9. Diem

Birdie’s car was the only one in the double-wide driveway when I arrived. Tension bled from my shoulders. Life was easier when I didn’t have to risk a confrontation with the old man, and Tuesdays were usually the nights he wasn’t home until late, so I took advantage.

I parked in front of the house and jogged up the driveway to the side entrance. The late afternoon sun was low in the sky, hidden behind the houses and casting long shadows along the cul-de-sac. For all it seemed a peaceful neighborhood, I wasn’t fooled. I’d learned long ago that looks were deceiving. The true nature of a family could only be discovered at its core. The outer shell, what the world saw, was often an illusion. Anyone could paint a gorgeous picture, but not many people saw the blood, sweat, and tears involved in its creation.

That was my life growing up. Picture-perfect from the outside. A nightmare on the inside.

My childhood home was a two-story split-level, beige brick and white siding. The same as every other house on the block save the color. The basement had been renovated into an apartment four years earlier after Nana had been diagnosed with dementia. Grandpa Boone was long dead and buried, or he would have undoubtedly had an opinion.

Ihad an opinion on the matter, but since I couldn’t afford my own apartment and lived at the office, I certainly couldn’t afford a nice nursing home for Nana.

I let myself in the side door and took the stairs down as quietly as I could. The TV was on in the upstairs living room, which meant Mom was home. She watched soaps all day and catered to my father all night. Mom didn’t drive or work—she’d never been allowed. If she knew I was around, she would guilt me into visiting. It sounded awful, but she was a depleter of spoons, and I didn’t have enough to begin with on a good day. My therapist long ago suggested I stop handing them out willy-nilly. It was okay to hoard them. It was okay to say no.

At the bottom of the stairs, I rapped a knuckle on the door leading into Nana’s apartment before letting myself in. I didn’t want to startle Birdie. I’d done that before. The aging nurse was jumpy, and when she had a scare, she tended to revert to her native language to reprimand me. My Spanish was nonexistent, but I hated being called names in any language, so I avoided startling the poor woman.

Nana’s apartment was warm and smelled of rich, savory spices, artificial lilacs—from the plug-in air freshener she favored—and wilted old lady. I wasn’t sure how else to describe the scent, but it was distinctive.

Something was cooking, and my stomach grumbled. “Hello?”

“D-ham?” Roberta Guerra, Birdie for short, poked her head around the corner and smiled. She always added an odd emphasis to my name using an unsuspecting H. I’d corrected her at first, but she couldn’t seem to remember from week to week, so I let it go.

“Hey, Birdie Bird. How’s Nana?”

Birdie waved a cooking spoon in the air. “She needs help with the knitting.” She mimed knitting in case I wasn’t following. “You help. I’m cooking roast tonight. Enough for you too. You are staying.” Not a question.

Birdie had come to Canada in her late twenties with a husband whom she soon divorced. She had learned enough English to get by, trained to be a nurse, and barreled headstrong through life as a single mom, raising five kids while working full-time. Nothing could stop her. After Nana, she was one of my favorite people.

Birdie didn’t wait for me to agree or disagree about dinner. She vanished back into the kitchen. The banging and clanging of pots and pans soon filled the air.

I found Nana in the cozy living room, sitting in her rocker by the space heater I’d bought her, making a mess of her yarn as she struggled to fix whatever had gone wrong with her knitting. Nana was ninety-one, and her vision was going along with her mind, so she couldn’t often see her mistakes until it was too late.

Her hearing, however, was impeccable, and when I entered—despite not making a sound—her rheumy-eyed gaze moved from her knitting to me. Her wrinkly face broke into a bright smile. “Boone! You made it home. How was your day?”

“It’s Diem, Nana.” The doctor had advised me not to correct her when she thought I was her husband, but it didn’t feel right to pretend I was someone I wasn’t. I was Grandpa Boone’s spitting image, and since taking up private investigation, I was also in a similar line of work. It made sense she got confused.

I sat on the edge of the ottoman and adjusted the afghan over Nana’s legs. She’d made it decades ago, long before she struggled to keep her stitches straight. It didn’t do for Nana to get cold. At her age, it took forever to warm her back up. It was why the apartment was stifling all the time.

“Why’d you go and cut your hair off?” Nana reached out and ran her fingers over my scalp. “Looks better longer, Boone. Hides the nasty scars. No one needs to see those.”

My grandpa had had his own collection of scars, but his were won from fighting in battles during World War II. Mine were from being taken prisoner by a single enemy. Boone hid his scars under a mop of brown hair so he could forget he was a hero. I kept mine on display so I could look at them in the mirror and remember I was a victim.

“I always wear my hair shaved, Nana. It’s Diem, remember? Your grandson. Boone’s not here.”

