Chapter 37

It’d been but a week since Candace had made me promise to talk to my ex-fiancée. I saw the new Caddy pull up in front of the complex. Well, it looked new to me, the Caddy. Ava Willis got out and was marching, not walking, but marching up to the stairs and I was sure down the walkway to our second-floor place too. She buzzed the buzzer. I answered the Buzzer. It was Sunday, I was off. I had time to talk to the woman. The same woman who despised me as a man. I’d heard her say so in as many words.

I wondered what her game was going to be. I mean considering her military gait.

“Come in,” I said. I turned and headed back inside. There was a small TV-tablette next to my rocking chair. My coffee cup was on it. She came in. I nodded my greeting. “There’s a new pot in the kitchen if you want a cup.” I motioned her to get her own if she wanted any. Well, I was making a statement.

“Thank you, and hello,” she said, heading into the kitchen. She was maybe a full minute inside. Coming back in to me, she took a seat on the divan across from me and set her cup down on the coffee table immediately in front of her.

“Okay?” I said.

“Candace said you were willing to talk to me; I mean about important things,” she said. I shrugged.

“When Candace first asked me to meet with you, at first I demurred; but then I thought, and agreed to the meet up, this meet up, because it would give me an opportunity to call you names and insult you to your face, I mean instead of behind your back, you know like you and your husband did, and likely still do, to me. You know, like you did that day at the Blue Boar,” I said.

“Huh”” she said.

“Never mind. I’m a freak, I know it and I have come to terms with it. So anyway, what qualifies as important in your book?” I said. She paused kinda long to arrange thoughts in her brain; well, it’s what it seemed like to me.

“The stuff you heard us say that day: I don’t know how to start,” she started.

“Yeah, by stuff you mean what you really think of me, the both of you,” I said. “But now, after the fact, I’m kinda grateful to you for all of what the two of you had to say. I was kinda glad because you cleared things up for me; I mean that day.”

“No!” she said. “It’s not what we really think. Really!”

“You forget. I was there, I heard the tone of voice, the words, the determination, all of it.”

She looked to be about to say something, but I held up my hand to short shank her for the moment.

“For the record, I need to tell you, that for those first nine years that I spent in my prison cell, I had thoughts every night of the wonderful things we, you and I, would be saying to each other and doing with each other the day, well the night, that I got out. You can believe me when I tell you, those thoughts made it possible for me to be okay. But those thoughts were way different than what I heard you saying you thought about me at the Blue Boar, way different believe me!

“Oh, and lest I forget, after that day in 1981 when he visited to let me know I’d been dumped; well, I know longer had any more of those good thoughts; well, you can imagine,” I said.

“Oh my, Julian, and honestly, I have to say, about that day at the Blue Boar; I am, was, frustrated and I was taking it out on your, at the moment, absent self. I’m still frustrated,” she said. “But I am also remorseful. So is Blake.”

“Don’t believe you and don’t care,” I said.

“Please, at the least allow me to beg forgiveness for what I said. And I do mean beg,” she said.

“Beg all you want; I still won’t believe you,” I said.

“Julian, please, I was rotten that day and many other days if it comes to that, and I deserved to be punished for what I said, and for that matter what I’ve not said too when it comes to that.”

“What you’ve not said?” I said.

“Yes. Julian, I love you. I loved you then, my savior, and I always will. Yes, I am faithful to my husband in thought, word and deed and those for the rest of my life; but that does not and will not ever detract one iota from the love in my heart for you. There finally, I’ve said what I have not said until this moment,” she said.

“And I still don’t believe you,” I said. “And it doesn’t make any difference. I’m still a freak, and I know it, and just trying to get by.”

“No, I’m certain that you will not believe me; and that, is my punishment. I mean knowing you will always hate me for what I’ve done,” she said. My turn to remain temporarily silent, to pause. She too was in pause mode.

“Hmm, hate you, do I? I suppose I do hate you, and him. Not really sure if you want to know. I try not to think about the two of you anymore, not much anyway.

“You know him visiting me a couple of weeks ago and offering me more of his monetary-tokenism really got to me. I do hate the man for doing that, insulting me like that,” I said. “I deserve what I’ve asked for. He doesn’t think so, so it’s a moot point, but it is something that prays on my mind all of the time. I mean his arrogant tokenism. Just like what he said to me that awful day in 1981 prayed on my mind after he informed me that I’d been dumped.”

“Twenty-million dollars is not tokenism, Julian, it’s not,” she said.

“Yes, it is,” I said. “And it is viscerally insulting.”

She was shaking her head. “He won’t give you half, Julian, and yes we’ve talked about it him and me. But he would consider, seriously consider, a much greater amount if you would consider it from your end,” she said.

“Harrumph!” I said. “And what would that be. What amount, forty million, a hundred million? Still but a miniscule inconvenience for him. Not nearly as valuable as what he took from me, and I do mean you; oh, and Candace.”