by Karen Cimms
“Then what’s this all about?” Devin asked. “You thought if you OD’d, she’d come running back?”
“It was an accident.”
“Don’t talk, Daddy,” she pleaded. “You’re straining your voice. Now, don’t get upset. No one’s blaming you.”
“I am,” Devin snapped. “I am most definitely blaming you.”
The cup went flying as her father nearly shot out of the bed. “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to? I’m your father. You don’t talk to me like that.”
“Father?” Devin snorted. “What a joke.”
A nurse flung the door open. “What’s going on in here?” She folded her arms, looking ready to take on any one of them. “I can hear you all the way down the hall. You’ve got to keep your voices down, or I’ll have security escort each and every one of you out of here.”
“I’m sorry,” Devin apologized.
Rhiannon echoed her brother’s apology. The nurse gave them each a warning look, unimpressed with the unidentified rock star and his family. When her eyes reached Doug, he raised his hands, proclaiming his innocence. Rhiannon glared at him. Traitor.
With one last warning look, the nurse left, closing the door behind her.
“I’m going,” Devin said. “I’m sorry you almost died, Dad. I’m sorry your life is so bad you can’t handle it without resorting to drugs and alcohol. And I’m sorry I blew up at you, but I can’t deal with you anymore. I’m done. You wanna drag yourself down? Go ahead, but you’re not dragging me down with you. And for God’s sake, stop dragging Mom down too. And if you can’t get your shit together, let her go. She doesn’t deserve this, and you sure as hell don’t deserve her.”
He dragged his hand through his hair and let out a loud whoosh of air, as if trying to expel the last of his anger. “You’re my father, and I’ll always love you, but I don’t respect you. I don’t think I want you in my life.”
Without another word, he turned and walked out.
“Devin!” Rhiannon called after him. When he didn’t respond, she turned to Doug. “Go get him! Make him come back and apologize!”
Doug stood but made no move for the door. “I’m sorry, Billy. I know you’ve been through a lot, but what you’re doing is hurting the people who love you. If you don’t stop now, it’s going to get worse. I hope this serves as a wake-up call.”
“Douglas!” she scolded. “You apologize right now!”
He picked up the jacket he’d neatly folded over the chair when he’d arrived earlier and draped it over his arm.
Then his warm brown eyes met hers. “With all due respect, sweetheart, get your head out of your ass.”
She sputtered. Okay, maybe she was speechless. Who wouldn’t be? Doug had never spoken to her like that, and she wasn’t about to start tolerating it now.
While she floundered for a scathing comeback, Doug turned back toward his father-in-law.
“I really hope you’ll leave Kate out of this.”
She snapped her mouth shut as the door closed behind him. Fine. He could go home and put the twins to bed himself. See how he liked it. Another cleansing breath. She might need two yoga classes tomorrow. Maybe even a massage.
She summoned her brightest smile and turned back to her father, reaching to refluff the already fluffed pillow. She recognized the angry twitch along his jaw.
“Don’t you listen to them, Daddy.” She brushed an imaginary piece of fuzz from the corner of his pillow. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You’re dealing with a lot of—”
“Rhiannon, honey.” His voice creaked as he spoke. “Please, sweetheart, just shut up.”
The world outside Billy’s room was shrouded in inky blackness. It was late. Or was it early? Not knowing made him antsy. He rubbed his hand over the space where his watch should have been and recalled the feeling of restraints strapped to his wrists. His stomach threatened to let loose whatever might be in there.
The last few days were a blur. He felt like Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend, only with better music.
He shivered. Either the air conditioning was turned up too high, or his body was still rebelling. He tugged the waffle-weave blanket up over his shoulder. The sheets were rough, and the pillow crinkled under his head when he moved. He wanted his own bed with the zillion-thread-count sheets and pillows with lumps in just the right places.
More than anything, he wanted Katie.
Through the large window of the private room, he watched the red lights of an airplane slice through the darkness. He pictured Kate standing in Joey’s rooftop garden, her face tilted up at the night sky, dark hair tumbling down her back, her arms crossed, holding herself together. His heart tore the rest of the way, and he realized what he’d been doing since everything fell apart: hiding. Numbing himself from the fear of facing life without her.
But trying to kill himself? Subconsciously, maybe. He’d chosen the sweet relief of escape over reality, until that reality had finally reared up and hit him harder than his father ever had. As long as he lived, he would never forget the look on Devin’s face when he came to. The mix of fear and disappointment. Disgust.
He’d spent the last twenty years trying to protect his family from his parents. Yet the demons he’d been fighting all this time had sunk their claws into him. As much as he hated him, his father’s blood ran through his veins. He couldn’t change that. He’d foolishly thought he’d succeeded in keeping his father away, grudgingly writing a check every month, paying his mother’s blackmail. But his old man had been with him all along, inside him, waiting to get out. He had become his father—a violent, selfish man, destroying everything in his path.
That Katie loved him had been enough to prove he wasn’t the monster his father was. So what had he done? He’d beaten and raped his own wife. He’d become the monster he’d always feared and hurt the person he loved the most.
Maybe he did want to die.