“Oh. He’ll be back soon. Must be working late. I tell ya, if he’s schmoozing the ladies, I won’t be surprised. He always was a ladies’ man. Good thing I snagged him when I did, huh?”

“Good thing.”

“Got my wool in a tangle again. See this?” She displayed the mess. “Don’t suppose you can help me out, can you?”

“I sure can. Let me see it.”

I relieved Nana of her knitting and spent a few minutes untwisting the yarn she’d looped over the needles by accident. She’d lost a few stitches trying to correct the problem, so I found a crochet hook in her knitting basket and fished them up through the rows where they’d fallen back, ensuring they sat correctly before placing them on the needle. Then I worked a few stitches to get her on track. She could only manage to work in stockinette. She didn’t trouble herself with complex patterns anymore. Couldn’t follow them.

Nana hadn’t lost the skill to knit. The doctor said it was likely ingrained in her mind at this point. She could do it in her sleep. But she couldn’t fix problems when they arose anymore. Couldn’t wrap her mind around them.

Nana had taught me to knit when I was a boy. It wasn’t something I went around bragging about. On the bad nights, when Dad was especially drunk and violent, I would run away from home and land on Nana and Boone’s doorstep. She would take me in and feed me oatmeal cookies and cocoa. We never talked about Dad, but I knew Nana sent Boone after him a time or ten. Not that it had mattered or made a difference.

On those nights, she would turn on the radio and give me two knitting needles and a skein of yarn before instructing me in the craft. Despite having overly large hands and too much awkwardness, I managed fine.

Had Grandpa Boone been home, he’d have probably taken me to the shop to putter around, but he’d worked long days until the day he died, so it was often Nana and me.

Once I got her knitting squared away, I carefully maneuvered it back into her hands. Her bony, trembling fingers moved the needles without missing a beat, making stitches faster than the eye could see. It amazed me, even though I’d watched her knit my whole life.

“I hear Birdie’s cooking roast for dinner. Are you going to eat tonight?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I might have a biscuit and tea. Boone’s working late. I don’t feel like cooking.”

“You need more than that. You’re too skinny. Birdie’s cooking. Remember Birdie?”

“The boys like me skinny.”

“Oh, do they? What boys would they be?”

“The ones at the barn dance. Boone can’t keep his eyes off me. Now, where’s he at?”

“Probably still working.”

I didn’t have the heart to constantly remind her of Grandpa’s death. It had been sixteen years, but with her mind going, she always wondered where her husband was. He was always on his way home. Sometimes, she thought he was still at war and would constantly check the mail to see if he’d written.

Nana had been a little girl when Boone fought in the war. They hadn’t met or married until long after, but you’d never know it with how she went on sometimes. Other days, she told people Boone had run to the store for milk so she could have tea. Regardless, it was easier to tell her he was at work than dead. I couldn’t handle seeing her grief over and over again. Despite their generous age difference, they had been soul mates, and seeing her live her final days without Boone was sad.

Birdie poked her head into the living room, cooking spoon still in hand. She had a penchant for wagging it around when she talked. “D-ham. Help with the balls. Wind, wind, wind. I can’t do it. It hurts my hands. I have the arthritis, you know?” She made a fist with the one not holding the spoon. “It cramps.”

“No problem, Birdie Bird. I’ll take care of it.”

While Nana worked on her rows and Birdie returned to the kitchen, I found a skein of yarn in Nana’s basket and made it into a ball so she could knit with it. Nana owned a ball-winder, but neither she nor Birdie could figure out how to use it. I couldn’t be bothered digging it from the closet. Nana had taught me to wind balls of yarn as a kid. It had been one of the most important jobs in the world, so taking time to help now gave me a warm feeling in my chest. A touch of nostalgia.

Nana chatted while I worked. She had a way of saying a whole lot without saying anything at all. But it was nice to listen to her voice. She talked about the olden days when she was a girl picking daisies in the field. She talked about her sister, Martha, who was long gone. She called me Boone and reprimanded me for shaving my hair again. “I like it better when I can run my fingers through it.”

“I’ll think about it, Nana.”

“Remember those earrings you gave me?” she asked.

“Which ones?”

“The ones with the pearls.”

“Oh yeah. What about them?”

“They’re gone. Haven’t seen them in an age.”

“They’re in your ears, Nana.”

She put her knitting on her lap and touched the lobes. “Well, I’ll be. You found them. I’ve been looking for them.”

“Mystery solved.”

“You always were good at investigating, Boone. No one ever got the jump on you, did they?”

“Never.”

I’d finished one skein and was about to make headway on another when a door slamming upstairs made me stiffen.

Nana perked up. “Oh, Boone’s home.”

