The Fifth of July by Kelly Simmons

Author:Kelly Simmons
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2017-06-22T04:00:00+00:00

Alice

I should have left him the moment I found out his father was a Nazi.

Wouldn’t that have been dramatic? That’s how it would have happened in a film or a book. Not in real life. No, in real life, there’s lack of movement, misplaced loyalty. Hope. Optimism. And regret.

People who claim regrets, late in life, usually talk about small things, about going outside more often on sunny days, about pushing their children on the swings, about indulging their “one more times!” instead of saying enough. Why? Because those regrets seem fixable when they see them in others. Say yes instead of no. Eat the dessert. Give the hug. Wear the purple hat with feathers. Don’t bitterly turn away from miniature possibilities.

But what of the big regrets? Of knowing, suddenly, that Tripp wasn’t who I thought he was. I could have overlooked the sins of his father, his grandfather. But that he would lie, would gloss over it all, would try to pass himself off as something else. I never trusted him after that, and that was the truth.

Well, it’s never too late. It’s never too late to cut them loose. Especially when they are about to become a drain on resources. But speaking of regrets, when you are a septuagenarian on vacation and call your lawyer to discuss initiating divorce proceedings, don’t do it in a house with thin walls. Or you will surely regret hanging up the phone and finding your daughter in the corridor, her face a mask of red fury.

Caroline grabbed my arm with a ferocity I always knew she had—squeezed my delicate wrist with such force, I thought she’d snap it. Wasn’t that what I’d told the officers all those years ago? That she could murder any one of those boys with one hand tied behind her back? That if everything she claimed was true, they’d be scratched and bruised far more than she was?

“You called a divorce lawyer?”

My other arm scrabbled behind me for the wall. My nails dug into the old wallpaper and the thin plaster underneath. All of it insubstantial, every layer.

“Let go of me,” I said evenly.

“What do you think you’re doing, Mom?”

“What I probably should have done years before. Figuring out my options.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“I should think about protecting you.”

“Me?”

“Well, and Sydney, of course. And Tom.”

“From what?”

The star-shaped, silver light fixture swung above my head. Dust motes swirled in front of my eyes, tiny and beautiful, like something they were not.

Our tussle had jostled and weakened the whole house.

She let go of my arm, and I rubbed it gratefully.

“From the asset-drain of his long-term, twenty-four-hour care. Don’t you want to inherit some money?”

“Mother, Dad needs you now. Don’t you—”

“I have at least ten good years left. Ten, Caroline. Or who knows, possibly more. My family has huge amounts of longevity in their DNA. And ten years is an eternity. I’m not going to waste them being married to an imbecile who no longer understands which way is up. Or to someone everyone now knows has Nazi lineage.

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