Free Playing the Hand You're Dealt by Trice Hickman

fairy tale, but it’s far from it.
    She was the sensible choice—attractive, smart, cultured, and respectable. Our families had both breathed a collective sigh of relief when we started dating, but I felt nuptial pressure almost from the very beginning of our relationship. We were in our senior year when she got pregnant, even though she’d been on the Pill. Three months passed before she told me that she’d missed her period. When I asked her why she had waited so long to tell me, she said it was because she didn’t know how to break the news to me. My best friend, Ross Morgan, still swears to this day that she set a trap for me.Whether Brenda stopped taking her pills on purpose or not had been a moot point back then. The bottom line was that I had a responsibility to own up to. I was raised to honor family, and that was what I planned to do.
    A month later we had a rushed but elaborate wedding with all the bells and whistles. Our son, Jeffery, was born five months after we married, and then Sam followed. Things happened so fast we really didn’t have time to examine our relationship. The span between the births of our children and my law school graduation was a blur. In the years that followed, there were ballet recitals for Sam, softball practices for Jeffery, volunteer activities for Brenda, and career climbing for me. We were so busy with “things” that Brenda and I never had time to focus on the two of us. Once we did, neither of us really liked what we saw.
    In Brenda’s view, I was too practical and analytical, as well as too stubborn, abrupt, and frugal. Essentially, what that meant was that I didn’t believe in putting on a show, and I didn’t act impulsively. I didn’t give in easily, and I didn’t have patience for pretension. And my crowning vice, the painful thorn in her side, was what she considered to be my frugality—translation—I lived well, but didn’t go overboard just because I possessed the material means to do so.
    On the other hand, my wife was a free spirit, as she described herself. Translation—she was full of drama, and she acted as if the flowers she grew in our backyard bloomed hundred-dollar bills every spring. She spent money like she was the one making it! But make no mistake, I was no penny pincher and I didn’t begrudge Brenda anything she wanted. But her extravagance and sense of entitlement have worn thin on me over the years.
    She was the baby of her family and was always taken care of by her parents and older siblings.When she became an adult, it was engrained into her that she would marry well and be kept up in the fashion to which she was accustomed. It wasn’t a second thought to Brenda that she’d have a husband who provided financially, and live-in help to take care of the kids and me. It was how she was brought up, so she simply followed the path that had been laid out in front of her.
    I guess that was why I gave my daughter a pass. Even though Sam and Brenda were like night and day, they shared the same blood, and being motherly wasn’t a component on their DNA strand. I loved Sam, but it bothered me that she was irresponsible as hell when it came to CJ. At one point I thought that having a child would force her to finally get her act together, but it didn’t.
    Sam’s got one of the best hearts of anyone you could ever meet—honest and sincere, loving and genuine. She was the kind of person who fought passionately for the people she loved. She tried to act hard-core, but underneath all the hardships that she created for herself, she was just a sweet kid who wanted validation—ironically from Brenda.
    During her teenage years, Sam was constantly in trouble. Most of her antics were deliberate, a result of her rebellious, defiant behavior. But her actions weren’t directed at me, or at herself. She acted out to get back at Brenda. The two of them had a contentious relationship, a