She was about to point out all the help she had had, but Dyma told Harlan, “She’s not going to fall in love with you, you know. Just like she probably never fell in love with Blake one bit, even though every girl in town and every girl’s mom thinks he’s the hottest guy they’ve ever seen in person. That’s probably why she stayed with Mark, even though he was boring and he totally took her for granted. Because she thought he was safe, and he didn’t come on to me. I’ll bet she’s more cautious than any woman you’ve ever met. I used to think that was stupid, but then I figured out why. Also, now that she knows who you are, she’s probably going to make us fly home coach again.”
Harlan said, “I think you should let your mom tell her own story.”
Dyma said, “Yeah? Except it’s not just her story. It’s mine. Wouldn’t you feel like it was your story, too, if your father was your mother’s rapist?”
“He wasn’t a rapist,” Jennifer said. “Or not exactly. There were two people there, and I own my own mistakes. Dyma, just no. Please. Not now.”
“Then why did he go to jail for two years?” Dyma said. “Why did he have to register as a sex offender forever? Mom. We need to discuss this. You need to make decisions for you for once, and quit trying to protect me from the truth, and from … from life. You can’t, not anymore. The truth is the truth.”
Oh, boy. Not now.
Jennifer said, “The truth has been the truth for more than nineteen years. Do we have to discuss it at this exact moment?”
“You’re always busy,” Dyma said, “because you pick up the phone or run out the door for Blake 24/7, and then there’s your so-called personal life. And so am I, because I’m rocking that apron all the time. I’m the assistant manager at Burger King,” she told Owen, “which mostly means that I’m the only one they can count on to show up for my shift. But now here we are, stuck on this plane, both not busy, and we need to talk about it. Why wouldn’t this be the perfect time?”
“You could be doing your homework,” Jennifer suggested. ‘Then you’d be busy.”
Dyma crossed her arms. “Mom.”
Harlan was still looking cool. Now, he said, “We’ve got a couple choices here. You and Dyma can move to that couch in back of us, have at least a little privacy. Or you can stay here with us and talk this out. Don’t worry about Owen and me. We already heard you were sixteen when you had Dyma, and that sure doesn’t make us think any less of you. Besides, you know my family life wasn’t anywhere close to perfect, because I shared. I’m not real fond of sharing, and I can’t think why I did, but there it is.”
That was true. Harlan had told her his story, at least a piece of it. Why didn’t that make this feel any easier?
“Harlan’s right,” Owen said. “The ink’s not even dry on my divorce. I’ve got no room to talk.”
“You’re divorced?” Dyma asked, and looked a little dismayed. Jennifer had been right, then. Some part of Dyma had been trying to think of Owen as just starting out, as in her league. Instead, he was an All-Pro NFL player, and undoubtedly a multimillionaire. Jennifer knew something about NFL contracts now. An All-Pro center? What was that, many millions of dollars a year? She wasn’t doing that calculation on Harlan, because it would be even more than that, and anyway, it was none of her business and none of her concern, except to say that, yes, he’d have private-jet money. Despite Owen’s teasing, he deferred to Harlan. It was subtle, but it was there. Harlan, she was pretty sure, was the big star.
Owen was not only an NFL player, though, he also owned a ranch. She’d had a chance to learn, working for Blake, about the kind of steady discipline it took to make it to the NFL, and to stay there. Emotionally, Owen was plenty old.
It was just as well that Dyma get set straight. Which was what made this conversation an important one, actually. Maybe Owen didn’t understand that age gap now, but by the time Jennifer was done, he was going to understand it.
“Yep,” the man in question said. “My divorce was final about three months ago. I’ve got good parents, though, and they’ve been married close to thirty-five years now. Can’t throw the fault for my marriage on anybody else.”
Jennifer said, “Right. This is halfway out there anyway, and there’s no stuffing it back in the bag now. It’s not that exciting a story anyway. Happens every day.” She could tell that she was sitting up too straight, her shoulders rigid, but this wasn’t exactly a relaxing topic. She told Dyma, “But you could have talked to me. If you wanted to know more, why didn’t you ask me before this?”
“Because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings,” Dyma said. “And besides, Grandma told me when I first heard about it in third grade, so I didn’t have to ask you. And later on, she explained some more. I’m all clued in.”
“She did?” Jennifer didn’t have much else than that. Why hadn’t her mother told her?
“Did you seriously imagine,” Dyma said, “that, ‘Your dad wasn’t ready to be a father’ was going to be enough for any kid?”
“Well, I hoped,” Jennifer said. “I didn’t really know what else to say.”
“You could’ve told me the truth,” Dyma said. “There’s that option. Of course, Grandma wasn’t a whole lot better. She just said that all kinds of good people come from bad parents, so I shouldn’t worry about it. She was probably right, though. Even things like depression and alcoholism are only about half due to genetics. If I’d inherited sociopathy, it would’ve showed up by now. I think he was just a bad guy.”
“He …” Oh, boy. Here they went. “I don’t think he was a bad guy, not really, or not all the way. I don’t know. I have no idea where he is now, or how his life turned out. He moved away, and so did his folks, as soon as he went to prison. That part was true. He was just … thoughtless, maybe.”
“Thoughtless,” Harlan said flatly.
She could feel herself flushing. “All right, insecure. Inferior. Whatever it is guys get when their life isn’t going the way they expected, and they’re still young and egotistical and entitled. Which you never were, right?”
“Which I was plenty,” he said. “Just not so much that I slept with any fifteen-year-olds.”
“Look,” she said, “he’d graduated from high school and gone from being a two-sport star to working at the lumber mill. His pretty cheerleader girlfriend went to college and he didn’t, because no college made him an offer, and he hadn’t exactly developed his other talents. All he had was sports, and it wasn’t enough. Don’t you feel bad, ever, about all those young guys who focus too much on football and not enough on anything else, because they’ve heard too many motivational speeches about their destiny and how they create it? From their coaches, from the movies, from guys like you? How many of them even play college ball?”
“Not many,” Harlan said. “And that’s still no excuse.”
“You’re right,” Jennifer said. “He was wrong. But so was I. Not as wrong as he was, but I was wrong. And stupid, of course. Romantic. Fifteen. About to start high school, and looking for magic. My parents had been divorced a long time, and I didn’t see my dad much. I didn’t know what men … or what teenage boys …”