Vote Then Read: Volume I

by Carly Phillips

  Starr suppressed a smile. Phee and Moonlight had bonded the second they’d brought her home. All of Phee’s protests about cat hair and cat litter smells vanished as soon as the cat curled up on her lap.

  “How’s she doing?” Starr asked.

  “Fine, and Nathan owes me $85 for more of her cortisone cream.”

  Luna’s forehead wrinkled. “We had a cat once, didn’t we?”

  “Snow White, but Dad got rid of her.” Phee lifted a pair of red, satin pumps. “I picked these up to celebrate our new show. What? I needed them.”

  “Uh, huh.” Starr aimed a smile at her sister. It was okay by her—anything to make her happy. “Oh, I love this.” Phee swung her legs up on the stage and stood. She stepped slowly along the row of standing mirrors positioned behind the mannequins, a red shoe in each hand. “Makes the army look larger.”

  Luna waggled her eyebrows. “More men to capture?” Her phone rang. “Be back. This has to be Max. He’s supposed to bring us more dry ice.”

  When her sister headed off stage, Starr studied Phee. She looked good, lighter somehow. Perhaps now was a good time to bring up an idea she’d been mulling over. “So, what do you think of Moonlight living with us forever?”

  Phee glanced at her. “Like move in with us?”

  “Yeah. You like her. Or, rather, she really likes you.”

  She crossed her arms. The two shoes poked out of the side like malformed wings. Her sister was no dummy. She knew what Starr was getting at.

  “Why don’t you just come out with it and ask me. You want to move in with Nathan permanently, and his apartment can’t take cats.”

  No, let’s all get a house together. Something larger where we all can have a floor. That’s what she wanted to say but couldn’t. There was one chink in her fantasies of marrying Nathan. Being with Nathan forever meant not living with her sisters.

  Luna’s stricken face appeared in the mirror between them. Phee and Starr turned her way.

  Her skin was too pale, her lips drawn too thin.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?”

  Luna's dazed eyes lifted from her phone. She took in a shuddering breath. “That was Mimi. Dad checked himself out.”

  For a long minute, Starr wasn't quite sure she’d heard Luna right. Starr stepped closer as if that would sharpen her hearing. “What?”

  “They found him face down in an alley. Alcohol poisoning.”

  He didn’t. He couldn’t have. A twinge went off in her heart. She’d dismissed him so thoroughly at the show. No, she wouldn’t allow guilt to get a hold of her. He chose this. He did this. Her giving him the cold shoulder had nothing to do with his choices.

  “Phee?” Their sister stood too still. Her hands clutched around the red satin pumps, mashing the sides together. She turned, stopped at the mirror, and stared hard at her reflection.

  Jesus, was she having a breakdown or something?

  Luna stared at Phee’s back. She took one step forward, placed her hand on her sister’s shoulder. “Phee are you …”

  Phee lifted a red satin pump and smashed the pointed heel into the mirror, a million tiny spider cracks bursting on impact.

  L. turned to Starr, and she didn’t need to say the words for her to get what she was thinking. He’d gotten drunk—and he’d known how to find them. He hadn’t come to them—but he could have.

  42

  Words from doctors and nurses floated into Starr’s ears and back out again. Critical condition. Blood alcohol content of .42. No corneal reflex. Breathing tube. Doctors, nurses, and technicians had thrown an encyclopedia of new words at them every twenty minutes for the last few hours as she and her sisters, along with Nathan and Declan, sat in a waiting room down the hall from an ICU Unit at Baltimore’s St. Joseph Hospital.

  They’d seen their father twice. His shriveled body lay in a hospital bed, intubated, on a ventilator, with IV lines stuck in his arms. He looked like a science experiment.

  She had to stuff down a continuously rising and, quite frankly, irritating guilt for her cold responses to him these last few weeks. The flip side of that emotion—sympathy—wouldn’t work either. The man didn’t deserve her compassion.

