Chapter 3

The one single day I could point to and say my life began to get better was a Friday. “Rodeo Rosie,” as I had started to think of her over the years because I could only take about eight seconds of her bull, made another attempt at ruining my day but was bucked off at six seconds when my fifteen-year-old daughter rushed out of the house with her duffle and announced she was ready to go. To make sure we did, indeed, go, she grabbed my hand and pulled me to the car. Rose followed us and was tapping on the window, trying to get one more dig in before I left, but Ellie just waved as I put the car in drive and got the hell out of Dodge, leaving Rose standing on the curb screaming at us as we drove away.

“God!” Ellie groaned as we pulled away. “She’s bearable for almost two weeks, but when my weekend with you comes around, she turns into an absolute b ... witch.”

“Wow, you caught yourself before you got in trouble this time!” I teased. “By the way, your timing was perfect, coming out the door before she could get warmed up.”

“Thanks, Dad,” she grinned. “I do my best.”

We drove in silence for a few moments before Ellie piped up again. “Can we stop by Jordyn’s house first? I left some things there the other day and I’d like to pick them up.”

I had no idea who Jordyn might be, but I was in no hurry to get back to the crappy little apartment I’d rented for the past ten or more years, so I let Ellie direct me to Jordyn’s house. She told me about Jordyn on the way there, and it was obvious that “Jordy” was more than just a casual acquaintance or classmate. My lesbian daughter had a girlfriend! I still didn’t understand the why or how of Ellie being a lesbian, I certainly didn’t plan it, but I was determined to love my daughter enough to accept her instead of trying to shame her for it. Life is hard enough. Besides, she was going to turn sixteen in a couple of weeks. That being the age of consent in this state, who she had sex with would be up to her, anyway. I figured it was close enough already, so long as she was being safe.

When we arrived at Jordyn’s house, Ellie made me get out of the car and go to the door with her. She wanted me to meet Jordyn and her mother. We rang, and the door was answered by a stunning redhead with attention-getting green eyes. Her face lit up when she saw Ellie and she welcomed us in.

“Jordy!” she called back into the house, “Ellie’s here!” She motioned for Ellie to go on toward Jordyn’s room.

“I’m Nancy Beth Beene,” she said in a honeyed southern accent while extending a graceful hand to greet me. “You must be Ellie’s father.”

“That’s me,” I acknowledged as I shook Nancy Beth’s soft hand, “Ronald Foreman. Call me Ron.”

“It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” she cooed. “Won’t you come in and sit a spell? I imagine the girls are going to be a while.”

I shrugged my acceptance. I knew teenaged girls well enough to know it would take a while to separate two of them, even two straight ones. Plus, as I said, I was really in no hurry to get back to my crappy apartment, where hanging out with Ellie was the only thing on the agenda.

Nancy Beth and I sat at opposite ends of the sofa and made small talk for about twenty minutes before the girls came into the living room. Jordyn turned out to be a clone of her mother; a very beautiful young lady with red hair and green eyes. Both she and Ellie looked happy to be around each other.

The three ladies persuaded me to stay and join them for pizza and a movie. At one point in the evening, while our daughters cuddled together on the loveseat, Nancy Beth leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Don’t they look sweet together?” and I had to admit they did.

I asked Nancy Beth to meet me in the kitchen, where we quietly discussed our daughters. “Does it bother you that they’re gay?” I asked her.

“To quote Doc Brown in “Back to the Future,” what’s wrong with being happy?” She laughed. “But really, I’ve been attracted to a few women in my time, so I suppose you could say I understand her. How about you? Does Ellie being lesbian upset you?”

“Not any more,” I said. “I decided to accept it because I love my daughter enough to let her be herself, even if I don’t really understand it. It’s a sore point with my ex-wife, though. When Ellie came out to her as a lesbian a couple of years ago, Rose had the court and Child Services run me through the wringer. She thought Ellie was gay because I’d abused her. We finally got that straightened out, but ... ugh.”

