"So, when do you think we'll be ready to leave?" Beth continued.
"A little later than planned, now." Rick retorted. Trying not to sound like an asshole.
"Well, I guess you'd better get moving then." Beth said as she started walking back toward the house.
Rick sighed, shook his head, and under his breadth muttered, "Mission accomplished."
In all honesty, there wasn't that much left to move. Just a few boxes of clothes, some electronics, a desk chair, a bit of school stuff. And to be even more honest, having Ben involved wouldn't really have been that much help anyway. Rick loved Ben, and always tried to do his best to be a father to him, but damn it if that kid wasn't the laziest, most entitled, arrogant, little shit you ever met.
Maybe it was just this generation. Maybe he was just a kid of privilege, spoiled by his Mom. Maybe it was because Ben wasn't Rick's real son. He shook that last thought from his mind. A family secret. Ben didn't know. They'd never found the right time to tell him. Which meant the less it was top of mind for Rick, the better.
Rick returned to the house and went up to Ben's room to grab the rest of the boxes. Ben was playing video games on his cell phone, showing full dexterity with his injured hand, of course. Rick shook his head and returned to loading the truck.
About 30 minutes later, Rick had finished. "OK, all ready!" He called out from just inside the entryway. Beth and Ben eventually made their way down the stairs and out to the truck. Ben lagged because he had recently discovered a few more items that he was clumsily balancing in his arms and trying to stuff into a backpack, which was already about to burst at the seams. And Beth lagged because she was already fighting back tears, trying not to show it.
**********
Jessica pulled into the subdivision where Rick Johnson lived, and although it wasn't gated - and the homes weren't new, but not exactly old enough to be classics either - they sure made the place she called home seem like an even bigger piece of shit than it already was. She hoped her beat-up Jetta didn't look so out of place that anyone would call the cops. She drove slowly, looking for numbers on the houses, which weren't easy to see across everyone's massive front lawns.
When she realized she was close, she pulled her car over, far enough away from the house that she could prepare, and pulled down the sun visor to look at herself in the mirror. She adjusted her hair, applied a bit of shiny lip balm, and by the time she looked back at the house on the corner lot in front of her, she saw what she was looking for... Rick Johnson. It had to be him. And he was a stone cold stud. Tall with a wide frame. Muscular. He had short, dark, wavy hair that was just beginning to gray at the sides. A naturally tanned complexion and big, masculine hands that revealed a history of manual labor.
Following him were a scrawny teenage boy, with a mop of curly blonde hair that he struggled to keep out of his face, and a woman that was probably in her mid forties and looked every day of it. Sure, she had been classically pretty in her youth, and although she wasn't out of shape, and she obviously took great pains to make herself look presentable, her demeanor was so prudish and her posture was so rigid, that she came off as a cold bitch rather than a hot mom.
Rick and the woman climbed into a clean, large truck filled with boxes and some furniture, and the boy continued on to a new, red Dodge Challenger. "Shit!" Jessica cursed to herself. "Where are they going?"
The woman rolled down her window and called out to the boy, "Now you drive safe, Benny! We'll be right behind you and we'll meet you at the dorm. You have the address?"
"Yes, Mom." The boy sighed with an almost artificial level of slacker-ness in his voice.
Jessica started her car. The plan had changed. To what, she didn't exactly know yet. But she'd figure that out. She wanted it all and she would not be deterred. And as luck would have it, she'd have a few hours develop it on the car ride ahead. The perfect plan.
**********
Rick drove behind Ben on the highway, struggling to keep up at times as Ben still seemed to be enamored with flooring it in his 18th birthday gift, and Rick was in a work vehicle, loaded down with a thousand extra pounds of gear.
"Slow down, Richard." Beth chastised him.
"I'm trying to keep up with your son, Beth."
"Our son."
"I know, I know, I didn't mean it like that." Rick said, trailing off. Not really loud enough for Beth to hear him, since it wouldn't have mattered anyway. Rick and Beth had grown increasingly distant throughout their 19 years of marriage. Little by little, day by day, almost imperceptibly, they'd become co-parents and roommates, not husband and wife. Rick was hoping that with Ben now out of the house, things might change.
Their marriage had never been very sexual, and at the beginning that had been fine for both of them. Rick had been a wild man in his younger years. Actually, he'd grown up on a farm. An only child to older parents, completely sheltered. The household was dysfunctional to say the least, but he didn't dwell on it. He did what he was supposed to. He helped his Dad on the farm and his Mother in the house, until one day, he just couldn't anymore. That one morning, he woke up, packed a bag and drove into the city, wondering why it had taken him so long.
He bounced around, held a few different jobs. His life was always in a slight state of unrest. As if one day he might just pick up again and go somewhere totally different. He spent most of his nights between the age of 20 and 22 drinking with his buddies and sleeping with a different woman every night. He had done quite well, but could never shake the faint feeling that he was letting his life slip away. Like he wasn't really living up to his potential.
He desperately didn't want to be one of those guys. The kind that grew old, feeling every day, that his best days were behind him. He didn't want to look up one day from the gutter. A functional alcoholic. Same old routine. Drinking. Laughing. Fucking. Repeat. Just waiting out the clock. He had never gone to college, but he was bright, hardworking, and people seemed to naturally gravitate toward him. He had been working construction for a few months and felt like he had a real knack for it. He didn't want to rule the world, but he wanted it to all stand for something.
And then, one day, his parents died. His father had gotten distracted while driving - probably arguing with his mother - skidded off the road, and flipped over into a ditch. They were on their way home from church. One of the only reasons they left the house. Rick inherited a failing farm and the all of debt that came with it. Not that he would have wanted to be a farmer anyway. The financials just gave him the motivation to sell it all. A few other farms in that area had already done so, making way for new housing developments and condominiums. Growing out to meet the city at the same time that it expanded to overtake them.
After the sale, Rick had just enough left over to retain a lot within the subdivision that now occupied the fields he'd played in as a child. And also to buy the materials needed to build a new house. His plan was do most of the work himself, call in a few favors from his old coworkers, and then to sell it and use the profits to start his own construction company. But, as he went, he put so much of himself into the house that he became more and more reluctant to let it go. The house was way too big for single guy. And the size of the plots would attract buyers in a tax bracket that he'd never really been exposed to before - and wasn't really looking forward to living next to - but he loved that house.
And soon, there were other reasons to keep it. A few weeks after Rick's parents' death, he found himself driving to their church. The last place they'd been. He hadn't planned on going, and he wasn't entirely sure why he was. Some delayed stage of grief that had never been given a name? Some misdirected retribution for the hypocrisy of his family's beliefs? Enjoying a nice drive on a perfectly fine evening?
When he arrived, a support group meeting for those who had lost loved ones just happened to be taking place. Completely out of character, Rick went in. He hated church. He wasn't particularly sad. He had no reason to be there. But there was Bethany: obviously a staple in the church community, recently widowed, five months pregnant, clueless and scared about what lie ahead.
Beth wasn't Rick's usual type. She was conservative. Prim, proper, elegant. A refined lady. But what drew him to Beth was that she was in a place where she needed to be taken care of. Not financially - she came from old money and would never need to work a day in her life - but to be protected and nurtured.
