“Don’t you ever shut up, Gerald?” Tara said while rolling her eyes with as much dramatic fervor as possible.

“Yes, but I never leave the house, so you get to hear all my words,” he answered her in a slightly ashamed tone, even though he meant to be indignant.

“That’s actually an excellent point… but I still want you to shut up.” Tara wasn’t pulling any punches with Gerald these days. She’s been broken for a long time, and he doesn’t seem to want to remain a productive member of their relationship.

It’s been years since he’s acted like an actual person.

“I’ll just go check on the kids. I can always talk to them.” Gerald normally wasn’t very good at giving it back to his wife, but something was changing within him.

Tara’s tongue was sharper and faster than his, but one of his most redeeming qualities was his sweetness… well, at least, it used to be one his most redeeming qualities, back when he had redeeming qualities.

“Gerald, please.” Tara said, defeated, trying to hide her poor attempt at discretion while refilling her flask with the vodka she thought no one knew about, to make her three-martini lunch in a few hours. It was the only thing she looked forward to, other than her three-martini dinners.

“Careful not to spill your lunch.” Gerald surprised even himself with this zinger as he walked out of the kitchen and toward the stairs to the second floor.

Tara froze with his comment and then sprouted a sly grin that Gerald didn’t see.

“Not bad for an incessant cry baby disguising himself as a man,” she groaned, licking the spilled vodka from the side of her palm.

She heard the kids approaching the stairs from the second floor and gathered her keys and “lunch”. Tara felt her skin crawl when interacting with her husband, but she still liked him a thousand times more than her children.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

SLAM!

The pictures on either side of the front door shook with her exit.

“Oh, well, now that’s unusual!” Gerald stopped, turned to make eye contact with his children who followed behind him down the staircase, and said, “Mommy never said goodbye!”

All three of them took a beat to exchange stoic smirks before continuing their movement toward the foyer.

“Tina, take my car today,” Gerald spoke to his daughter while folding his car keys into her lotion-soft, lavender scented hand.

This gesture confused Tina. Her father obsessed over his car and hated when anyone got their hands anywhere near it.

“What’s up with this, dad?” Tina knew there must be a good reason for this decision.

Gerald broke into tears, sobbing into the hands that held his face. The kids made eye contact with one another and flashed the “dad is crying again” look.

Gerald waited a moment, and when it was obvious no one was going to comfort him, he raised his head from his palms and looked toward his mostly grown children to utter, “Germaine, can you hand me a tissue?”

“Yeah, sure, dad.” Germaine stated with a brief, but noticeable, hesitation. He used to, at least, try to disguise his confusion and impatience with his father’s dramatics, but now that he’s closing in on his senior year of high school, his patience was wearing thin.

Gerald knew just how unpopular he became in his own home, and it caused him to revert further into himself. The others had their own lives to live. Tina was leaving for college this summer; Germaine towered over both of his parents as he grew into a man; Tara was… well, Tara was out to “lunch” most of the time.

“I wanted to check the spare, and I noticed your trunk won’t open. The latch must be stuck.” Gerald responded as the tears welled in his eyes again. “It’s important to take care of things like this before you leave us this sum… this summer.”

Gerald choked through the sentence. Tina looked at her brother and flashed a quick eye-roll before her father pretended not to notice.

“Thanks, I’ll make sure that I take good care of Laverne.” Tina smiled at her father while repeating a name she thought up after Gerald bought the car close to a decade ago. Tina always had a special relationship with her father, and she tried with as much effort as she could afford to maintain it.

“Ha, Laverne, I forgot about that.” This warm memory dried Gerald’s tears as the kids exited the foyer and closed the door with much less force than their mother a few minutes earlier.

Gerald, hearing the clicks of the door being locked by the keys he just handed Tina, wiped the pitiful, largely fabricated look from his face.

“I just hope mommy doesn’t get another DUI,” he mumbled and walked back up the stairs with the gait of a man on a mission.