The memory of Joey’s funeral flickered in his head, a slide show of black-and-white images. The rest of the day was still a blur. Either he couldn’t remember, or he’d blocked it out. But the image of Katie the next morning—hurt, angry, damaged . . . That was burned into his brain.
More sober than he’d been in days, Billy felt the darkness rise up, threatening to swallow him. He was empty. Cold and lost. He wanted Katie. Needed her more than he’d ever needed her before.
It was all too much, and he had no one to blame but himself. Choking on a sob, he buried his face in the cheap, noisy pillow. And when it came, washing over him in great waves of darkness with nothing to stop it, he had no choice but to feel the pain he’d been running from all of his life.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Let me get this straight,” Danielle said, climbing into the front of Devin’s mother’s Saab. “You’re mad at your father and you refuse to speak to him or go visit him, but you’re shopping for him so when he comes home tomorrow, he won’t need anything.”
Devin continued shoveling bags into the back seat of the car. “Something like that.”
She smirked. “Just wondering.”
He returned the cart and climbed in next to her. “Besides, he can’t drive because his license was suspended, so at least this way he’ll have some basic necessities. Plus, my mom should be home by the end of the week. I don’t want her to have to worry about going to the store or anything.”
He’d tried to keep up the impression that he was angry, but he was more hurt and disappointed than anything else. As far as he was concerned, there was no excuse for what his father had done. None.
“You’re a good son. Speaking of which, have you told your mother you’re not in Colorado?”
His thumbs tapped out a nervous rhythm atop the steering wheel. “I haven’t spoken to her other than to text her that I landed. Besides, she thinks I’m out of cell phone range, so she won’t even try to call me. One lie is enough. After I drop all this stuff at the house, we can head to the cabin. No one has to know anything. My father wo
n’t tell her. He’s got his own mess to worry about.”
He turned the key and waited for the rag top to open, then slipped the gearshift into reverse. They’d moved only a couple of feet when a truck appeared out of nowhere in his rearview mirror.
“Jesus Christ!” he said, slamming on the brakes.
An old pickup, perhaps once red but now faded to a rusty brown, had stopped directly behind them. The driver, who looked a bit like a deranged Santa, stared down at the car.
“Excuse me!” Devin called over his shoulder, trying to keep the annoyance he was feeling from his voice. “I’m trying to back up.”
The man ignored him, as if he had every right to park in a lane of the SuperFresh parking lot.
Devin went to open his door, and Danielle grabbed his arm. “Please don’t confront him.” She stole another look at the stranger behind them. “He looks dangerous.”
“I’m not going to confront him. I’m just going to point out nicely that he’s in my way.”
Devin’s height was usually enough to make people think twice about challenging him, but apparently not this time. The man threw open the door of his pickup and jumped out rather quickly for someone with such a shaggy white beard and hair. A filthy T-shirt covered his thick barrel chest.
“Is there a problem?” Devin asked.
“Yeah, there’s a problem.” The stranger jabbed a finger at him. “You’re the problem. I know who you are, and I’m warning you. Stay the hell off my land.”
A crowd was forming a short distance away, but no one seemed willing to get involved. A clerk who’d been gathering carts dashed inside the supermarket.
Devin shook his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know you or what land you’re talking about. I haven’t been here all summer. You must have me confused with someone else.”
The man began to speak but choked out a cough instead. “You’re a fucking liar.” He gasped several times, wheezing and jabbing wildly at the air. “I saw you. I’m gonna warn you once. Come on my property again, it’ll be the last thing you do.”
Devin raised his chin, trying not to lose his temper. “Listen to me—”
“Consider yourself warned!” The man coughed up a great gob of phlegm and spit it at Devin’s feet. Then he climbed into his truck and sped off, gears grinding as hapless bystanders scurried out of his path.
Devin slid back into the driver’s seat and heard Danielle reporting the incident over her cell phone.
“The police are on their way,” she said, disconnecting the call.
“You didn’t need to do that.” He gripped the steering wheel, feeling more unnerved than he wanted to admit. He leaned back and stared up at the blue sky overhead.
As far as he was concerned, he was more than ready for this summer to be over.
Chapter Thirty
Billy wasn’t even sure why he was knocking on Eileen Ryan’s back door. He’d walked up the driveway to grab the mail, and the next thing he knew, he was knocking on her screen door. He could hear the television blaring in the living room. He knocked again, harder this time.
“Coming,” she called.
Her voice sounded far off. This was a bad idea. She was probably in the middle of something. Maybe she was in the bathroom. Jesus. He didn’t mean to drag her out of the bathroom.
He was about to call out “Never mind” when the volume on the television dropped.
“I’m coming.”
Eileen had been their neighbor since they moved to Belleville. She’d also been Kate’s seventh-grade English teacher. Over the years, she’d become like a second mother to Kate—more of a mother and grandmother than Evelyn Daniels had ever been. A widow, she’d retired years ago. Billy guessed she must be in her upper seventies by now.
What the hell was he doing here?
