Read Online The Life You've Imagined by Kristina Riggle - Free Book Online

populated today. The waitress is leaning on the bar talking to the bartender, but they glance over this way, probably just to see if we need more drinks, but they could also be actively listening. For all I know they’re Nee Nance customers. The store is just down the block.
    Beck has nearly plowed through his sandwich already. So I say, “Got time to take a walk?”
    I ’m glad I skipped the pantyhose today, because now I can dig my toes into the warm sand. I tip my face up toward the sun. I’d forgotten how good this feels on a perfect June day when the sun is just warm enough to be pleasant instead of burning. Beck and I are sitting on an old picnic blanket he found in his trunk. He’s cross-legged on the blanket next to me, still wearing his shoes and business clothes.
    It’s crowded at the beach, but no one’s paying us any attention. Moms are watching their children; teenagers on summer vacation are watching each other.
    Beck rolls up his shirt sleeves and loosens his tie. “So, what’s wrong?”
    I sit up and turn toward him. He’s giving me that steady look of his, the one that seems to say, Let me have it. I can take it.
    “My dad is writing my mom letters.”
    He startles and turns to face me more fully. He takes one hand of mine in two of his. “Are you sure? Is he okay? Have you talked to him?”
    “No, I haven’t talked to him, and he’s at least okay enough to be writing. Yes, I’m sure. I found the letter and she confessed immediately.”
    “Well, that’s wonderful!”
    I pull my hand back out of his. “What’s so wonderful about it? He’s an asshole loser who abandoned his family twenty years ago without so much as a postcard and now he’s writing my mom love letters or something. He probably just wants money, which she doesn’t have, no small thanks to him.”
    “Maybe he’s changed.”
    “Changed into what? Some saint? And if he’s all saintly now, why is he not writing to me, his daughter? Mom was a grown-up; she had a chance to get over it herself. I was just a kid. Think of your daughter. How she would feel.”
    That was perhaps a low blow. He grimaces. “I’m sorry, you’re right. I just . . . Aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to see him?”
    “What for? So he can complicate my life again? He can say, ‘Hey, sorry about all those years and stuff I missed, and oops! Gotta run!’ I’ve spent twenty years making sure he has no effect on me whatsoever and I’m not about to muck that up now by having a conversation with him. Anyway, he doesn’t want to talk to me; he wants Mom.”
    “Now what’s going to happen?”
    Before I can answer, Beck’s phone bleeps at him. He looks at the screen and cringes. “I’m sorry, Annie, just a sec.” He starts typing, holding the phone at an angle to shield the screen from glare.
    I was only ten, but I remember that day. I remember my mom screaming at Bill, that no-account loser who came to bring the car back but not Dad. I remember her screaming at him, “You’re helping a man abandon his family!” and she was holding her stomach with both arms, doubled half over like she’d been stabbed. She was right there out on the sidewalk. She’d made me go inside, but I was peeking between the newspaper rack and the beer posters to see what was going on.
    I knew what abandon meant, so when she told me that night that Dad was just taking a trip and he’d be back eventually, I also knew she was lying to me.
    Beck finally puts his phone down. His face is long and his frown is heavy.
    “Everything okay?”
    “Sure, it’s fine. Sorry about that. It was Sam.”
    He puts his hand on my knee. I move my leg away from him. “Don’t.”
    He clasps his hands in his lap. “I just hate to see you hurt.”
    “Who’s hurt? I’m not hurting. I said I’m worried. I made Mom promise not to write him again, but what if she doesn’t really stop? The return address was Tennessee, but he could call or just show up one day at the store. Then