  The worst part was she couldn’t figure out why they hung around and listened to the rush of the respirator, and the constant beeps of the machines: all familiar, terrifying sounds. She couldn’t shake those noises from her head even when sitting in the waiting room. The last time the three of them had stood in a hospital room like that was to say goodbye to their mother. No doctors had thrown big words at them then. In fact, no one had talked to them at all.

  Of course, there was the last time with Phee, who had refused to enter his hospital room and only agreed to come and sit in the waiting room with her and Luna.

  “Here.” Nathan handed her yet another cup of coffee. He didn’t know what else to do. Hell, none of them knew what to do but sit and wait.

  “Thanks.” She sipped the bitter coffee and glanced at Phee, who studied her manicure.

  L stood by the window, staring off into the parking lot. Declan hovered around her. He knew if anyone broke down, it would be her. After all, Luna had found their dad and then agreed to cut him off—all because Starr had asked her to.

  A man in a white lab coat, swinging an iPad in one hand, strode in. “Miss O’Malley?”

  She and Luna looked up to face him. He gave them a practiced smile at their identical movements. “I’m Dr. Broadstreet, the emergency psychiatrist on call.” He hugged the iPad to his chest. “Any reason to believe your father was trying to harm himself?”

  “Probably.” Starr’s tired whisper caused the man’s brow to knit.

  “Well, it’s just five times over the legal limit has us wondering if this was a—”

  “Call for help?” Phee rose to standing. “Trust me. He’s just a drunk.”

  “Stop. Please. Just stop.” Luna's face grayed.

  Starr pulled her top lip through her teeth and then sighed.

  “I see. Well, I’ll send a counselor by.” The doctor backed away, seemingly nonplussed by their reaction. He'd likely seen it all before.

  Luna hugged the back of her arms. “You think he did it on purpose?”

  No one answered because no one could, just like they couldn’t give the hospital any insurance or billing information, or answer any health-related questions—except he’d been in rehab. It then occurred to her that the people who knew their father best were complete strangers to them, people paid to watch over him drying out. And they’d failed even at that.

  Phee picked up her bag and slung the strap over her shoulder. “This is pointless. I’m going home before they come looking for someone to pay the bill.”

  “I’ll take you.” Declan pushed up and grasped his cane.

  Phee didn’t object, which only meant one thing. She had no fight left. Starr bristled a little on the inside. Her sister wasn't one to melt into sentimentality, and it wasn't until that second Starr recognized how much she counted on that, as if Phee’s hard edge kept her and Luna from dissolving under pressure over the years. It was oddly a gift.

  The maddening injustice of the whole situation hit Starr in a mad rush. He’d been rejected. Now, he was lying in a hospital bed on the brink of death? Vegetation? Did it matter anymore what state he was in? It was like he was holding them hostage all over again.

  Phee cocked her head. “L, you should come with me.”

  Luna nodded. “I’ll come back tomorrow.”

  “Nathan, Starr, you coming?”

  That was the first time Phee had even remotely acknowledged Nathan was part of the group. Starr should have been comforted by that fact, but an unsettled nest of bees droned in her belly.

  “Give me fifteen minutes? See you in the parking lot. I’ll go and tell the nurses we’re leaving.”

  “Okay.” Phee sighed in an obvious why-bother tone.

  Starr turned to Nathan as soon as they were alone. “I need to go do something. Mind waiting for
me here?”

  ‘I’ll go with you.” Nathan’s hand engulfed hers.

  “No, please. I need to do this alone.”

  He nodded once. “Only because you won’t be alone in there with him.”

  She squeezed his fingers.

  She didn’t need to tell anyone they were leaving. Visiting hours for the ICU were over, but there was something she needed to do. Declan had pulled her aside earlier, told her not to worry about hospital bills or insurance, that he’d help. His generosity only maddened her more because Declan didn’t deserve to be saddled with their father’s fuck-ups, but then again, neither did they.

  She paused at the nurse’s station. A nice man covered in head to toe blue scrubs with a cap on his head smiled up at her. “Miss O’Malley, what can I do for you?”