A gray cat meowed at him from the top of the stairs. A few seconds later, Eileen’s feet shuffled into view. She swept the cat aside with a slippered foot. “Shoo! Henry, move!” Ignoring her, the cat hopped down the stairs ahead of her.
“Billy!” She unlocked the screen. “This is a surprise.”
He hesitated in the doorway. “I don’t want to trouble you.”
She waved him in. “Nonsense.”
He saw her eyes flick across the bruises lining the insides of his arm. They had faded from purple to a sickly yellowish green, but they were still prominent enough to be seen. He pushed his sunglasses up atop his head to hold back his hair, forgetting about the dark smudges beneath his bloodshot eyes until it was too late.
“It’s no trouble.” She followed him up the steps.
He couldn’t remember being in this house more than a couple of times over the past twenty years. Both times, Kate had dragged him there for a holiday drink on Christmas Eve. He wanted to apologize, but really, what was the point after all this time?
“Are you hungry?” Before giving him a chance to answer, she darted into the living room to scoot her cat off the arm of her recliner just as he was about to take a bite of her sandwich.
“I’m sorry.” He shuffled his feet. “You were eating lunch. I should go.”
“Sit,” she demanded. He obeyed. “How about a meat loaf sandwich?”
The thought of food still nauseated him. “No. Thanks.” He swallowed the lump in his throat instead. “Have you talked to Katie?”
“Not since the funeral. I imagine she’ll be home soon though.”
He nodded, still unsure of why he was there. His eyes scanned the kitchen, as if the words he needed might be found in her cupboards or stacked on the drain board.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
It was a reasonable question, although the answer was pretty obvious. It was also more than likely that even if she hadn’t heard the ambulance come screaming up the driveway a few nights ago, it wouldn’t have taken long for gossip to make its way around town.
“No. Um, Kate doesn’t know about the other night.”
“That’s probably for the best.”
“Yeah.” He stared at his hands. “I’m moving out. She wants me gone before she gets back.”
Eileen lifted a gnarled old hand. It looked as if she were about to touch him, but at the last moment she pulled away. “I’m sorry, Billy. I didn’t know that.”
“I really fucked up big time.” He looked up. “Shit. I’m sorry.”
This time she didn’t hold back. She reached out and patted his hand. “I agree,” she said sternly. “You did fuck up.”
Her language caught him off guard, and he couldn’t help the smile that tugged at the corner of his mouth.
“What are you going to do about it?”
He played with the fringed edge of a woven placemat. “I think it’s too late.”
“You’re not dead yet, are you? Although it’s not from lack of trying.”
Billy froze. “I wasn’t trying . . . ” He began again with more conviction. “I just wanted to dull the pain. It wasn’t intentional. I just don’t think I can live without her.” His elbows crashed to the kitchen table, and he covered his eyes with the heels of his hands.
Eileen slid the wicker basket of paper napkins on the table in his direction. Then she got up and poured him a glass of iced tea.
He crumbled a handful of napkins and hastily wiped his face as she set the glass down before him.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. For someone who never cried, he was making up for lost time.
“Tell me what happened.”
He nodded, but he couldn’t seem to begin. He took a sip of the tea and made a face—something bitter and herbal. He set the glass down and ran his thumb over the condensation running down the side.
Then he began to tell her about Miami and getting arrested.
“I already know that,” she said, cutting him off. “I also know Kate had been planning on coming home before Joey was killed. She told me she wanted to try and work things out. Something must have changed her mind.”
He wrapped his hands around the glass.
“I think there’s someone else.”
It was difficult enough to think it, saying it out loud hurt like hell.
“What?” she said sharply. “You found someone else?”
His head snapped up. Was she fucking serious? “No. I think Katie has someone else.”
“Now you’re being an ass. What else?”
He frowned. “I’m serious.”
“So am I. What else?”
He picked up a napkin and blew his nose. “Like I said . . .” He glared, daring her to contradict him. “I thought there was someone else, and it was eating at me. I had too much to drink at the luncheon after the funeral, and I was getting pissed, so I left.”
“I remember,” Eileen reminded him. “I was there.”
It was one thing to tell someone about your bad behavior. It was another thing to realize they’d witnessed it firsthand.
“I went to some bar in the Village and I ran into some old friends, sort of. One thing led to another. We were partying, you know?”
She nodded.
“I was drinking. A lot. We were doing some coke. I know I did a few lines, more than a few. Then somebody pulled out some crystal meth. I usually don’t touch that stuff, but I just didn’t give a shit. Everything seemed so fucked up. I snorted that, too. I don’t know if that’s what pushed me over the edge, but I was just all kinds of fucked up.”
He balled up a napkin and threw it onto the table.
“Sorry.” He sunk lower into his chair. “I’m turning into a real lowlife.”
When she didn’t argue, he continued. “I don’t remember making my way back to Joey’s apartment, and I can’t really remember what happened with Katie, but . . . I did something to her. I hurt her.”
Eileen’s fingers gripped the dish towel in her hands. “What do you mean ‘hurt her’?”
“I hurt her.” He dragged a hand through his hair and struggled to control his voice. “Physically. I might have hit her, I don’t remember.” He gulped for air. “And I guess I forced her . . . ”
