Chapter 15

Brenda has been away from home for three months, it’s the month of March in the year 2017 and Richard is coming unglued. The children feel sorry for him. He figures that any day now, she will return to her family. Her reason for leaving is eating away at him. He has no idea what could have set her off this time. It’s a Friday evening when she calls to check on her daughters. Ring. Ring. “Hello.” Richard answered. “Can I speak to the girl?” Brenda inquired. “Sure. Hold on.” Richard said accommodatingly. “Girls! Your mother wants to speak to you.” Richard yelled. Both Samantha and Trina each go to grab the telephone receiver. They rattle off all that has happened in the past week. Brenda calls at least once a week after her first month of being away. The three laugh, then whisper. Richard signals to them to hand over the phone. Samantha hands him the receiver. “Listen, I have a question. What is the problem? This little exercise is getting old. Can you clue me in?” Richard demands in a sharp tone. There is silence on the other end of the line. He can only hear her breathing. She sighs deeply. “It is not you. It’s me. You don’t make me happy and life is too short to constantly be unhappy,” Brenda explained. She does not wait for a response. “Tell the girls that I love them.” She uttered quickly before the line goes dead.

Still holding the receiver in his hand, Richard becomes angry. He beats the receiver on the counter several times. The receiver cracks and the girls become uneasy. “Daddy, are you okay?” Trina asks with a quiver in her voice as she cautiously approaches him. He sees the fear in her eyes, puts the receiver back on the hook and embraces his youngest daughter. “Baby, I am not doing well. I miss your mother terribly. I do not even know why she would leave us. The frustration of it all is starting to get to me. I am sorry if I scared you. You and your sister mean the world to me,” Richard explained with a crack in his voice. The two continue to embrace. He can feel his daughter trembling in his arms. He does everything within his power to reassure her that everything will work out. Samantha watches from the living room. Her eyes fill with tears, the hurt that her father is feeling spills over. She too hopes that this is all worth it in the end. The three planned to do something fun for the weekend to get their minds off of Brenda. Saturday morning, Richard took his daughters to breakfast, then they caught a matinee and finally a little bit of shopping. It cost him a pretty penny but it was necessary.

Sunday morning, Philly calls to check on his friend. Ring. Ring. “Hey guy, what’s up? Your baby momma come to her senses?” He joked. “Nah. She is not back. I don’t know what to do. I have been racking my brain trying to think of where I went wrong,” Richard quipped. “Man, you went wrong when you took her back years ago,” Philly states with a chuckle. “Look man. I do not need a lecture right now,” Richard retorted. “My bad. My bad.” Philly conceded. “Tell me something. If she doesn’t want to be with you. Then she must be with somebody right? You cannot make me believe that she just up and left her comfortable home and her children without a back-up,” Philly suggested. “Man. I don’t even want to hear that shit right now.” Richard cautioned. “Now wait. Hear me out. She has not been back to the house in three months. She has not seen the kids in three months and she was gone for an entire month before she even makes contact. Sounds like she thought this thing through before she did it,” Philly reasoned. Richard rubbed his forehead hard as if he was scrubbing away the ideas that his friend was depositing into his mind. “Man, I can’t think about that right now.” Richard answered in a low voice. “Well. It is food for thought brother. What I want to know is why do you subject yourself to this type of emotional and mental abuse?” Philly asked with a confused voice. Richard doesn’t answer. He holds the cell phone to his ear thinking about all that his friend has said. “Man, I’ve got to go. I will check you later,” he finally states as he hangs up.

As Richard sits in his recliner reading the Sunday morning paper, he cannot help but contemplate all that his friend had to say. He thought long and hard about why he allowed himself to be manipulated by Brenda for all these years. Of course, he always had a love for her but that wasn’t enough to keep him loyal to her beck and call. There was a deeper connection to her that he could never quite put his finger on. The love of his family has always been important. Its a major priority in his life. One that he missed during his upbringing. He was traumatized as a child. He would never put his children through the agony of wondering why things fell apart. His father branded him with an emotional wound so deep that he vowed that would never be him in the future. A commitment to a woman would be for better or worst with or without a legal document binding them.