  “I was wondering if I could just pop in for a second? We’re all leaving, and, well, I wanted to give my father a message before I left.”

  He squinched his eyes. “Okay, but just for a second.”

  He escorted her down the hall, darkened for the evening hours but still with too much light for anyone to get any real rest. An anxious quiet mixed with the incessant beeps and rhythmic wooshes and thumps of ventilators.

  They paused in the doorway. “Hey, Jean, Miss O’Malley here wants to tell her father good night.”

  Oh, if he only knew.

  “Just for a second.” The woman’s face was mostly covered by a facemask, but Starr caught the stern and admonishing message in the woman’s eyes.

  Whatever, lady. I don’t want to be here anymore than you do.

  Starr moved to her father’s bedside, and stared down at the shriveled figure, limp and lifeless. She didn’t care if Jean, who hovered by the side of the bed, heard what she’d come to say. She didn’t care if the world heard.

  “Well, Dad, you did it again,” she spluttered and made her eyes stay on his face. In her periphery, she saw Jean’s hands curl over the bed railing.

  “We’re going home now. Jean, here— “she glanced up at those stern dark eyes— “is going to take care of you tonight. You probably don’t deserve her.”

  She was getting off track.

  “So, you broke our deal. How fucking dare you?” Her throat burned as if scalded by her own words. “You landing in this place means we are forced to deal with you. But that may be what you planned all along. A big grand gesture to get our attention? Or maybe you were trying to kill yourself.”

  Would his death have been better? She couldn’t say.

  “Well I’m here to tell you, you’re not doing either. You’re not going to hold us hostage.” God, her voice cracked. It was such a weak sound that could be taken as a sign she wasn’t sure. But she was—as sure as the sun rose and set—about what was going to happen next.

  She leaned down, close to his face, and inhaled the stale scent of an old man’s skin mixed with bleached cotton. “This time, old man, you’re going to make good on your promises. You’re not going to die because that would kill Luna, who seems hell-bent on finding peace.” She nearly spat her final words. “And you’re not going to revert to your old ways because that will kill Phee. Just knowing you’re out there, that you could continue to hurt people like you hurt her would cause her worry.” Heat seared her throat, and maddening tears spilled over her lashes.

  His sallow face sickened her, and she drew away a few inches. “Because you know what? She’s a good person. She doesn’t think she is, and that’s all because of you.” Starr swatted at her wet cheeks, and she cleared her throat to unstick all the stupid emotion rising up. “So listen up. You’re going to get better. You’re going to make things up to us. I don’t know how, but you will.”

  She drew in a long breath and puffed it out—hard. Then she drew close to him again, teeth clenched so hard they ached. “I’ll see you atone for what you’ve done to Phee if it’s the last thing I do on this earth, and you have no idea how far I’ll go.”

  He didn’t know because he didn’t know her. He didn’t know any of them. But she coughed up those words anyway, slowly and deliberately, so the Universe or God or whatever the hell existed that allowed this man to get away with so much shit couldn’t mistake her resolve.

  She straightened. There was nothing left to say. She looked up at the nurse whose eyes had widened. “Thanks, Jean. See you tomorrow.” She then turned on her heel.

  “Miss O’Malley.” The words were muffled from behind her mask.

  She turned back to her. Jean had pulled her mask down so Starr could see her face. The woman was younger than she’d expected. “I’m breaking protocol in telling you this, but he might not ever wake up.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ve been working in this unit for a long time. Even when they are unconscious, you’d be amazed at how much patients remember about what is said to them.” She then pulled her mask back over her mouth.

  Starr nodded once and marched back to Nathan. She didn’t care whether Jean was trying to make her feel better, as if her father might remember her words, or make her feel worse. It didn’t matter. That man would not get to die—a free pass in her mind—or continue to cause trouble.

  This cycle of them ignoring the fact they’d been abused, abandoned, neglected, couldn’t stand. It was like invisible chains had wrapped around them, and it was time to break free. It would start with everyone, including their father, admitting exactly what had happened, and what needed to happen next. Her father was not going to mess up their future. No one would ever do that to them again.