“Oh, that woman!” Nancy Beth groaned dramatically. “I ... She. She’s said some truly hurtful things to Jordyn about ... goodness. I won’t even repeat what she said about the girls.”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “I can imagine.”

“I assume you divorced her because of Ellie’s little brother?” Nancy Beth inquired.

“The short version is that I took one look at Randall, walked out of the delivery room and filed for divorce,” I shrugged. “I feel sorry for him, actually. He’s a sweet kid and doesn’t deserve his nutty mother.”

Nancy Beth sighed. “Your story is far worse than mine. I was stupid enough to get pregnant in high school and the boy took off for parts unknown when he found out. I kept my maiden name, Beene, and listed the father as unknown on Jordyn’s birth certificate, even though I know exactly who it was. I might tell you the whole sad tale one day, but that’s enough to go on for now.”

“I’m sure you’ll learn my whole story, too,” I grinned back. “If the girls keep on like this, I imagine that we’ll be seeing each other a lot.”

“I would hope so, Ron,” Nancy Beth smiled. “I like Ellie a lot, and I think you’re very nice as well.”

We returned to the living room to finish watching the movie, and I noted how Nancy Beth sat closer to me on the sofa. When the credits started to roll after the happy ending, I stood and said, “Thank you for a wonderful evening, Nancy Beth. Ellie and I would probably only have had pizza and watched a movie anyway but being here in your company was very nice.”

Nancy Beth seconded that motion with a brief hug and a kiss on the cheek while the girls were saying a more private goodbye in Jordyn’s room. Ellie came back with her backpack and we soon made our exit. “Jordyn seems very nice,” I said as we drove away from the Beene’s house.

“I’m falling in love with her, Dad,” Ellie sighed. “She’s amazing.”

I could only nod. Teen girls and their romances being what they are, I wasn’t going to push one way or another. At not-quite-sixteen, I wasn’t expecting Ellie’s romance to last forever.

“What did you think of Ms. Beene?” my daughter asked.

“She’s nice.” I said. I left it at that, but frankly, the woman was amazing. She was beautiful, charming, intelligent, sexy and independent and my cheek was still warm where she had kissed it as Ellie and I were leaving the house.

“I think she likes you, Dad,” Ellie laughed.

“I just met the woman, Ellie,” I protested. “Don’t go marrying us off just yet. You’re only fifteen. Can you imagine what would happen if I marry Nancy Beth and you and Jordyn break up? That would leave you with a stepsister who hates your guts, and me caught in the middle.”

“Relax, Daddy,” Ellie snorted. “I’m smart enough to know that relationships don’t last forever at my age, but if – and I’m only saying “if” – if Jordyn and I end up together, and, again if, you and Ms. Beene also end up together, wouldn’t that be really cool?”

“Are you trying to entangle me with your girlfriend’s mother so you two can spend more time together?” I teased.

“Oh, Dad,” she giggled. “Just go with the flow. You and Ms. Beene get along well enough together. Leave it at that.”

“Yeah. Leave it at that,” I grunted.

“But isn’t she pretty?” Ellie said.

“Hush!” I snapped, making my daughter laugh.

I slept well that night, with pleasant visions of smiling green eyes and bright red hair filling my dreams.

The next big change happened a few weeks later, shortly after Ellie’s sixteenth birthday. Under the terms of the custody agreement, Ellie could decide who she wanted to live with once she turned sixteen. She said she wanted to live with me. She’s wanted that since day one, when she was four years old, but now the court would finally let her voice be heard. Despite protests from my ex-wife, who tried yet again to raise the argument that Ellie was a lesbian because I had molested her, and with a strong implication that I was still doing it, the courts allowed Ellie to move in with me. I even played nice and let Rose get by with child support payments about half the size of what I had been paying. Rose, of course, thought the money she had to pay was part of my evil plan to ruin her. She was nothing if not predictable.