He puts down the paper to catch a few winks in his favorite chair, his mind still reeling from his interrogation with Philly. Richard remembers why his relationship with Brenda remains sacred. His parents went through an ugly divorce when he was a kid. He remembers his father leaving when he was just six-years-old. Mr. Harvey left out of the apartment to fetch some milk and a carton of cigarettes. Richard ran after him begging to tag along. He worshipped the ground that his father walked on. His father told him that he would be back in a little while so he should stay home. In fact, his exact words were, “I need you to look after your mother while I go to the store. Don’t give her any trouble and I will be back in a jiffy,” Mr. Harvey expressed with confidence. Richard nodded and ran back disappearing behind the door. It would be the last time that Richard would lay eyes on his father for quite some time. The trip to the store for a couple of items haunted him for years. Jessica, his mother, never thought any more about him and she never tried to explain to Richard what really happened. She had Monica to tend to as well as how she would manage to run a household without a husband. Richard always thought that something bad happened to his father. He would go into a depression about his father’s absence and wonder why his mother never contacted the police to report him missing. Of course, Jessica knew that nothing ill had transpired. She could never bring herself to tell her son that his father no longer wanted his family. The pressure of a wife and three children was more than he could handle. He slithered away like a coward who runs from a fight. Mr. Harvey walked away from the life he created because it was no longer convenient for him.

At the age of sixteen-years-old, by chance Richard would be walking by the subway station and be stopped in his tracks. He sees his father with another woman and a little boy about the same age he was when his father left home. The two would lock eyes as he and his father are mirror images of one another. The little boy resembled him as well. He is speechless. His father clears his throat, places his hand on the small of the woman’s back to usher them along. Mr. Harvey never acknowledges his son. Richard stands there motionless until they disappear from sight. All these years, he worried and pined for his father’s return, only to discover for himself that his father had taken up with another woman and started a new family. He never looked back or cared what happened to them. Richard’s heart broke all over again. It was this day that he sworn to himself if he ever got into a relationship where a family sprouted, his children would never suffer the loss of love and attention at his hand. He would remain there as a protector, nurturer, and confident. Richard knew Brenda’s family story and did not understand how she could be so dismissive when came to the emotional stability of her daughters. This made him bitter. He had to get to the bottom of it. The more he thought about her selfish tendencies the more he needed to know why. The more he needed to put an end to this charade of an existence. He deserved better and finally came to see that maybe this is unhealthy for him as well as the children.

The next week rolls around and Richard has a new attitude. He is on a mission to figure out what Brenda is doing and why. Richard begins to snoop around to find the pieces to the puzzle. He starts monitoring Brenda’s social media over the last six months. Hoping that something out of the ordinary will jump out at him. Then he starts paying closer attention to the mail that comes each day. Next, he scours through the detail portion of the cell phone bills for the last six months. After about a week of combing through everything that he has access to, he notices a pattern. She has made only one new friend on social media, six months prior to leaving home. It is male who compliments her on every photo that she posts. Her cell phone also has one new number listed consistently for months all hours of the day and night. The mail from yesterday had a utility bill in Brenda’s name. Richard takes care of everything in the household. No bills come in her name. She has never had the responsibility of anything. The more he finds the more he believes that Philly is right about his assumptions.

On Thursday evening, Richard gives Philly a call to share his discovery. As the phone rings he signals to the girls that he is going out to the car. He wants privacy. Before Philly could recite his salutation, Richard gets straight to the point. “Dude. This bitch got another man. From what I can tell, it’s been going on for a long time. Can you believe it?” Richard shouted. “Oh. Man. I am sorry to hear it, but I can believe it,” his friend said solemnly. “What about the girls?” Richard squealed. “Man. Do you really think that they don’t know what’s going on?” Philly inquired defiantly. “Huh. No. They don’t know. They’ve been in the dark along with me,” Richard suggested. “Are you sure?” Philly quipped with a hint of suspicion. “Dude, I’m not sure of anything at this point,” Richard beckoned. “Maybe, you need to have a family meeting and show them the evidence to support your suspicions and see how they react,” Philly suggested. “Yeah. But, this is between me and their mom. I do not want them to take sides,” Richard expressed. “How do you know that they haven’t already chosen a side? They’re not babies anymore,” his friend states with conviction. The two continue to talk about ideas of how to approach the children without being accusatory. After about an hour of deep discussion, the two friends end the call. Richard goes back into the house. Trina meets him at the door. “Everything okay daddy?” She asked. “Everything is good baby,” Richard said with a slight smile as he walked to the kitchen to grab a soda from the refrigerator. The two teenagers are hanging out in the living room watching Black Entertainment Television. Richard sits in his recliner, picks up a book and begins reading. Every so often he would peek over the top of the book to watch their body language as he looks for clues as to what they really know about their mother’s current situation. His plan to debrief them would come during breakfast on Saturday morning.