Something Borrowed

Chapter 28

***What's this??? Two thousand piddling words containing zero plot development, in a POV nobody asked for, after an unexplained month-long hiatus??? Gosh, I sure do express my gratitude well, don't I?
In all seriousness, I am sorry for disappearing. Here's a shitty chapter. Another should be forthcoming shortly. As always, thank you for reading.***

Owen

Every night, Owen Tucker stumbled off to bed with a plan. Tomorrow, he thought to himself, I'll get up with the dawn. I'll ride out with the men. I'll check the fences, visit the stables, poke my head in the bunkhouse. I'll come home and play chess with Melissa, talk to Amelia about what she's reading. I'll have one glass of whiskey, read some passages from the Bible, and retire.

Every night, he drifted off with crystal clear images in his head of what the next day would bring. Every day he woke up and put off redemption for one more day of sickening familiarity. The rising sun brought nausea and a stuffy, thick head. Breakfast brought bitterness, as he looked around the table at the bright, young faces with nothing but hope ahead of them. The quiet late-morning hours brought an intense need to stifle the silence, as he sat in his office and thought about his plans.

Today was supposed to be the day.

But it never was, and noon always found him sitting at his desk, already half-drunk, staring at the fading portrait of he and his late wife. When they'd had the photo taken, the photographer had asked them both not to smile.

"It takes a long time," he had said as he prepared his equipment. "And it's easier to hold a frown than a smile."

So they'd frowned severely, and laughed uproariously when they'd received the finished photo.

"You look like you're plotting my death," she had teased him.

"You look like you welcome the darkness," he'd returned.

Now, he wished they had smiled. That she, at least, had smiled. He'd long forgotten what a happy expression even looked like on her beautiful face. For so many years, he'd stared at this photo while stern disapproval stared back at him. Righteous anger. Seething disappointment.

He felt that glare on him every moment of every day, letting up only in the evenings, while he lay in bed, planning to do better tomorrow.

The rest of his day was a downward tumble. Lunch, where he sat alone with the girls, listening to the clatter of silverware against china and the echoes of happy family dinners that were decades in the past. Afternoons, spent turning his buzz into roiling, thick-headed drunkenness, his bitterness and grief into hatred. Evenings, fighting to keep that hatred on its proper path.

This evening, just like every evening, his plans for rebirth were forgotten. Everything was forgotten but his anger. Seething, sickening anger that bubbled in his stomach and left the taste of bile on the back of his tongue. Every word spoken across the expanse of the dinner table ignited his fury like a match to spilled liquor. Every word spoken by every member of his cobbled-together family.

To outward appearance, nobody would know how far his hatred extended. Nobody would know that nobody escaped his disdain. He hated Melissa and her mulish independence, because she reminded him so much of her mother. He hated Brent for his immaturity and lack of filial loyalty. He hated Amelia for failing to keep Brent home. He hated the preacher for the things the man said about his wife, he hated the people in town for the way they whispered, and he hated every one of his employees because he knew their loyalty was not to him.

He hated everyone, but he kept it to himself because they didn't deserve his wrath, and he knew that. It took everything in him to hold the poison at bay, but he did it because beneath the anger he loved his children. He knew he would come to love Amelia and the child she carried. He was loyal to the preacher and to the folks down in town, who had been his friends in the time before. He was fair to his employees because without them his ranch would fail. Yes, he hated them. But his soul knew better than his rotten heart, and it kept his hatred contained.