Page 10 of A Return For Ren

An hour later his mother came back. He’d been done and spent the time cleaning his father’s computer and then running tests on his mother’s. Two office staff had come in to see his mother and introduced themselves.

It seemed to him his mother was making the right decision selling the place. She’d been running around like crazy since he’d been here. He didn’t remember her doing that years ago.

“Are you hungry?” she asked him.

“I am.”

“Have you checked in on Max?” she asked. “I remember how hard it was the first time I left you at the sitter’s. I checked in a few times that day.”

He grinned. “I did call and check in. Zara said he stopped sniffling within a few minutes of me leaving. Then I checked to see if he ate his lunch.”

“That’s good. I’m sure it makes you feel better. I’m sorry you are uprooting your life for this. You don’t need to stay here for months.”

“I do,” he said. “For a number of reasons. I can see how much you are working on top of it. I can’t say I’m going to work here with you daily. I will for the two weeks. We’ll figure out what needs to be done and set up to get the place up for sale, but you haven’t sat down once.”

“It’s like this most days,” she said. He grabbed his jacket and walked outside with her to go to the restaurant across the way from the main building.

“And not good for you,” he said.

“I’m very healthy,” she said. “Ren, your father wasn’t.”

“Why didn’t you say anything before?” he asked.

“You’ve never wanted to talk about it and why burden you with it. I’d asked him to go to the doctor for years. He had high blood pressure and rarely took his meds. He didn’t eat well either. He worked a lot and didn’t sleep.”

“So he was as miserable as he always was? That doesn’t help either.”

“I know he wasn’t the best father. He didn’t treat you well and it wasn’t right.”

“He wasn’t the best husband either,” he said. No use saying there was a difference between not treating someone well and borderline verbal abuse. It’d make him tougher, his father would say.

“He was fair. The employees got along with him well enough.”

“Because you probably played the middle man like you always did.”

“It worked for us. He left the restaurant in the hands of the manager. Mitch helped run the marina with him. I took care of the office and other business.”

“But with him gone everyone needs to run to you?” he asked.

“Yes. It’s fine. They all know I’m going to sell the business. I can’t do it anymore. More like I don’t want to.”

That was news to him. “If Dad were still here would you be working as much?”

His mother opened the door to the restaurant. “You know the answer to that.”

And all it did was piss him off. His mother was sixty-four, his father had been sixty-five. They’d had him a little later in life. If he thought his father would appreciate the time with his kid, being older when he had him, he was wrong.

He’d found out when he was ten that his mother had tried for years to get pregnant and they’d given up hope. She’d always thought of him as her miracle baby. Maybe that was why she tried to keep the peace so much, but it never worked.

Thinking back, that might be when things changed with his father too. No more kids and Ren had already been making comments about hating it at the marina. Maybe his father realized it was only Ren and if he was hard enough on him, he could bully him into taking it?

It didn’t work and all it did was force his parents to work harder.

It was a little after noon and the restaurant had a handful of people at tables. In the summer months the place was hopping. He’d thought it was doing well year round though.

“Is it this slow all the time?” he asked.

“On a Monday at lunch, yes. Earlier in the week is always slower. We are only open for lunch and early dinner. We close at seven Sunday through Thursday. Friday and Saturday we’ll stay open until nine...for now.”