The Walls of Orion

by T. D. Fox

  A soft knock at the door made her turn off the water. Reaching for the towel, she dried her face and breathed into the plush fabric for a moment.

  “I’ll be out in a minute,” she called.

  “Courtney... can we talk?”

  She stared at her reflection in the mirror, gaze lingering on the red rims of her eyes, the pink tinge to her nose, all the signs that she’d been crying. Signs of weakness.

  Dropping the towel, she gripped the sink hard enough the porcelain might’ve cracked. She opened the door.

  Her father stood there, looking lost in his own house. His brown eyes were an awful lot like hers. Red around the rims, weary shadows beneath them. He didn’t say anything. She gritted her teeth. He was going to make her start this. On the first holiday she’d spent with him in years. With her boyfriend sitting at the dinner table down the hall.

  “I think Jasper and I should head home soon.” She set the towel back on the rack.

  Conrad gave her a look like she’d punched him. He always wore every emotion right there on his face. She hated him for that. “We’re halfway through dinner. I haven’t even brought out the pie yet.”

  Courtney shook her head and stepped toward the door. “Thank you for inviting us, Dad.”

  He blocked her path. “What did I do?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I asked you how work was going. I tried not to bring up the incident at the café. I’m trying to get to know your boyfriend. I’m trying to rebuild bridges, Court, which you seem hell-bent on burning back down.”

  “What bridges!” she exploded. “Dad, any bridges that were going to be fixed burned down ten years ago, and you dragged me over the coals every time I tried to put them back up! Now here you are, acting like everything is fine, bringing up Mom and throwing it in my face that you can suddenly talk about her again without turning into a raging incoherent mess—good for you, Dad. Congratulations. But some of us don’t get to just walk away and get on with our lives.”

  “Look, I know my sins, better than anyone, but could you just—”

  “I came for Mikey.”

  “What?”

  “I came here for Mikey, and that’s it.” Her throat closed on the lie, but she hoped he believed it. It was her only way of escaping. “I’m not interested in trying to build up some daddy-daughter bridge with you. I came because my little brother begged me to, because he deserves to have some semblance of normalcy in his life, not a family that’s trying to chew itself apart. So you and I can be civil. But don’t you dare think you get to walk back into my life and be a father. You don’t get to talk about how it was. You don’t get to talk about Mom, and you sure as hell don’t get to weigh in on my life.”

  She finished, her fingers shaking with some emotion she couldn’t quite identify. He stood in the doorway looking more and more like the man she’d known three years ago. That old something resurfaced behind his eyes. A heated darkness that flickered, a flame ready to leap out and burn whatever was close. She watched him inhale.

  “You needed a father,” he whispered. “And I failed. Do you want to hear me say it?”

  “No. I don’t need one anymore, so I don’t care. I know apologies are some sort of requirement for AA, so you can tell them you said your piece if that’s what you need.”

  He blinked. The light glanced off his eyes more sharply than normal. To her horror, she realized they were wet.

  His voice broke when he replied. “I’m trying here, Court.”

  She couldn’t do this. Couldn’t look him in the face any longer. Courtney pushed past him out the door. “Try with Michael. There’s still a chance for you there.”

  He reached out and grabbed her arm. “I’m still your father.”

  She shook him off so violently his hand hit the door jam. He recoiled.

  “Fathers are overrated.” The words surprised her even as they flew off her lips. They weren’t hers. A flashback of a snowy night in a café rose in her mind, followed by the face of the last person she’d actually talked to about her father’s sins. Horror filled her. Feeling sick, she turned. “This was a bad idea. Jasper and I are going to go. Thank you for the meal.”

  He stood in the hallway, unmoving as she walked away. Courtney emerged into the dining room and grabbed her coat. Jasper looked up. Something must’ve been written on her face, because he rose.

  “Whoa. Are you okay?”

  “Fine. We’re leaving.”

  “What, really?” Michael scowled. “Did you do it again?”