With our signed decree in hand, Ellie and I went out for dinner to celebrate our court victory and solidify our plans to get her moved out of Rose’s house and into my apartment. On the way home, I stopped at a convenience store to get gas for my old Toyota. As was my habit, I bought a lottery ticket. Usually it was just a one-dollar ticket but I was in the mood to celebrate and bought one of the twenty-dollar tickets for a chance at a bigger payoff. I scratched it off at the counter and shook my head as the numbers were revealed.

Four sevens. I had just won the big jackpot of fifty million dollars.

“Crap!” I groaned.

“Is it not a good ticket?” asked the clerk in his lilting Pakistani accent.

“Oh, it’s a good one, alright, Naveed,” I croaked, showing him the fifty-million-dollar ticket, “but my ex-wife is going to think this is part of my evil plot to destroy her.”

He shook his head in amazement as I walked out the door. I’m sure he thought I was nuts for thinking a fifty-million-dollar payoff meant bad news. It wasn’t exactly bad news. An eight-figure windfall would change my life for the better in a lot of ways. There was going to be a ration of shit from Rose, though, I was sure of that.

“Did something happen in there?” Ellie asked, concerned. I guess my face was still showing the shock. I just handed her the ticket. She stared at it for a few seconds until it sank in and then squealed. “Holy crap, Dad! We’re rich!”

“Sort of, I guess,” I replied, doing some quick math in my head. “If you take it all at once, it’s actually about thirty million. The government takes about a third and you’re left with twenty million. If you invest that and live off the income, it’s maybe around a million a year before taxes, depending on the actual rate of return. Take it as a twenty-year payout and you get two and a half million a year. Taxes will eat up a third of it and the payments stop after the money’s paid. It’s not nearly enough to be ‘fuck you’ money, but it’s enough for a comfortable life if you handle it right.”

“What are you going to do?” Ellie asked.

“First thing tomorrow, I talk to an attorney and a broker. I want this in a trust that gives us good income and protects us from every money-grubbing jerk that wants to get in our pockets.”

“Like Mom, for instance,” Ellie giggled.

“Her, too,” I admitted, “but, believe it or not, there are actually worse kinds out there.”

“You’re just going to sock it away, then?” Ellie asked.

“Well, I’m not going to give the waitress a car, quit my job and buy an RV to travel around the country, and I categorically refuse to buy a bass boat. We’re not going to have a gold-plated mansion or an airplane, either, but your college fund and my retirement will be covered. Maybe your retirement, too. We’ll take nicer vacations, live in a house that’s paid for and drive slightly better cars. Most people aren’t going to know we won the lottery, which suits me just fine. I don’t want them to know we have that kind of money. For now, I don’t even want you to tell Jordyn about it.”

Ellie went to school the next day, a Wednesday, but I called in at work and took the rest of the week off on personal leave. The next call was to my attorney, Jerry Clark, to get him started on a way to shelter the money from tax liabilities and to give Ellie and me some degree of anonymity. Jerry pushed me toward one of his associates who specialized in that sort of thing. The flurry of emails, phone calls and faxes lasted two days, alongside similar activity with the broker who handles my retirement plan from work. On Friday morning, my attorneys presented the winning ticket to the Lottery Commission and collected a big check for the family trust we had created. The money went into the family trust brokerage account on Monday and was invested by the end of the day on Tuesday.

Ellie and I kept out a hundred thousand, most of which would be a down payment on a modest house. The rest would go toward new cars for Ellie and me. She was looking forward to driving hers, having just gotten her license. I was looking forward to owning a house after being a renter for almost twelve years. Like I said, eight figures can change your life.

Within a few months, Ellie and I had moved into a house of our own. The new house and the newer cars we were driving had Rose thinking that I was screwing her over. She hauled me into court again to have her child support payments reduced. I surprised her by letting her win bigger than she ever hoped. I asked the judge to reduce child support to zero, telling him that I could raise my daughter on my own income without extra from Rose. That was actually true. I had used some of the lottery winnings to eliminate my debt, my mortgage was slightly less than the rent I’d been paying, with better tax benefits, and Ellie had an after-school job that gave her some extra spending money. My salary was enough to cover the bills, leaving the money in the trust to gather more interest.

