Chapter 26

Chapter Twenty-Six

BEFORE

TOM

My Uncle Dave—my mother's sister's husband—had a heart attack a couple of days ago.

My aunt and uncle live in Seattle, and my mother is flying out to see them. When I was little, I used to go with her whenever she went for a visit, but I've got school now, so I have to stay behind. With my father.

I'm not thrilled about it being just him and me in the house, but on the other hand, he'll probably just ignore me. He's got work and I've got school. There's a chance we might not even see each other at all the whole time my mother is gone.

"Be good for your dad, Tommy," my mother tells me before taking off in her Chevy for the airport.

Yeah, like I'm the one who gets drunk and starts throwing things in our household. "Okay."

She wrings her hands together. "Just leave him alone, okay?"

"Okay."

She kisses me goodbye, and promises to call as soon as her plane lands. Like I'm going to be sitting around worrying that my mom's plane crashed. I've got much more important things to worry about.

For example, it's been two days since Alison's ultimatum, and Daisy is still very much my girlfriend. Alison keeps shooting me warning looks, but I still haven't made a move to end the relationship. I keep hoping something will happen and I won't have to do it, even though that's impossible.

I can't let Alison go to the police. Daisy told me in confidence that the police aren't having any luck finding out who killed Brandi, and they're pinning all their hopes on finding Brandi's secret boyfriend. I can't let them know I'm the guy they've been looking for.

If Daisy's father weren't so nervous about her safety, I would've liked to take her out to dinner tonight, but instead, I cook myself the skirt steak my mother had in the fridge, and I'm eating a late dinner at the kitchen table when a text pops up on my phone from Daisy:

Bored. What R U doing?

Dinner.

What's 4 dinner?

Steak. Made it myself.

Yum! Will U make it 4 me sometime?

I'd be happy to let Daisy come over for steak if only her dad would let her. I'd make her a whole feast. I'd attend culinary school just to make her happy. I'd do anything for her. Anything .

I can't break up with her. I just can't. There's got to be another way.

The front door slams, and I shove my phone into my pocket. My father must be home from his job at the hardware store. He always complains that he's doing menial labor, but he's lucky to have the job, considering he shows up for work drunk half the time and hungover the other half.

Sure enough, when he stumbles into the kitchen his eyes are slightly bloodshot and he stinks of whiskey. He must've stopped by the local bar, O'Toole's, on the way home, which is what he does most nights.

"Where's Luann?" he demands to know.

I'm sure my mother told him a hundred times where she was going, but it doesn't surprise me he's forgotten. "Mom went to see Uncle Dave."

"It's always something with her," my father grumbles under his breath.

I don't know what to say. It's rare that my mother isn't home for dinner. She only goes to see Aunt Gloria twice a year.

"So where's dinner?" he barks at me. "I'm starving."

I look down at my own plate. I only cooked one steak, and I've almost finished it. "I don't know."

He glowers at me. "So you make yourself dinner, and you don't bother to make anything for your old man, even though I'm the one who puts the roof over your head and pays for all the food?"

"I didn't know you'd be home."

"Unbelievable," he mutters. "You'd think you weren't raised to have any manners."

He stumbles into the kitchen, but instead of going for the refrigerator, he goes for the liquor cabinet, which is filled with bottles that are all nearly empty. Liquor doesn't last long in our house. He rattles the bottles. "What the hell, boy? Where is all my whiskey?"

"You drank it?"

He slams the liquor cabinet shut, hard enough that the entire kitchen seems to shake. "Don't lie to me. I know you're sneaking drinks from my stash."

I'm not sneaking drinks—not even close. I've never even tasted alcohol. I won't touch the stuff after seeing what it does to my father.

But I know him, and once he gets an idea into his head, it's hard to dislodge it. If he thinks I'm swiping his liquor, he's never going to let it go.

"You know," he says, taking a step toward me, "you're not too big for a beating."

As he says the words, he reaches for his belt buckle. When I was younger, my father beat me with his belt buckle a handful of times. Just enough for me to learn to stay out of his way. My mother was always the one who took the brunt of his abuse.

"I'm going up to my room," I say. "There's plenty of food for you in the kitchen."

He snorts, although his hand leaves his buckle. "What are you going to do up there? Talk to your girlfriend, the police chief's daughter?"

I stiffen. I had no idea he knew about Daisy and me. The thought makes me uneasy.

My father is amused by the look on my face. "You think I didn't know? Your mom told me all about it. That girl is much too good for you, you know."