  “Mike, don’t.” Courtney shrugged on her coat. She shot Jasper a pleading look.

  He pushed back his chair. “Uh, yeah. That’s right. I forgot I have a... thing. A cop thing. It was awesome to meet you, Michael.”

  “You too,” Michael said glumly. He glared at Courtney.

  Hurrying, without a backward glance at the hallway, Courtney tugged Jasper out the door.

  ⬥◆⬥

  Four minutes later, and twelve stories down, they sat in Jasper’s car. He rested his hands on the top of the steering wheel. He didn’t start the engine. Courtney huddled in the passenger’s seat, knees pulled to her chest, which tightened with every breath.

  “What just happened?”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “Are you okay?”

  “This was a stupid idea. I haven’t been there in...” She buried her face in her jeans. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have invited you. Put you in the middle of all this. I shouldn’t have even come.”

  He reached out a tentative arm. It settled around her shoulders. “What happened in there?”

  “I don’t....” One hot tear leaked out. She crushed it against her sleeve.

  The silence lingered.

  “I haven’t sat down with him in years.” Courtney let the words leak out, each one a bleeding slice into the living Wall she’d built around this part of herself. “The last family meal we tried to have... I think I was a teenager. I’ve seen them together once or twice on holidays, maybe two out of the four Christmases since I moved out.” She tugged on her sleeve. “I see my brother, though. As much as I possibly can. He’s the only family I’ve got in this city.”

  Jasper hummed.

  “My Dad was fine with it up until about a year ago. Then he sort of ‘caught religion,’ or something, and he’s tried to transform himself into this whole new person, like this great dad, and he won’t rest until he’s forced his way back into my life.”

  “That sounds tough,” Jasper said.

  “You have no idea,” Courtney muttered. Then she laughed, hoarsely, drying her eyes again on her sleeve. “Actually, you do kind of, now. I’m so sorry. That was probably the worst holiday you’ve had in Orion City.”

  “Well,” he said. “It’s the only holiday I’ve had here.”

  “What?”

  He fidgeted, picking at the leather of the steering wheel.

  “I mean... this is the first actual relationship I’ve had since coming to the city. In the whole year I’ve lived here, I spent that first Christmas at home in my new apartment, without any friends or even a phone call to my family. No contact with the Outside, Quarantine rules. I knew what I was getting myself into.” He took a deep breath, and blew it out. “I spent New Year’s down at the station working that wild goose chase they gave me. The spring and summer holidays sort of came and went without me realizing it. And now... well, yeah, it’s Thanksgiving, and I’m kind of glad to have somewhere to be at all. It doesn’t matter that your family blew up.”

  The tears threatened again. Courtney reached across the car and hugged him.

  “I mean,” Jasper said into her hair. “It does matter. It sucks. Nobody wants a Thanksgiving family blowout over the dinner table.”

  She settled back to stare at the raindrops threading their way down the windshield.

  “I thought I could change something,” she murmured. “Eleven-year-old me was too small, and I thought I was bigger now. Big enough
to start over with him. But I’m not. Tonight only made things worse. Coming here didn’t bridge anything; it drove the rift deeper between us.”

  As the last word left her lips, a white cloud dispersed on the air. Jasper reached forward and turned the key in the ignition. The heater rattled to life. They both sat, waiting for the vents to warm, as the car rumbled beneath them.

  “Have you tried just talking to him?”

  Courtney laughed. The absurdity of the question caught her off guard.

  “I’m sure you’ve tried, in the past,” Jasper hurried to clarify. “I understand there’s history there. But, as an outside party, it looked to me like your dad’s a smart guy. And he seems like a good guy, too. It’s obvious there’s some pretty painful skeletons in the closet, but he seemed to honestly want to have you there. Have you considered giving him a chance?”

  “I’ve given him chances,” Courtney bit out. “I can show you the scar from each one.”

  “He hurt you?”

