“Dakota.” Jaymes drank his coffee and stabbed out his smoke. “Dakota Janelle McQuire.” He looked at his daughter for a moment. The last time he saw her, she was three years old. Her face drained of color as she looked from her mother then to Jaymes. “You okay?” he attempted to say weakly. Her emerald eyes dulled in color, welling up with tears as she stood frozen, a broken coffee pot at her feet, black liquid staining the green carpet.
“No!” She could not help but cry out, turning the heads of the small crowd of people toward their direction. “You…no way! It can’t be. This isn’t true? Is it, mom?” She looked at her mother for a moment. Lacey held a confused saddened look, frustrated as well.
“Dakota, let’s get you over someplace where you can sit and we’ll discuss this,” her mother offered, glaring over at Jaymes.
“Jesus…” She caught herself, tears slowly falling from her eyes. “I gotta go, I’m sorry, please…” She hurried into the kitchen, leaving her mother there with Jaymes.
“What the hell do you think you are doing?” Lacey’s voice trembled with anger. Her face red.
“Lacey…” Jaymes started to say softly, keeping his gaze distracted. “She told me her name, and I asked if she knew you…” Lacey only grumbled at his response, almost ready to speak, but thought better of it. Standing, she just glared down at him, then turned on her heels, heading to where Dakota had disappeared into the kitchen moments ago. Jaymes quickly sat alone for a moment before he headed out of the restaurant.
Stepping outside, the bright September sun almost blinding him as his eyes adjusted from the dimly light café to the brightness of a mid-afternoon sunny day.
Not waiting for the pedestrian light, he timed his pace across the street to where his vehicle was parked. Just as he reached the driver’s door, key in hand, he saw Dakota exit the café and quickly cross the street, stopping a short distance from where he was.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” she yelled.
“I honestly do not know,” Jaymes replied quietly.
“Here…take this then.” She stepped up to him, pressing a picture into his chest. Taking the picture, Jaymes glanced over it for a moment, then looked at Dakota. Her purse hanging loosely in her hand, and a light brown coat falling off her shoulders. He looked at the picture again. The image of a three year old girl sitting on his lap burnt into his memory banks.
“No, how…” He could not think. Everything seemed to just suddenly cave in as he feels his chest tightening into a knot, his stomach churning, grumbling in protest.
“Yeah, apparently…” She paused, gathering her composure. “I’m your daughter.”
“Dakota, …” was all he was able to say when Lacey caught up to them both.
“Dakota, let’s get going.” Lacey stepped between Dakota and Jaymes. “Come on,” she urged quietly.
“Lacey, please, could the three of us just go somewhere and talk?” he pleaded, stepping back a little. “I…I…just.” The words failing him. “I know this is awkward,” he spoke quietly.
“Jaymes, I don’t think it’s a good idea. We were doing just fine without you all these years until…until you had to come back into where my daughter works.!” Lacey had spun around and pushed Jaymes back. She stood only five-six.
“Mom…I think I have a right to know where my father has been most my life, why he wasn’t a part of it,” Dakota protested.
“I’m sure your father probably has much better things to do than to talk with you about why he wasn’t there.” Lacey took her daughter’s arm and started walking away. Stopping, she turned to face Jaymes again. “We don’t need you in our lives, Jay,” Lacey emphasized. “Oh for Crissakes, Jay, our relationship ended years ago, what the hell is your problem?” she said, noticing Jaymes bowing his head, hiding his tears. “You can’t still be that much in pain over…” Lacey stopped abruptly. “Jaymes, our relationship is over, if you haven’t dealt with it, then I don’t know what to tell you, but we have to get going. Besides, I am sure you have someone at home waiting for you.”
“I just lost my wife,” Jaymes said softly, looking at Dakota, then Lacey. “She died a few days ago and I am having a hard time dealing with her death.” His gaze rested upon Lacey’s. “It doesn’t matter.” He shrugged his shoulders then turned from the two women. Unlocking the driver’s side door, he opened it when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“Jay, I…I don’t know what to say,” Lacey spoke softly, her voice cool.
