I shook my head. "No, it's not." I said. "I love your daughter Mrs. Blackmore. I love her with all of my heart. I love her the way Mr. Blackmore loves you. I plan to be with her for the rest of my life."
She nodded softly. "You know something?" She asked. "I've known that for a while. I don't know what you and Jack talked about the day he went over to your house, he wouldn't tell me, but I was dumbfounded when he said that he was going to allow you and Nina to see each other. I was absolutely in shock. We fought bitterly over it but finally he convinced me that I was simply going to have to let Nina run this relationship out for better or for worse. And he was right about that. You can't control a seventeen-year-old girl if she doesn't want to be controlled. I didn't like it, but I had to accept it. That's when I started waiting for Nina to come home crying again. Every time she went out with you I thought that this would be the time. You were finally going to get what you were after and toss her aside.
But every time she came home she wasn't crying. She always seemed deliriously happy in fact.
"I told myself that her happiness was simply part of your plan. I myself know intimately what it feels like to think you're in love with someone such as yourself. You are happy during that period. That's what makes it hurt so badly when the happiness is taken away. These last two months Nina has been positively glowing whenever she came back from a visit with you. And I just told myself you were picking her up further and further before you dropped her. I knew you were going to do it. I simply knew."
"Do you know why I feel this way?" She asked me pointedly.
I wasn't sure how to answer that one. I hesitated.
"Jack told you about Bob Simpson, didn't he?" She said.
This question put me on even shakier ground. "Uh…"
She nodded knowingly. "He did, didn't he? I can see it in your eyes. I suspected as much."
"Look, Mrs. Blackmore…" I started.
"Call me Mary." She said. "I think you and I need to be on a first name basis, don't you?"
This really threw me off guard. Call her Mary?
"Bill." She went on. "You know about Bob Simpson, right?"
I nodded. "Yes." I answered.
"I appreciate your honesty." She said. "I don't how you got Jack to tell you that story, especially since he hated your guts, but somehow you did. This should offend me. I should go in there and beat the hell out of Jack for telling you such a personal thing. But strangely, it doesn't bother me.
I'm glad you know about it in fact. It makes this talk a little easier."
"Okay." I agreed.
"Bob Simpson left a scar on me that remains to this day. He took away something that was precious to me and precious to Jack. I'm not talking about my virginity, although that's a part of it, I'm talking about something in here." She pointed to her chest. "And in here." She pointed to her head. "He used me like a man would use a dirty book and he threw me in the garbage like a man would when he's used that book enough. He took away more than five years of what should have been happiness with Jack. To this day I still remember how I felt when I realized that I'd sent that letter to him and that I'd lost him. To this day I still get down on my knees and thank God that Jack was strong enough and loved me enough to take me back after that. What Jack did was unheard of back then. Most men today, even in these liberated times, wouldn't do what he did. My point is that Bob Simpson was the lowest form of life on this earth. And though I share a good portion of the blame for what happened, it was Bob that deserves most of it. He took advantage of me when I was little more than a girl, when I didn't know what I wanted in life yet. He made me think I knew what I wanted. Do you see?"
"Yes." I answered. "I do."
"When Nina came to me crying that day, when she told me about you and those girls at school, she was describing Bob Simpson to a tee. I was horrified by what you'd done. I still am."
"I know." I said. "I'm ashamed of that now. But I never did that with Nina.
Never."
"That's what she told me when you got back together. But I couldn't accept that. You were Bob Simpson out to destroy my daughter. You see, before I fell in love with Bob I'd heard all of the stories about him. The same stories Nina said she'd heard about you. I didn't believe them, I wouldn't believe them, because I loved him, just like Nina loved you. I figured Nina had simply been smarter than me, or luckier anyway. She caught you sleeping with an engaged girl and she couldn't ignore your reputation any longer. I told her she'd done the right thing in getting rid of you. She was hurt, I could see that, but not nearly as hurt as she would have been if you had gotten what you wanted."
"And then she went back to you." Mary said, shaking her head. "I couldn't believe it at first but finally I knew it when she started borrowing my car every day. I was determined to put a stop to it once I knew what was going on. I didn't let her go out with you on New Year's Eve and I stupidly thought that would end it. But when she asked to borrow the car again the next day, giving me a pathetic lie about it, I knew something would have to be done. That's why Jack showed up at your house."
"And the rest is history." I said softly.
She shook her head again. "I was sure I knew what you were about Bill." She told me. "You don't even deny what you were like?"
"No." I said simply. "I can't deny it. All I can say in my own defense is what I told your husband. I discovered a way to get girls to go to bed with me. I was fifteen when I discovered this and I couldn't resist taking advantage of it. I couldn't. But Nina was never like that to me. I initiated the relationship with Nina for friendship. That's what we were Mary. Friends. That's what we still are primarily. I love her deeply, I want to marry her, I want to spend the rest of my life with her, I want her to have my children, but she is my friend first and foremost. The best friend I've ever had.
"When she caught me with the engaged girl and told me she would never see me again I was crushed. I realized then how much she meant to me. Since then I haven't done anything like that and I don't plan to do it in the future. Nina IS my future Mary. Can you understand that?"
"That's just it." She said. "I couldn't. I couldn't see past the fact that you were like Bob Simpson. That's the whole point of what I'm trying to tell you now. You were Bob Simpson reincarnated, out to have my daughter. I was so sure of that fact that I didn't see certain other things that were right in front of my nose the whole time.
"I told you what I thought about Nina's apparent happiness to be with you. That was easily written off as part of your plan. But there are other things, things I didn't acknowledge until you forced me to tonight. For instance I'm forced to ask myself why, if you were only after one thing, it has taken you so long to get it? You've been seeing Nina for more than two years now. Now I certainly don't want to go into what, if any, sexual experience my daughter and you might have had, but if that is all you were after, surely you would have gotten it by now wouldn't you?"
I nodded. "If that was what I was after, I would have." I agreed.
"But still she remains committed to you, and you to her. The biggest thing I'm forced to see though, is you."
"Me?" I asked.
"You." She nodded. "Tonight you and I were forced together, probably against both of our wills. I didn't want to be with you, to have anything to do with you. I just wanted you to go away. But all the same I've been watching you when Nina is sitting next to you. I can see how you feel about her in your eyes. When I came in the room just now and saw you with your arm around her, holding her to you, you reminded me of Jack. You were holding her the way a man who loves a woman holds someone. You weren't trying to cop a feel or put on a phony comforting act for her benefit because you thought it might get you inside of her later, you were genuinely concerned about her and you were genuinely trying to comfort her. You love her." She said.