Only it wasn’t Boone. Heavy, stomping footsteps crossed the ceiling, then my father’s voice sounded in a half shout. I couldn’t make out the words, but I knew without hearing them that they would be followed by a meek reply. Dad would take over the TV, and Mom would tiptoe off to the kitchen to make his dinner and get him a beer.

So much for visiting. It was time for me to go. I stood, replacing the unwound skein in the basket.

Birdie must have anticipated my reaction and appeared in the doorway. “No way.” She waved the cooking spoon. “You stay. Eat.” She aimed the spoon at the ceiling. “Ignore him. He’s not your concern. She”—Birdie aimed the spoon at Nana—“is your concern.”

“I don’t want to cause a problem.”

“He’s the problem. Not you. Sit. I’ll bring the food. It’s ready. You need to convince this one to eat.” Birdie jabbed the spoon in Nana’s direction again. “Otherwise, she eats biscuits and tea. Not good enough. She needs more substance. Potatoes. Meat.”

Submitting, I sat back down. Birdie was right. Nana’s health was more important than my own.

Birdie brought two plates. She had cut Nana’s into bite-sized pieces. I set up the TV tray and pushed it close to the rocking chair so Nana could reach it, then encouraged her to eat. It was a battle. Nana put her fork down between every bite and was hard-pressed to pick it up again.

I shoveled roast beef, mashed potatoes smothered with gravy, and steamed carrots into my mouth as fast as possible, knowing it was impolite but also knowing the longer I hung around, the higher the chance of things going south.

Nana ate half of what Birdie served before giving up altogether. When I tried to feed her another bite, she waved me away. “I can feed myself. I’m full up now. Leave me be, Boone. I want tea and those shortbread biscuits you always buy. They’re my favorite.”

“Okay, Nana. I’ll tell Birdie.”

But before I could relay the message, Mom appeared in the doorway like an apparition. Her skin was pale, and the shadows circling her eyes made her look like a corpse. Even her hair was scraggly and limp like it had given up at vibrance a decade ago. She was a petite woman, made smaller by a life living under my father’s thumb. The vacant look in her gray eyes had been there since I was a boy, and it aged her, making her look decades older than her fifty-five years.

I’d long ago given up feeling sorry for her, and maybe that made me a horrible person, but my therapist had said numerous times I needed to know when to cut my losses.

Eye shade aside, Mom and I looked nothing alike. The Krause genes dominated everything, and it was the bane of my existence. I didn’t mind being told how much I looked like Boone, but seeing any hints of my father when I looked in the mirror made me want to punch out the glass—and I’d done that a time or two.

“Hey, Mom.” My teeth hurt from clenching. My bones ached from holding a rigid stance.

“Your father wants to see you.”

“I’m on my way out. Another time.”

Mom blinked and stared as though unsure how to process the response, and I knew what would happen if she carried that message upstairs to Dad. Fuck my life.

Nana patted my arm. “Boone, you go deal with him. I won’t have him hurting that boy.”

But Leroy Krause had hurt that boy time and again, and Boone, Nana, and my mother had not been able to stop him.

“I’ll be up in a second,” I told my mother.

She left, and I said goodbye to Nana, knowing I’d be in no mood to continue our visit afterward. We didn’t hug—I didn’t know how, and unless she forced me into her arms like she had when I was a kid, I wasn’t one to initiate something that made me uncomfortable—but I bent so she could kiss my cheek with her dry lips. Nana squeezed my hand with her waning strength before letting go.

I said goodbye to Birdie, whose disdainful look told me exactly how she felt about the situation, and headed upstairs.

Mom was in the kitchen, cooking. Dad was in the living room, drunk off his ass. The fumes wafted off his skin into the air. Considering he’d gotten home within the hour, I figured he must have arrived intoxicated. The handful of empty bottles gathered at his feet weren’t near enough to make him drunk. He held a fresh bottle on his knee. In nothing more than boxers, his beer gut and silver chest hair were on display. Boone had taken care of himself and was a sturdy man until the day his heart gave up. Dad was a disgusting mess, overweight and bitter with the world.

Several times as a patrol officer, I’d put a bug in coworkers’ ears about monitoring him for drunk driving, but nothing had come of it. It would have been heavenly to lock the fucker up and throw away the key, but I was never lucky where Leroy Krause was concerned.

Dad had worked for the pipe fitters union since he was in his twenties. At sixty, he was due to retire but kept plugging along. The work could be labor-intensive, but Dad had a lazy streak. He’d been at it enough years that he’d learned to play the system. Mostly, he ensured he always had an apprentice to do the grunt work.