Even getting to ‘win’ like that wasn’t good enough for Rose, who suspected my evil plan to destroy her somehow included letting her off the hook for any child support. Her attorneys finally dug deep enough to find the family trust with the lottery winnings in it and took me to court as a run at getting some share of the money, or at least some back share of increased child support she was owed because she assumed I’d had the money for a long time. This was the ration of shit I had dreaded from the moment I scratched off that ticket: Rose was coming for the money.

She didn’t succeed. The testimony of the convenience store clerk, Naveed, who was actually one of the store’s owners, tipped the scales in my favor. Not only did he recall the evening when I had showed him the fifty-million-dollar ticket, he explained how, in order to prevent fraud, the Lottery Commission requires a record of when lottery tickets are purchased, including the serial number of the ticket. Lottery records show I bought the winning ticket at 9:27 PM on the evening after the court had awarded me full custody of Ellie. The Lottery Commission’s records showed the ticket was presented later in the week by representatives of the trust we had formed. That helped prove my testimony, and Ellie’s, about when I had won the lottery.

It was a blow to Rose, who was facing cash flow difficulties without my child support payments to prop up her budget. It makes me wonder if I hadn’t been overpaying on child support, but I didn’t press the issue. She and Randall downsized to a small condo. It actually worked to her advantage in the end. After the divorce, she bought a big four-bedroom house in one of the up-and-coming neighborhoods in town. She sold it for twice what she’d paid for it in the first place. It almost paid for her new condo, so she came up smelling like ... never mind. Rose had benefitted from losing the battle to get my money, but somehow twisted the facts to prove I had planned everything just to ruin her.

Once Ellie moved in with me and had her license and her own car, she would often pick Randall up from school and bring him to the house. She would help him with his homework while they waited for me to come home from work, then we’d feed him, and Ellie would run him home. Jordyn, as Ellie’s girlfriend, was part of the mix as well. Nancy Beth told me Randall was over there quite often, as well, and the same routine seemed to apply.

I found it amusing. Randall had turned into a nice young man and I actually enjoyed his company. Ellie adored her little brother and Jordyn fell right in and treated him like he was her brother, too. Because he was around so much and was so likable, I became a sort of mentor or father figure to him, despite his being the root reason behind divorcing Rose. I’m sure she saw our friendship as another part of my plot to ruin her. We’d all come to expect that of her. Rose blamed me for everything, bad hair days included.

One day, Randall asked me outright what had happened between me and Rose, and why she hated me so much. I told him the whole story. It wasn’t much of a surprise to him. After all, he’s black and the rest of us aren’t, so Rose’s cheating was only to be expected. The only shock to Randall was how quickly I’d acted once I found out.

“You took one look at me, knew she’d cheated on you and walked out?” he asked.

“Right out of the delivery room,” I said. “The divorce papers were served in the hospital the next day.”

“Harsh,” he sighed.

“Randall,” I told him. “A lot of times a story like that comes with a news headline like “Mother and Infant Murdered in Hospital.” So, I think I deserve some credit for being a better man.”

“Yeah, Papa Ron,” he agreed. He had started calling me Papa Ron when he was little. Maybe it was just his affectionate title for me, but I think he sometimes used it to piss off his mother. “You are a good man. No matter what my mama says.”

“Thanks, Randall.”

“Did she ever say what went on?” he asked me. “Does she have any clue who my biological father is?”

“She’s always claimed she didn’t know,” I shrugged. “Whether she’s covering the truth, or never got the guy’s name, or can’t figure out which of a long list of people it might be, I don’t know. She’s also never apologized for cheating on me.”

“Yeah, she’s that way. Even when she knows she’s wrong, she won’t back down,” he said. “And she’s always saying you’re out to ruin her, like you’re actually planning for bad things to happen to her.”