As was the case last year at this time, Bill is getting more insistent, more aggressive. We have had his search dog for three months now. That dog eats and poops a lot. And Bill says he can't take the dog back until .......first it was three months, now it's indefinite. Right now we also have Stevie. Stevie is a joy and we are all glad that he's back for a while.
Bill has been trying to get hold of Kyle to get Steve back. Kyle has not been answering his texts. Bill's latest text said that if he doesn't hear from someone soon, he will use attorneys to get Stevie back.
Laura just came home from a stunt camp with her cheer squad. Kyle told her that his crazy ex-girlfriend has been calling him and he must have said something about Bill. Maybe he mentioned the threatening text. She now has Bill on the phone and is ripping into him. Does he get it? What does he think when his child tells him he's taking food out of her mouth by forcing her to pay rent at our home and asking her mother to pay him $4000/month when she can barely make it paying him $2500? What's his comeback when she tells him it angers her that he wants her to be removed as the beneficiary on my life insurance policy and replaced by him? She says that being nice to him doesn't work. She says that letting him get close again will only end up in him trying to run her life again. She said we have been too understanding of his situation, that we've had the dog for three months already, and that we have spent too much money feeding and caring for him. He said he'd give us $45 for the food. She said to give us a check when he picks up Steve. He said we'd have to wait until the end of the month because he is all 'tapped out'. She said, "Really? You're out at a restaurant talking to me on the phone and you're tapped out? Then maybe you should sell your motorcycle." His response to the life insurance policy was that, since I am his source of income, if I were to die he would have no means of supporting himself. She suggested he get a job. He said that wasn't an option. He said he didn't intend to harm her in his court papers. He said she'd be taken care of. She said, "Rrriiiiggghht, like you've always taken care of me......"
I strain to understand their relationship, this strange coming together and falling apart of a father and daughter, his only child. As a child, and even as a teen, I didn't question that my father or stepfather were right or wrong. I assumed they were not only miles ahead of me in the life-experience department but that they had wisdom and maturity, and their decisions were always sound. I rarely argued with them. Somehow Laura didn't get the wool pulled over her eyes with her father. She could see from early on that he didn't make good decisions, that he was a 'do as I say, not as I do' father, and that fairness and acting in her best interests were not his gifts. Was she spared the dismay that comes with finding out your parents are human? I can remember feeling emotionally crushed when I realized my mother, my stepfather, and then my father were imperfect creatures. Was she not ever in that position? Did she always know he was full of bull? Was I the only one who didn't?
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