He's not entirely wrong. "Yeah," I mumble.

"Feel free to invite her over here." He winks at me. "That Daisy Driscoll is a pretty one. I wouldn't mind having a shot at her. Be nice to have a break from your mom's saggy tits."

Nothing my father said before now had really bothered me. His threatening me with the belt buckle isn't anything new. Accusing me of stealing his crap is par for the course. But I don't like the way he's talking about Daisy.

I really, really don't like it.

He can see that his needling finally got to me, and a grin spreads across his ruddy face. "I saw her walking down the street the other day," he goes on. "She was looking good . Don't the Driscolls live on Peach Street? And isn't her bedroom the one in the back... on the second floor?"

My hand balls into a fist at the thought of my father getting anywhere near Daisy.

"I bet she'd like that." He licks his lips. "Not like anything you could do would satisfy her."

"Leave her alone," I say through my teeth.

"I'd make her real happy." The alcohol fumes coming out of his mouth are enough to make my eyes water. And there's another stale odor—one I can't identify. "Whether she likes it or not. But I think she'll like it a lot."

I don't even quite realize that I've grabbed the knife I'd been using on my steak until it's in my hand and I'm aiming it at my father's chest. "Don't even think about going near Daisy."

He looks down at the knife and up at my face. It takes him a second to burst out laughing. "You kidding me, boy? Didn't we try this once before and it didn't go so good for you?"

We did do it once before. But this time he's not getting the knife away from me. My grip is ironclad. "Stay away from Daisy."

It's hard not to appreciate the irony of the fact that those are the same words Alison said to me a couple of days ago.

"I don't think I will." Blatantly disregarding the knife, my father reaches into the liquor cabinet and selects a bottle of whiskey, even though it's nearly empty. He finishes off the last dregs. "In fact, maybe right after this, I'll go over and say hello to your sweet little Daisy." He looks down at the knife. "Why don't you put that thing away before you get hurt?"

I have watched my father beat my mother with his bare hands. I have felt him smack me across my backside with a belt. But I have never hated him quite as much as I do when I plunge the blade of the knife deep into his gut.

The knife is sharp. I sharpened it only about a week ago on the edge of one of the ceramic mugs, just like my mother taught me. The blade slides cleanly into his belly, and then, when it's inside, I twist it once for good measure. It's only after I pull it out again that I hazard a look at my father's face.

His face is frozen in a look of utter shock. His mouth is hanging open, and his usually ruddy skin has turned ashen. "Tom," he gasps as he clings to the kitchen counter.

And then he collapses to the floor.

He's bleeding badly. There's a puddle of blood forming below him on the floor, but it's not five pints. It's not enough to kill him, not even enough for him to lose consciousness. He is still alive, and he's trying to get back on his feet. He manages to get on his hands and knees, but that's the best he can do.

"Tom." He coughs and his spittle is red when it lands on the linoleum. "I…I didn't know you had it in you…"

Maybe he didn't know. But I knew.

"Tommy…" His speech is slurred and I'm not sure if it's from the alcohol anymore. "You gotta call an ambulance, kid. You gotta help your dad…"

When he looks up, his brown eyes—the same color as my own—meet mine. And that's when he knows I'm not calling an ambulance. That I'm going to let him bleed to death on the kitchen floor.

He feels around in his pocket for his phone. It's not there. He's always leaving it behind at the bar, or maybe at work, so I'm guessing that's where it is right now. We've got a landline next to the sofa, but considering he can't even make it to his feet, it may as well be across the ocean.

Still, he tries for it. I stand frozen in the kitchen as he crawls across the kitchen floor, leaving behind a trail of smeared blood. He manages to make it onto my mother's favorite shag carpet, and almost collapses, but he doesn't. The bastard is stronger than I thought he was. He might actually get to the phone. Either way, he's not dying anytime soon.

And that's when I realize I've got two options:

Get my father to a hospital so they can save his life.

Finish him off.

It's not a hard decision. I've done it in my dreams a million times before.

I stride across the kitchen, careful not to slip on my father's blood. I'm tracking bloody footprints all over the place, but I'm not sure it matters at this point. I step in my father's path, blocking him from moving forward. He reaches out for my ankle, smearing blood all over the leg of my jeans.

"Tommy," he rasps. "Please. Your old dad is hurt real bad. You gotta help me out."

I get down on my knees beside him. I look into his bloodshot eyes, which are a reflection of my own.

"You will never hurt her again," I say.

Those are the last words he hears before I cut his throat.