"You What?" Laura's eyes almost popped out of her head.

"I was sixteen at the time." Fenton began his story. "You know my relationship with my parents was never good, but that summer was extremely bad. My father had just lost his job at the factory and was drinking heavily. My mother was working non-stop to support us, but it still wasn't enough; most of her money went to buy alcohol for my father. I had been working at the local store trying to save up to buy a car. One evening when my father was really drunk he came up to me and asked me what I was going to do with the money I had earned. I, of course, told him about the car. He became extremly angry, and called me a self-centered moron that needed to be tought a lesson. I had no buisness spending my money on some old piece of junk when my family was starving. I told him right off that maybe if all our money wasn't being spent on booze then we wouldn't be in this mess. I also told him he wouldn't get a hand on one dime of my money to take to the bar."

Fenton paused his story as he remembered that day. The look on his father's face had stuck in his mind for so many years, haunting him like a ghost from the past.

"What happened then?" Laura asked, and handed Fenton a glass of water.

"What happened next was something I'd never believe would ever happen to me." A single tear slipped from Fenton's eye and fell on his shirt. "My father rased his hand and slapped me across the face, not once, but twice. I just stood there, looked at him. I couldn't believe it. He had never hit me before."

"Oh my God!" Laura was shocked. "Why didn't you ever tell me this?"

"I was too ashamed to tell you this," Fenton confessed. "After the second blow he went to the living room and poured himself another Jack Daniels. He finished the glass in one sip and turned back to me. "I am going to need that money kid" he said." Fenton imitated his father's drunken raw voice to his wife, his face breaking out in horror. "At first I just stood still. I wanted to run out of the house but my legs didn't obey my order to move, nor did my lips let my talk."

Suddenly Fenton got up from the chair, and covered his face with his hands, and Laura could see as his shoulders began to shake.

"Fenton," was the only thing she could say. She had never met her father-in-law. He had died of an hearth attack two years before she and Fenton met. The little Fenton had told her about him was that he liked baseball and had taught him how to fish. This mention of him had never been introduced to her before.

"I didn't want you or the boys to know this about my father," Fenton said, as he was feeling a little better. "Especially not the boys."

"What happend next, honey?" Laura felt she needed to get Fenton to talk about this now.

"Well, I was standing there. I started to cry and of course my father had to comment on that. "What are you a sissy? Standing there weeping like a woman!" He laughed at me as he poured himself more whisky. I thought about just giving him my money but, for some reason, I couldn't. Why should he get to spend it on alcohol? I had been saving that money all winter, working at the store in the evenings and on weekends. I never had any time for my friends.

"NO!" I don't know where I got the courage to scream a simple "NO" at him. But I did. His face became as red as an apple. I could have sworn I saw steam comming from his ears." Fenton smiled at that image of his father. "The glass he was holding in his hand came flying through the room right at me. I ducked just as the glass was about to hit me and it shattered in the corner. He came running towards me, pulled out his belt, and hit me fiercely with it."

Fenton could still feel the belt hitting his back. He tried to protect his head with his hands. Like in a trance, Fenton pulled his hands against his head as Laura tried to touch him. The memories burned him. He had never told anyone about this, not even his mother. Laura was weeping as she pulled back. Fenton had never pushed her away before.

"All of a sudden he was gone. I was lying on the living room floor. I got up, went to my room to gather up my things. And then I left."

"Where did you go?" Laura asked wiping the last tear from the corner of her eye.

"I went to the country. I got a job at a farm there. I never told anyone that I was a runaway, but they must have suspected it because one day a police car came to the farm. My mother was sitting in the back. She didn't hug me, she didn't even cry. Just told me to get in the car because we were going home."

"Did you tell her what happened between you and your father?"

"No, I never told her. I just got in the car and left with her," Fenton replied.

"She must have asked you why you ran away?" Laura asked.

"No, she never asked me. My father told her I ran away because he didn't want to give ME money--that I was a selfish brat. She believed him and never wanted to hear my side of the story."

"This is unbelievable," was all that Laura could say.

Fenton continued: "My father found work soon after I got back home. School had started again and things went back to normal... almost, anyway."

"Did he... ever beat you again?" Laura's blue eyes were watery from all the crying.

"No, he never touched me again. We hardly spoke to one another again. I went off to the police academy soon after that, and then he died. End of story."

"Was that, Fenton?" Laura asked.

"Was what?" Fenton said.

"Was the the end of the story?"

"You know me too well," Fenton said, and gave Laura a smile. "No, that wasn't the end. Not with me anyway. Despite what happened,I loved my father. He wasn't all bad, not when he was sobor anyway. Being dragged home by the police and my mother made me feel so small, so controlled. Like my life was not mine to run."

"I think I know what you mean," Laura said. "You were sixteen and at that age you feel like you are an adult, but no one treats you like one."

"Exactly! My dad tried to talk to me once about what had happened. It was three weeks after I got back home, but I blew him off. I told him right there and then that I hated him and that I was never going to talk to him again. And I never did." Fenton started crying heavily.

"It's going to be all right, Fenton." Laura tried to comfort him, but Fenton was in another world. He was sitting in his kitchen, but his mind was in the past. He was standing next to his mother dressed in black. His mother was crying holding on to him as if he was her lifeline. The coffin was being lowered to the ground and, in it, was his father's body. He had suffered a heart-attack three weeks ago and died in the hospital two weeks later. He had reqested for Fenton to come and see him but Fenton had refused to.

"Mom told me that the last thing he said before he died was "Fenton I'm sorry, I love you". I should have been there to hear that. I should have gone there to see him. I let my father die without knowing that I loved him."

"He knew that you loved him. Oh, honey." Laura pulled Fenton as close to her as she could.

"If I only had one wish, I would wish that I could go back in time to tell him that." Fenton snapped back to reality, raising his head so he could look at his wife.

"I am never going to put either one of my sons in this position. Standing there in my father's funeral I swore to myself that I would be the best father the world had ever seen. That I would give my children to opportunity to be the rulers of their lives, and to help them make their own decisions. I would not make them for them. And now I have broken that rule with Joe. I have done exactly what I swore never to do. I have bullied my own child."

"No, you haven't," Laura said. "No matter what Joe is going through right now, he knows that whatever you did, you did out of love and concern for him."

"I hope he also knows that I love him," Fenton said. "I wonder if I've told him that enough."

"You are a good father, Fenton. Both Frank and Joe know that. They adore you and they are so proud to be your sons."

"You think?" Fenton's face lit up a little bit.

"I don't just think that. I know so. I have seen the way they talk about you. You are their hero." Laura bent down to give him a kiss. Fenton realized how lucky he was to have found her. "I know now why you aren't going to look for him. I agree with you. Joe will come home when he is ready."

"Thank you for understanding," Fenton said, hugging Laura tight. "Joe will be all right. He will come home when he is ready and I am going to be here for him one hundred percent. I am not going to let this ruin my relationship with my son. We are going to get through this. I promise you."

The Hardy Boys belong to Simon and Schuster and the Stratemeyer Foundation. The authors have just borrowed them for an adventure or two. The authors promise to put the boys back when they are done with them. The authors do claim copyright to the original characters in this story. Please do not borrow them without express permission of the authors.