Ladies of the Lake by Ken Corday

Author:Ken Corday
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beaufort Books
Published: 2015-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

21

IT WAS THE CLUB’S FOURTH OF July extravaganza. Members were out in full force. I had wanted to go with my mom, but I hadn’t seen her all day. And Dad was finishing up a round of golf with Alana’s dad, Alphonse. They were paying their caddy and telling him to put their golf bags on the rack near the lake. My head was swimming. I’m not the type of person who can think of more than one thing at a time. And there I was at this party and all this internal drama was going on with Cassidy wanting to bug her mother’s phone and my dad being gay, and I just went all kinds of brain dead.

The kids wanted to join me on the steps overlooking the putting green to watch the fireworks, but I needed to find my mom. Everyone was on one side of the club settling in for the fireworks display the club sponsored every Independence Day, but my mom and dad were nowhere in the crowd. I headed through the dining room and out the other side of the club. I walked down the flagstone steps to the lake. I could hear their voices in the dark. They were trying to whisper but weren’t doing a very good job of it. I stepped back into the shadows so my presence wouldn’t be detected.

“Why did you even marry me?”

“Because I run a family-friendly business. I’ve got to maintain an image as a family man.”

“So that’s all I was to you, an image?”

“I could come up with something clever but I’m just tired of lying. Now you know. Now we can go on with our lives with a little less tension between us. You understand my needs and I understand yours.”

“You understand nothing about me. I want to be your wife, in every way. I don’t want to live a lie. And who says you can keep your lie? No matter how discreet you are, someday someone else is going to catch you and it’s going to be front-page news. My private detective took a lot of those photos in public. You’re not being very discreet. Why don’t we just quietly divorce and you can live your life any way you choose?”

“If I wanted things that way I’d have made those arrangements a long time ago. We may seem to be living in a new age of enlightenment, but there’s still a price to pay for a man of my stature to live an alternative lifestyle. That’s just the way it is. You think I like it? I hate it. But I’m not about to tear down the empire it took me a lifetime to build. And you’re going along for the ride.”

“As your beard? No way in hell.”

My dad grabbed Mom’s arms and began shaking her. “You can’t leave me.”

“Watch me.”

I couldn’t believe my dad was being so horrible to my mom. I ran away as fast as I could. I ran to my house, and like a scared little girl, hid under the covers of my bed.

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