Chapter 2

I sat there, watching those hips sway as she walked away, remembering. Mickey brought me out of my reflections. “So, that was your first wife. Damn, was she a child bride?”

“Don’t let the clothes fool you. She’s actually two years older than I am, forty-one now. She’s just a very well kept forty-one. Appearance was always important to her.”

“This is the first I knew about you being married before Maria and Sandy. What happened?” Ashley realized she made a mistake when she saw my face, bringing up all my wives at the same time. She was trying to find a way to back up when I spoke.

“Short version, she traded up. Found someone higher up on the food-chain who made her a better offer and she was off like a shot. They married, divorced seven months later, because she caught him screwing around. Like that wasn’t part of his history. Met two more losers, neither of them lasting more than two years. She’s been married for a long time to the guy she has now. Maybe she finally found what she was looking for.”

Mickey was adding it up as he talked. “So she’s been married five times?”

“As far as I know. Maybe more. I don’t really keep up with her, but my cousin keeps me informed when I visit. One of the many reasons I don’t visit much.”

Ashley apologized. “Sorry, Papa. You seemed to be getting along fine, and she is a good looking woman. I thought it might be fun.”

I reached over and took her hands. “You see the good in everyone, Angel. I think it’s one of the biggest reasons my son fell in love with you. Me too, as far as that goes. I doubt she will show up, but if she does, she does. I’ll be in such a good mood I don’t think anything could possible screw it up. Now, let’s talk about more pleasant subjects. Come to your senses yet, and decide to dump Mickey for me?”

She laughed and Mickey grinned. “Not yet. If he’s not trainable, though, I might reconsider. Older guys tend to already be housebroken.”

Then they started talking about the wedding, and all thoughts of my ex left my mind. Mickey had met Ashley in college, and it was love at first sight. She moved into his apartment at the start of their junior year, and hadn’t left his side since.

Her parents weren’t keen to see her with a minority partner, but when they found out he was my son, they thawed pretty quickly. It made me not trust them. I got Mickey when he was nine, when I married his mother. His mother was long gone, we didn’t last four years, but I had adopted Mickey in our second year, and he wanted to stay with me. I didn’t have the money then I did later, but it was starting to come in when she had run back to Costa Rica to be with her lover. I filed, citing abandonment, and got sole custody of Mickey until she could be found. That took a year and a half. By then the divorce had gone through, and I got full custody. She didn’t even get visitation rights.

Mickey took it hard. He had just turned eleven, and for a long time it had just been him and his mother. It took a couple of years of therapy to get him back, and when he was finally happy she showed up again, wanting him to move to Costa Rica and live with her. I really didn’t realize how big a vocabulary he had until then, and a lot of what he said wasn’t in any dictionary.