Alas, nothing seemed to be working tonight. He set the club down and grabbed his empty pint glass, then stuck it under the keg tap and began yet another pour.
Braxton took a long pull from the glass and then snatched the bottle of tequila and poured another shot. Chasing Patrón with pale ale. The rich man’s guide to getting wasted, he thought, chuckling bitterly and kicking back the shot. Then he raised the pint glass and took a long sip of beer. No lime. No salt. No problem.
Braxton burped and grasped the golf club, stumbling back to the mat as Darius sang about dying free in Raleigh.
“Dying free,” Braxton bellowed out over the lake, knowing his words would be drowned out by the wind and sound of firecrackers. He placed another ball on the green carpet and gazed out at the muddy water. Then he turned back to his empty house, lit only by the overhead chandelier in the den. There was a time when the Fourth of July had meant that the lawn between the boathouse and mansion would be filled with people of all ages mingling, drinking, and dancing. Four years ago, he’d hired a live band, and a lot of the neighbors had come over along with some of the girls’ friends. That was while things with Jana were still cordial.
Braxton sighed and lined up to the golf ball. He jerked the club back and brought it down onto the mat. The ball squirted dead right. A cold shank. The worst shot in golf.
“Figures,” he said. He rolled another ball over and hit another “lateral shot,” as he preferred to call it, hating even to whisper the word shank. Braxton closed his eyes and felt unsteady on his feet. He thought of his oldest, Niecy, a rising sophomore at Birmingham Southern College. He’d almost begged her to come home. “Your sister could really use some time with you,” he’d pleaded. He dropped the club and pulled out his phone to look at her text, which had been nice but firm.
I’m sorry, Dad, but I can’t be around Mom right now. Every time I come home, she sucks me into her drama and it becomes a huge fight. I’m going to Destin with some friends. I asked Nola to come with us, but she said no.
Braxton flung his phone into a lawn chair and picked up the golf club, waggling it several times in frustration. Nola . . . his youngest daughter was sixteen. About to be a junior in high school, assuming she passed her summer classes. She’d been hit the hardest by his and Jana’s estrangement. Due to her poor grades, they’d had to pull her out of Randolph, the private college prep school in Huntsville, and she was barely getting by at Guntersville High. Once a bright-eyed, curious, happy-go-lucky child, she’d become a moody and edgy teenager who’d withdrawn into herself, barely speaking to him or her mother.
Jana said it was Braxton’s fault. That he hadn’t spent enough time with her. That he’d spoiled Niecy with attention and glossed over his youngest.
For a while, he’d believed her spiel. He was an orthopedic surgeon. One of the best in north Alabama and, by far, the most proficient in Marshall County. He had a ridiculous schedule of operations and worked sixty to seventy hours a week almost every month of the year. He’d tried to cut back when Nola switched schools, but dropping hours meant fewer surgeries and less money. Braxton was well off, but the mortgage on their house was steep, and Jana’s spending habits and drug use kept him in constant danger of being in financial peril. He was forty-nine years old, in the prime of his medical career. He needed to be working.
Braxton rolled another ball over. He took a three-quarter swing and this time hit the ball flush. He breathed a sigh of relief. Even when he was drunk and at the end of his wits with his crazy wife, the last thing he wanted to add to his plate was a case of the shanks.
He giggled at the absurdity of the thought and then plopped down in the lawn chair, surveying his texts. The only message from Jana today had come in around 6:00 p.m.
Out tonight.
Braxton scrolled down, pausing briefly at a message from Colleen, the CRNA who’d been with him for over a decade. For the past few years, since Jana’s craziness had escalated, they’d engaged in an on-again, off-again affair that was currently off.
Happy fourth! I wish things could have been different . . .
Braxton gave his head a jerk. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Truth was, he hadn’t been the perfect husband. He’d made mistakes, but his indiscretions were nothing like his wife’s. They hadn’t put his family in danger.
He clicked over to his phone call summary and looked at a set of unfamiliar digits with a Boaz location. Braxton had screened the number at least five times before answering yesterday afternoon. He’d figured it was another extended-warranty reminder and had readied himself to hang up, but instead the voice that had come over the line had sent a shiver up his arm.