KoL Paul 14.30

“Don’t worry hon. We’ll think of something.” Arnie reached across the car to Jess as she climbed out of  the Range Rover. She held onto the door frame and then, hestitating,  popped her head back inside. She reached across and kissed her father firmly on the cheek. His car  smelled of mud and manure and in a strange way, that smell of her childhood was comforting.
 
“I wish I could be so sure Dad,” she said quietly. “He’s just turned out to be a complete jerk, hasn’t he.”  Arnie sucked in the side of his bottom lip and lowered his eyes. Looking back up his daughter, he gave Jess a quick nod of his head. “We’ll all have troubles love, some when in our lives,” he said. “We all hope to do the right thing but none of us really know. We can only do our best.”
 
Jess smiled back sadly and closed the door, pressing both her hands against the frame rather than slamming it shut.  Arnie watched her go up the steps towards the flat where she lived and knew that she carried this weight of this in her heart. It wasn’t her burden to bare, but he understood her. She felt the pain of others so badly. It was the price of the empathy that her made her special.
 
He waited till she closed the heavy blue door with the brass knocker that she’d begged him to buy for her. He smiled, remember how badly she’d wanted that funny brass beater that would have annoyed him every time he shut the door – and how long it had taken him to fix the blasted thing to the door.
 
That was his girl.
 
Arnie sighed as he turned his attention back to the road and pulled away from the curb. Evening was coming on now and although the days were drawing out he needed lights. A miserable misty  rain was starting to fall, enough that he needed his wipers but not enough to avoid their annoying scraping across the windscreen.
 
Damn Paul. Damn him. Where did they go wrong, he and Joan, he thought. What had they done that was different with Jess? And how was he going to sort this problem out, right before the wedding, right during lambing season.
 
Truth of the matter was, he couldn’t see that there would any sorting this problem out at all.
 
Arnie’s mind wandered back through time, back to holding Paul as a baby in the hospital, back where it all began. They’d expected Jess to be jealous, but she’d loved having a brother to protect. They’d grown up playing together, happy he thought, though perhaps he was wrong. After all, what did he really know? He was out on the farm most hours the good lord sent and the others he was sleeping getting his body ready for another round.
 
Arnie smiled. The time he’d loved was when he’d slipped down the bank and broken his leg. Sure, it was hard on Joan and poor Bruno, heaven knows how he’d managed the farm on his own, but he’d at last had time for himself, time for Joan, time for the kids.  Jess had been six then, cute with her black pig-tails half way down her back and her missing teeth. Paul, funny little clown, had clambered all over him, amusing him with tricks and always wanting stories read.
 
A loud tooting brought Arnie back from his reverie.
 
“Can’t you see the light is green! Get a move on!” someone yelled at him from a red car that had come screeching from behind.
 
Arnie couldn’t be bothered to reply. Folk like that gone on his wick, but he wasn’t going to join them. Nor was he going to waste any more time thinking about Paul. The boy had made his bed, got himself married and now apparently a baby. If he wanted no more to do with the family, well to hell with him.
 
Nah, he thought. Who was he kidding. He missed Paul. He worried about him. Apparently he was a granddad but Paul had made it clear in that letter, that neither Joan or himself would ever see the child.   
 
Poor Joan, he sighed. A mother lost her son and her granddaughter in one foul sweep. Arnie was glad about one thing, at least she would always be able to count on Jess.