out, dammit. She’s what they’d call collateral damage. Look, she never loved me. I know that. I also know about you and her, what you did together in high school. She wasn’t proud of that, maybe even hated herself for it.”

“Hey, I don’t need to listen—”

“No, you do. You do so you’ll understand. I know I sound screwy, prejudiced even, but… listen, Annie’s dad, you know what a prick he was?” It was no secret that Annie’s dad was a womanizer, barfly, and lazy bastard. Annie and had I rarely discussed him. “He used Annie, you know. From the time she was maybe twelve or so. You get what I’m talking about here? He’d even make comments to me about it when he was drunk.”

I buried my face in my hands, smelling the hospital bandage and underlying disinfectant that coated my stitched palm. I looked up at Wayne. “You mean her father was committing incest with her?”

“She blamed herself, even admitted she sometimes welcomed it. Until you came along. I think you showed her something different, but in the end, you were just another shameful secret to her. She wanted out of her father’s home and her friendship with you. Did she ever tell you how often I asked her out and how often she turned me down?”

I shook my head. “Frankly, the only time I ever thought of you was when you two got married. As far as I knew, she only dated me.”

Wayne’s tanned hands hung limp off his knees as he stared at the floor. “She came clean before I married her, said her dad got her pregnant. I wanted to shoot the fucking pig, but I’m not made of that kind of stuff.” Wayne stopped for a moment and took a sip of coffee. “We settled in over the years, had the second boy, and things were okay. Well, they were okay ’til we started hanging out at the Martins. Them and their patriot religion. Josh thought he was God out there, and some of those folks believed him, including Annie. Then those ragheads moved in with all their money, guns, and plans.”

“What plans?” I was wondering what the rank-and-file Martin folks knew about their terrorist buddies.

“Ah, they kept that away from me. Annie quit telling me anything a few years ago. I was just useful but worn-out furniture to her. Well, actually, a while back, she told me one thing.” Wayne sat up and looked at me.

“She told me that summer of our senior year, when we got married and I committed to raising her dad’s kid, it was another one of her manipulations. Apparently, during that spring, she was dating another guy while giving you and me the brush-off. When he got her pregnant, he told her to get lost. So she convinced me to marry her, using Daddy’s incest as her pity hook. I was such a dumb kid, in love, I believed everything she said. But she always loved the other guy, the one who dumped her when she needed him. The upshot is the father of our first boy is Josh Martin.”