So he said it.
“That might be but the day after you get kidnapped by the Russian mob, my guess, as it’s never happened to me, you’d normally have a head full of getting kidnapped by the Russian mob. Not a head full of biker and a face that says you just got your heart broken,” Uncle Marsh returned.
This was true.
I didn’t reply.
“How long were you with him?” Uncle Marsh asked.
I counted it down.
Then I answered, “Not long.”
“He seemed rooted here, Tyra,” Uncle Marsh noted, my heart squeezed at his words and my eyes went back to him.
“Pardon?”
“Him, his kids, pancakes in your kitchen. None of what I saw yesterday said, ‘not long’.”
Damn.
He was right.
“Maybe so, Uncle Marsh, but –”
He shook his head. “Don’t know the man. Do know he’s not going to win father of the year. That said, doesn’t mean he doesn’t think the world of those kids. He does. One thing about that man is clear. He loves his kids. And you don’t have family pancake mornings with your kids in the house of a woman you’re going to be together with for ‘not long’.”
I hadn’t thought about that and, thinking about it, Uncle Marsh was right about that too.
Oh boy.
“We weren’t actually even together-together,” I shared. “We weren’t actually anything.”
“Maybe you weren’t but he sure as hell was.”
I blinked.
Then I repeated, “Pardon?”
Uncle Marsh leaned into me and said softly, “I’ll be honest with you, honey. I’m not sure about that man. Circumstances weren’t such that he made a good first impression. So, truth be told, you telling me this morning that you two were over, I felt relief. You moping all day…” he trailed off but his hazel eyes held mine. “I don’t know what happened. I do know I’m surprised that the man I saw in this house yesterday morning is no longer with my niece. He was comfortable here. Rooted. Him and his kids. All of them comfortable… with you. Makes matters more surprising is you got kidnapped and that may be part of his world but it isn’t part of yours and my guess, he knows it. So I don’t understand why he’d let you go the night you had that happen to you.”
“Because I asked him to,” I whispered.
Uncle Marsh shook his head. “Man’s any man at all, that kind of shit doesn’t fly.”
“That’s exactly it, Uncle Marsh. He’s that kind of man and that scares me. He didn’t want to let me go. I made him.”
“That kind of shit doesn’t fly,” Uncle Marsh repeated.
“He can’t make me stay with him. He wanted to but I didn’t let him.”
Uncle Marsh leaned further into me. “That kind of shit does… not… fly.”
I stared at my Uncle.
He kept talking.
“Something matters to you, you do not let it go. Ever.”