  She shook her head. “Not... physically, no. He lashed out more when I was a kid, but now it’s just words.” Just words. Like those didn’t leave scars deeper than the skin.

  “You said he started changing a year ago. Tried to make things right with you.”

  “Tried.” A subjective word, if there ever was one.

  “Do you still love him?”

  Her throat clamped so tight, she couldn’t answer for several seconds.

  “Of course I do,” she whispered. “That’s why it hurts so much.”

  They both sat listening to the rain. In the distance, tires squealed on wet pavement.

  “Being in the same room with him,” she went on. “Hearing him bring up the past like that, it’s like a knife in each one of those old scars. Twisting and goring me. Over and over. Reopening those wounds, so it’s like they never even healed at all. And everybody’s clueless to the damage. They think there’s something wrong with me when I get up and leave.”

  “Court...” Jasper’s voice was soft. “Maybe there is.”

  She looked at him in the dark. Unsure if she’d heard him right over the whir of the heater.

  “Maybe he didn’t want to restore the relationship before you moved out.” It sounded like he was measuring each word. “But he does now. He’s reaching out to you, Courtney, and you’re pushing him away.”

  A low whine began in her ears. Courtney folded back in on herself, hugging her knees once more. She returned her gaze to the windshield.

  “This is a hellish city,” Jasper continued. “It’s chaotic, violent, backwards. Every man for himself. Friends are almost impossible to make, but once you do make them, you clutch onto each other like family. I guess that’s how it works in a city where most everybody knows somebody who got their family ripped away. But you still have family. He’s still your dad, like it or not.”

  Courtney said nothing. After a couple seconds, raindrops hitting the roof, Jasper sighed.

  “Trust me, being without family in a city like this sucks.”

  She checked the anger that rose, struggling to see his response for how he must’ve meant it: sympathetic. “You chose to leave your family,” she said. “I didn’t choose to lose mine.”

  “Not then, maybe. But now your dad’s looking for a second chance, and you’re denying him. Sounds like a choice, to me.”

  The anger burned past her careful hold. “Don’t pretend to know my family.”

  “Come on. From what I saw in that apartment up there, Conrad didn’t start anything. You were the explosion. Okay, maybe Conrad wasn’t a great father when you were a kid. But you’re an adult now. It’s time to fix it. I mean, that’s what adults do. Try to fix the stuff that looks impossible to fix, instead of running away. That’s why I moved to this city. Everyone here is too scared to stand up and fix what’s going on. People you should look up to, the police, the men who are supposed to uphold the law, they’re letting the fear in this city tear everyone to pieces. Sometimes I think you just need somebody from outside it all to come in and show you how to fix it.”

  “Jasper, sometimes your naïveté scares me.”

  His fingers stiffened on the steering wheel. “I’m naïve? Courtney, how many times this week have you risked your life just to prove something to yourself?”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re so dead set on doing everything alone, even if you don’t know where you’re going. You’re drifting. Sometimes it seems like you need someone to push you in the right direction. I mean, look at what your Dad said about your barista job. Didn’t you want to be a doctor? You dropped out of med school, and now you’re stuck at a coffee shop, for who knows how long? The rest of your life? Come on, Court, maybe you need a little tough love to get you up and moving.”

  “That,” she snapped. “Was none of his business. Or yours.”

  “But you don’t accept help from anyone. What if I hadn’t shown up in that alley yesterday morning? What if I’d let you be bullheaded and try to walk alone? Those men would’ve... God knows what would have happened to you. And don’t even get me started on the Whistler. Of all the people you could’ve met last night on the road—”

  “I pepper-sprayed him in the face and got away just fine, Jasper.”

  “You were lucky,” he snapped. “Sometimes you can be really, really stupid, Court. Don’t you get that? How many times do you have to risk your life before you realize that you’re not invincible?”

  Courtney reached for the car door and yanked the handle. Rain sprayed into the car as she swung it open.

  “Wait—wait.” Jasper caught her arm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. Please stay.”