“Makes no difference.” Jaymes climbed into his vehicle.
“Go ahead and run Jay. Just like you ran from us, leaving me alone with Dakota to care for!” Lacey realized her words were ill chosen.
“I wasn’t the one that ran…” Jaymes stated emphatically, his voice rose a couple octaves. He bit his tongue before unleashing a train of verbal assaults toward Lacey. “You know what? You want me to leave you alone, that’s fine. Dakota, it was a pleasure seeing you, and you have grown into a beautiful lady.” With that, he was about to close the door when Dakota stepped over, grabbed the door and stopped him.
“Dad!” Dakota said. “I don’t care what mom thinks. If you are my father, I do have a right to know. I want to know why you left, why you didn’t want to have anything to do with me?” she pleaded, ignoring her mother.
“Dakota, let your father be….” Lacey protested.
“Mom, all this time you told me what my father did to you and to me, but I want to hear it from him. I have that right!” Dakota said. “I have that right to know.”
Jaymes was grateful that his cell rang when it did. “Hello?”
“Jay, it’s Chandler, could we get together and talk over at Jakes on Fourth?”
“Yeah, I can be there in a few minutes.”
“Where you at now?” Chandler asked.
“Across from the Spar.”
“The Spar? Thought you didn’t like going there anymore, not your kind of place.”
“I just needed something different and besides, I was hungry and it happened to be the first place I could think of.”
“I’ll be at Jakes on Fourth in ten minutes. Meet me there.”
“Alrighty then,” Jaymes said, then hung up his cell. Looking at Lacey, then Dakota, “That was Chandler, I have to meet up with him.”
“Chandler? You mean your old friend? The jerk that caused you and I so many problems?” Lacey spoke through gritted teeth.
“Lace, please.” He caught himself. He had not called her that pet name in years, memories flooding him like the Coulee Dam releasing the pressing Columbia River through its gates. “Sorry, Chandler is actually now a detective. He has come a long way since you last saw him.”
“Well, it was a pleasure seeing you again,” Lacey said.
“I do need to get going here.” He then pulled out a piece of paper and a pen, jotted his phone number and address, handing the paper to Dakota. “If you need to come by and talk, I would like that.”
“Yeah…sure…” Dakota pocketed the paper.
Jaymes offered a smile, then closed the driver’s side door, and pulled out of the parking lot. He headed a few short blocks to where he was supposed to meet Chandler. Parallel parking his vehicle, he stepped out of the car, locked it up, and headed into Jakes on Fourth.
Taking up a booth, he waited for Chandler to show up. The young waiter brought over water, a menu and a beer for Jaymes.
Lacey and Jaymes had lived together for three years, Dakota was born, and they were planning to marry. But, things took a change for the worse when Jaymes had lost his job. With his father’s health deteriorating, Lacey for one reason or another packed up and left him. Nothing but painful memories, mixed with a sense of lingering love and attraction toward her.
Taking a drink, he saw Chandler approach and take up a seat across from him, motioning for the waiter for a menu.
“Drinking again I see,” Chandler commented.
“It’s helping the nerves and pain,” Jaymes said, taking a pull from the pint. “Don’t say it, I’m not in the mood for any AA lecture right now.”
“Jay, I wasn’t going to say anything, but you know what this is going to do.” The waiter appeared with a cup of coffee for Chandler. “We have both been down that road, brother,” Chandler began, stirring cream and sugar into his cup of coffee, then taking a drink. He then tossed a deck of cigarettes onto the table and took one, lighting up, he rested his arm on the back of the booth’s seat. “The way I see it, you are going about this all the wrong way. You’re hiding and running from what you need to deal with.”
“Chandler, I hope you were not planning on coming here to lecture me and give me the good ole boy speech,” Jaymes stated, finishing off the pint. He then motioned for the waiter to come by and when he ordered another round, Chandler interceded and ordered a cup of coffee for Jaymes.