With one arm slung over the back of the couch, Dad channel surfed, never landing on anything long enough to take it in. I stared at the back of his head for a minute, a souring sensation in my gut advising me to leave. I wasn’t at his beck and call. I didn’t owe him anything.

In all likelihood, my mother would suffer the consequences regardless. She always had, and yet she had always stayed.

“What do you want?” I grumbled, not taking my eyes off the old man. The blood inside my veins boiled. Muscles twitching, I waited at attention for something to happen. Something always happened.

Leroy didn’t turn around when he spoke. “If you park out front of my house again, I’ll slice your fucking tires.”

“You don’t own the street. I can park where I please.”

“Are you giving me lip?”

“I’m stating a fact.”

“Sounds like lip.”

“Is that all you wanted?”

“No.”

He shifted to face me. Dad and I shared many features, but not as many as I shared with the late Grandpa Boone. The most prominent difference was our size. The day I’d surpassed the old man in height and weight was the day things got worse. He’d had something to prove as the smaller man and made a show of displaying his dominance.

“What did I tell you about visiting your grandmother?”

I stayed quiet.

“Answer me when I ask you a question.”

I refused.

He pointed with the half-empty bottle. “I told you to respect my fucking house.”

I hadn’t disrespected it, but there was no sense arguing. Leroy Krause was gearing up for a fight. When Dad got in a mood, he invented problems so he could smack me around. He’d been doing it my whole life.

“I pay her way around here,” he said. “I put a roof over her head and ensure that good-for-nothing nurse comes seven days a week to look after her. It’s me who feeds her. Not you. I ought to be told when you plan to come into my house.”

“She’s my grandmother, and you don’t give two shits about her.” The minute the mumbled words left my mouth, I knew I’d made a mistake. The impulse to back talk had always gotten me in trouble.

Dad whipped all the way around on the couch, half falling off the end before righting himself. The beer bottle tipped and spilled its contents on the furniture. He didn’t notice. “What was that?”

“Nothing.”

A muffled ringing sounded from my pocket. I didn’t move to answer it. Dad and I were in a stare-down that wasn’t going to end well. I sensed Mom’s presence at the door to the living room, but she vanished again just as quickly, not wanting to get involved. She’d never gotten involved. When her husband took a notion to discipline his son or make an example out of him, Mom turned her back like it wasn’t happening.

“You best walk out that door and not look back.”

“I’m moving her to a nursing home. Ain’t nothing you can do about it either.” It was hot air, nothing close to a threat, and Dad knew it.

“Oh yeah. And how’s it you’re gonna do that? You think that shit business you’re running’s gonna pay those bills? You ain’t nothing like your grandfather Boone, that’s for sure. At least he had half a brain. You’ve got shit for brains. Always have, always will.”

“Must run in the family.”

“What was that?”

“You should get your fucking hearing checked,” I muttered too low for him to hear.

The incessant ringing was driving me insane. I tore the phone from my pocket and read the screen. Tallus. Goddammit.

“I said you’re the one with shit for brains. Boone should have had your abusive ass locked up when he had the chance,” I spat before connecting the call. “It’s not a good time,” I barked into the phone before Tallus could get a word in.

“Well, hello to you too, cuddle bear. You’re more of a scorpion. Anyhow, make it a good time, Guns, because I might have information.”

“You call me shit for brains to my face, and I’ll have you taken down a peg,” Dad shouted.

Things were getting ugly fast. I needed to leave. Growling into the phone, I repeated, “It’s not. A good. Time. I have to—”

Dad whipped the beer bottle across the room, aiming for my head, but I was prepared and ducked before it made contact. The glass shattered against the wall, beer splashing everywhere, glass exploding.

“Don’t you ignore me.”

“Maybe you’d have hit me if you weren’t so fucking drunk, asshole. Go on. Try again. I fucking dare ya.”

“You always were a smart-mouth brat.” He grabbed one of the empties by his feet and threw it with less coordination. It went wide, shattering against the wall three feet from where I stood. Dad growled and reached for a third.

“Put it the fuck down. I’m leaving.”

I ducked into the hallway and aimed for the side door as a third bottle hit the wall. The cool night air blasted me in the face when I got outside. I hustled to the Jeep, tugging my keys out as I ran. A second later, I was in the driver’s seat, heart pumping poisonous fury through my veins. I wanted to hit something. I wanted to scream and break my fist on a wall. But the ugliest part was the murderous heat engulfing my brain and turning my reasoning center to mud.

My biggest fear in life was that I would someday kill my father and feel no regret.

“I have to go,” I said into the phone.

“Is everything okay?”

“Just fucking peachy.” I disconnected the call, jammed the keys into the ignition, and gunned the engine, driving directly to the gym. Some poor punching bag was going to see no mercy.