  It was truly freezing outside. The cold sweep of rain and wind blew her hair back, stealing some of her bravado. What was she going to do, walk all the way back home in thirty-some-odd degrees? Courtney sat back down, and let the door fall shut. The rain continued to drum.

  “I meant,” Jasper said. “That I care a lot about you, and I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

  “Oh, is that what you meant?” she deadpanned.

  He took a breath. “This is about your Dad. I shouldn’t have brought all that other stuff into it.”

  “This isn’t a problem for you to fix, Jasper. I’m not a case that needs solving.”

  “I’m trying to help.”

  “I let you in so you would know me, not to ask you for help.”

  He paused. “I don’t want to just leave you in pain when there’s obvious things I can fix.”

  “You can fix?” Courtney shook her head. “Jasper, I can’t fix my relationship with my Dad, okay? I can’t paste on a smile and say, ‘Let’s forgive and forget.’ I can’t become that happy daughter who meets up with him for brunch every other weekend, catches him up on my life, brings boyfriends home to see him without worrying that he’ll... that he’s going to...” She choked. “I stay over on Westside for a reason, okay?”

  They both stared at the rain running down the windshield.

  “Well, if that’s the way you want it to be.”

  Anger surged up. It took her several careful seconds to beat it down. “It’s not the way I want it to be. It’s the way that it is.”

  “Okay,” he said simply.

  “You know, this knight-in-shining armor complex,” she said. “The whole ‘I’m going to ride into this city and save the day’ worldview. I thought it was cute at first. I’m not so sure anymore. You’re not a knight. You’re... a kid.”

  Jasper reached forward and put the car in reverse. “You’re obviously pretty worked up right now. Maybe we should call it a night.”

  Courtney waited one long, sharp minute, gaining control of her tongue. “Maybe we should.”

  Silence. Neither of them moved. At last, Jasper touched the gas. The car jerked beneath them, a little harder than necessary, and pulled out onto the road.

  16. THE EXPLOSION

  COURTNEY’S KNEES GROANED as she leaned forward, ha
lf buried in the darkness under the sink. She groped around for the bleach. Behind her, Christmas music blared through the kitchen.

  It was well past midnight. Rain drummed on the roof. Jasper had dropped her off three hours before, after asking for the fiftieth time if she was really okay. He left only after she promised to call him in the morning. As soon as the door shut behind him, Courtney had set to work tearing apart her apartment.

  She needed a distraction. She felt dead, drained to exhaustion from emotion. But the idea of curling up under her covers made her recoil. Sleep wouldn’t come. She knew that from experience. So here she knelt, in the middle of her kitchen floor, steel wool in hand, rubber gloves up to her elbows. She pushed a fallen strand of hair out of her eyes with the side of her arm.

  Some people cleaned to relieve stress. Courtney didn’t like to admit she was one of them, but there was something about scrubbing the stains off her cabinets, rubbing the shadows off her counter and her windows, that made her breathe a sigh of relief. Once she’d scrubbed away the marks, it was as if they were brand new. They’d never been touched. Never come into contact with anything that could smear that shiny surface.

  Pushing herself to her feet—her knees popped—she reached for a paper towel from the bundle on the counter. Her cell phone buzzed. Since she’d turned it off silent, the tinny jingle of a notification interrupted the Christmas tunes that filled the kitchen.

  Courtney pulled off her gloves. She had an alert that informed her of breaking news in the area. It came in handy in Westside Orion. Since she didn’t have a car, she needed to know which streets to avoid in her walk to work if something happened.

  She glanced at the notification banners gliding across her lock screen. To her surprise, there were several. Breaking news, breaking news, breaking news...

  She hovered her thumb over the first one until it expanded. “Three Dead on Thanksgiving Day. Whistler Suspected.”

  Courtney froze. Before she could stop herself, her eyes skimmed the list of victims. Dr. Henning, Dr. Sudman, Dr. Stevens.