  Things were going to change starting now.

  43

  Nathan grasped Starr’s hand as soon as they stepped through the sliding glass doors into the thick August air. It was like walking into a wall of cotton. She snatched her hand back.

  She shook her red hair out of her face. “It’s hot.”

  This situation was hard. He knew that, but her reaction to being touched didn't sit well with him. He searched her tone of voice to assess her frame of mind. Two words were much to go on. Should he let her be? Press her? Ask her what's up? What did she need?

  He lifted a hand toward Declan, who leaned against his car door, engine running. Phee and Luna sat inside, their hair lifting in the air from the air conditioner vents. Declan blew out a long thin line of smoke.

  Nathan held out his keys to Starr. “I need to talk to Declan, Starr. Give me a sec?”

  “Sure.” Her fingers nails scraped over his skin as she snatched them from his open palm.

  His hands rose up automatically to frame her face. “And you? You okay?”

  “I’m going to be.” She cocked her head to slide free from his hold. “I should call Cherry. She’s worrying. I can feel it from here.”

  He nodded, though couldn’t stomach not knowing what was swirling in his girl’s mind. He still left her to her call.

  He strode over to Declan. “Thought you were trying to quit.”

  “Some things are hard to give up on.”

  “Some things should never be given up on.” Nathan glanced at Phee sitting in the front seat and back to Declan.

  Declan eyed him. “Need more time off?”

  “No.” That was definitely something he did not need. “Just wanted to thank you. For the Erin thing.”

  Starr stood by his car, her cell phone held up to her ear. Her other hand ran through her hair, fingers running through the strands as if detangling them.

  “Can't afford to lose you.” Declan tossed his cigarette to the ground, twisted it into ash under his shoe. “How’s Starr?”

  “Hard to say.” He stretched his neck as if that would ease some of the growing tension there.

  “Well, the father-daughter thing is a tough one.”

  Declan wasn’t aiming arrows at him, but his words landed that way just the same.

  “How much do you know about Starr and her sister’s past? With their father, I mean?”

  “A lot.” Declan looked over at her “It's why Phee’s so pissy
with me all the time.”

  “Women like their secrets.”

  “And hate ours.”

  And didn't that truth sting? Yesterday would have been the perfect time to tell Starr about his daughter Madeline, but he hadn’t found the words. Today would be the worst time.

  Declan cracked open his door and lowered himself into the driver's side. He'd never understand why the man loved his old Jag so much. It broke down every other day, along with all his other antique cars.

  After Declan pulled away and disappeared around the corner, he studied Starr pacing back and forth two rows over. Her phone was still pressed to her ear. She swiped at something in the air—a mosquito, perhaps. A trickle of sweat ran down his back. Man, it was hot, even at 9:30 in the evening.

  He moved to the trees that stood in the parking lot meridian to give her some privacy and him a break from the heat. He'd rather go inside and take advantage of the air conditioning, but leaving Starr out here by herself wasn’t happening.

  He pulled his shirt from his clammy chest and tuned into the distant car engine rumblings of the highway close by. A train was moving fast on railway tracks somewhere nearby, too. It wasn't silent, but rather quiet for a Saturday evening, as if something was about to happen, like the moments before racehorses are let out of a gate.

  On the side street, a plain white workman's van approached the lot, turned in, but instead of slowing down, it sped up.

  The van door slung open. Two men—brown skin, tattoos, jeans, it was all such a blur—reached for Starr. Arms banded around her chest, her neck, and a meaty palm covered her mouth. Her blue eyes, large and shocked, caught his, and his legs moved fast. His feet beat the pavement, but they weren’t fast enough. If only his lungs could take in more air. His hands smacked the hot metal side of the van door just as it clanked shut. He pounded the side and tried to follow it as it hurtled away from him.

  Thick exhaust seared the inside of his nostrils and his brain blanked. The disbelief didn’t last long. They had her. They’d taken Starr.