Phil brewed coffee while I changed into fresh clothes in the bedroom, then come back into the kitchen.

“She still asleep?” he said.

I nodded.

“Goes out like Spinks fighting Tyson, don’t she? One minute she’s all bright-eyed energy, the next she’s crashed like she ain’t slept in a month.” He poured some coffee into a mug. “Always been that way, that girl.”

I got myself a Coke, sat at the table. “She’ll be okay, Phil. No one’s going to get to her. Or you either.”

“Mmm.” He brought his coffee to the table. “You sleeping with her yet?”

I leaned back in my chair, cocked my head, and raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re way out of line, Phil.”

He shrugged. “She loves you, Patrick.”

“Not that way. You never understood that.”

He smiled. “I understood a lot, Patrick.” He cupped the mug in both hands. “I know she loved me. I’m not arguing that. But she’s always been half in love with you, too.”

I shook my head. “All those years you beat her, Phil, guess what? She never, not once, fooled around on you.”

“I know that.”

“Really?” I leaned forward a bit, lowered my voice. “Didn’t keep you from calling her a whore on a regular basis. Didn’t stop you from pummeling the shit out of her when you felt in the mood. Did it?”

“Patrick,” he said softly, “I know what I was. What I…am.” He frowned and stared into his coffee cup. “I’m a wife beater. And a drunk. And that’s that. There you go.” He smiled bitterly at the cup. “I beat that woman.” He looked over his shoulder toward her bedroom. “I beat her and I earned her hate, and she’ll never trust me again. Ever. We’ll never be…friends. Not on any level near what we used to be.”

“Probably not.”

“Yeah. So, however I became what I became, I did become that thing. And I’ve lost her and I deserved to because she’s better off without me in her life in the long run.”

“I don’t think she’s planning to ever boot you out of her life, Phil.”

He gave me that bitter smile. “That’s classic Ange, though. Let’s face it, Patrick. Angie, for all her fuck-you, I-don’t-need-anyone attitude, can’t say good-bye. To anything. That’s her weakness. Why do you think she still lives in her mother’s house? With most of the furniture that was here when she was a kid?”

I looked around, saw her mother’s ancient black pots in the pantry, her doilies on the couch in the den, realized Phil and I were sitting in chairs her parents had purchased from the Marshall Field’s in Uphams Corner that had burned down sometime in the late sixties. Something can sit in front of you your whole life, waiting to be noticed for what it is, and often you’re sitting too close to really see it.

“You got a point,” I admitted.

“Why do you think she never left Dorchester? A girl as smart and beautiful as her, the only time she’s been out of state was on our honeymoon. Why do you think it took her twelve years to leave me? Anyone else would have been gone in six. But Angie can’t walk away. It’s her flaw. Probably has something to do with her sister being the opposite.”