“Four boys. All in four years. Talk about your rabbits.”
“And then my little girl came along.”
She smiled and poked him in
the arm. “Can we say accident?”
“No, Michelle, it was no accident. We planned for you.”
She looked at him quizzically. “I guess I never really asked either of you about it, but I always assumed I was sort of a surprise. Was it because you were trying for a girl?”
Frank stopped walking. “We were trying for… something.”
“Something to hold you together?” she said slowly.
He started to walk again but she didn’t. He stopped, looked back.
“Did you ever consider divorce, Dad?”
“It was not something our generation did lightly.”
“Divorce is not always the wrong answer. If you weren’t happy.”
Frank held up a hand. “Your mother wasn’t happy. I, uh, I was trying to work at it. Although I’d be the first to admit that I spent too much time on the job and away from her. She raised the kids and she did a great job. But she did it without a lot of support from me.”
“Cop’s life.”
“No, just this cop’s life.”
“You knew about Doug Reagan, obviously?”
“I saw some of the signs that she was attracted to him.”
Michelle couldn’t believe she was about to ask this, but she had to. “Would it have bothered you if you knew they had slept together?”
“I was still her husband. Of course it would have hurt me, deeply.”
“Would you have put a stop to it?”
“I probably would’ve beaten Reagan within an inch of his life.”
“And Mom?”
“I hurt your mother in other ways over the years. And it wasn’t her fault.”
“By not being around for her?”
“In some ways, that’s worse than cheating.”
“You think so?”
“What’s a quick fling in the sack compared to decades of indifference?”
“Dad, you weren’t gone all the time.”
“You weren’t alive when the boys were little. Trust me, your mother was a single parent for all intents and purposes. You can never get that time, that trust back. At least I never did.”
“Did you cry for her too?”