“Actually, that isn’t my intent. You do what you need to do Jay, but to be perfectly honest with you, you need to deal with this at some point. The bottle ain’t going to do it for you, in fact, it is only going to bind you into dulling what you have to work through.” Chandler paused, took a drink of his coffee, and a drag of his cigarette. “Listen, I know Ellyn meant everything to you, and her death is taking its toll on you.
Jaymes leaned forward, tensing a little. “Chandler listen,” he began. “You don’t know what my life has been like. You don’t know the loss I have endured. First my father, then my mother…Lacey leaving me wondering how my Dakota is doing…”
“Wait one moment there, back up the horse drawn carriage my friend. What does Lacey and Dakota have to do with this? You haven’t talked about them in a long time,” Chandler said intently.
“It’s a long story.”
“You bet your sweet ass it’s a long story, one you should consider writing some day. But seriously, what do Lacey and Dakota have to do with what we are talking about, regarding Ellyn’s death?”
“I came across Dakota and Lacey over at the Spar,” he said.
“Well, let’s file that away for the moment and get back to the issue at hand.”
“And that issue is what?” Jaymes questioned.
“Ellyn’s death and your sudden affair with the bottle.”
“Chandler let it alone…I can handle it.”
“Yeah, so could I, and every other person dealing with the addiction of the bottle.”
“Chandler, what the hell you getting at? You don’t know me, or what I have been through.” Jaymes kept his anger at bay.
“Shit, Jay, I don’t know what your life has been like? That I don’t know you? Goddamn what kind of fantasy land you living in these days?”
“Chandler, you know Ellyn meant everything to me,” Jaymes began, keeping his emotions in check. “My life became complete, meaningful for the first time when her and I finally married. Did you realize what it took, what I went through?”
“Yeah, as a matter of fact, my phone wouldn’t stop ringing twenty thousand times a day.” Chandler chuckled for a moment. “Seriously, Jay, you have to accept that she is gone. Why are you trying to find any reason why Ellyn would still be alive if you had done something different? She committed suicide and as tragic as it may be, how do you think she would want you to remember her?” Chandler paused. “I mean, how do you think she would have you deal with this?” Jaymes understood what Chandler was driving at, and he really didn’t want to hear it right now.
“Chandler, you were there when Lacey packed up and took Dakota. Then a year later, my father passed away, and a year after that, my mother.”
“Jay, forget Lacey and Dakota, worry about how you are going to get through the loss of Ellyn. Quit hiding in the bottle, and deal with your emotions. If you don’t you will literally kill yourself over it.”
“Chandler, of all the café’s in all the world, Lacey and my daughter had to come walking back into the one I haven’t been in for awhile.”
“Well it could be worse, Jay.”
“And how’s that?” Jaymes questioned, noticing the smirk on Chandler’s face.
“I don’t know, but there is always something worse than what we currently think is worse.”
“Chandler, that didn’t make any bit of sense.”
“Jay, lighten up. I know it’s hard, but you need to get a grip on this. It’s eating you up.”
“I just want to run,” Jaymes blurted out.
“I know.”
“I just can’t handle this right now.” Jaymes looked at Chandler for a moment, an awkward silence comes between them. “You were there with me when Lacey left as I said before, when my parents passed away.”
“Yeah, and during those times, you never gave in, you didn’t waste your life. You dealt with it. You got up and dealt with it. You took life by the balls!” Chandler clenched his fists closed. “And you told life it wasn’t going to get you down.” He became animated, leaning forward, stabbing the table. “Man, you had the guts and the balls to just manage to keep on keeping on.”
“Chandler, you don’t know how many times I wanted to run, wanted to get the hell out of Dodge! Yeah, we joked about it all the time, but finally, I got the opportunity to just get the hell out of this god-forsaken town and experience life!” He could feel the emotions boiling, percolating like an old time coffeepot.
“Yeah, and that’s exactly what you did!” Chandler replied as tension lingered on his words. “You didn’t say a word, you just up and left.” A sense of betrayal lingering in the sudden silent air between the two men as they finished their coffee.
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