Atone (Recovered Innocence #2)(20)

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it, Evelyn. Please. Let me in.”

She turns her face away. In profile, I catch the sheen of tears in her eyes as she slips past me, leaving me alone with Dad.

“Beau. Son.”

I stop him from trying to hug me with a hand on his shoulder. “Not like this. Not now,” I tell him. I don’t want to meet this man, this broken drunk. I want my father. I want the man who raised Cora and me. I want the man I tried to emulate.

The look in his eyes cuts me. His lower lip shakes as he drops his hands to his sides. The bony flesh of his shoulder is unfamiliar and a startling contrast to the place where I once laid my head as a kid. Up close, I can see the gray tinge to his skin and smell the stench of alcohol and cigarettes. Since when did he start smoking? I can’t reconcile this man with my father. He was so full of life and passion, and now…now he’s just not.

He presses his lips together. His expression turns mean. “Too good for me now that you’re famous?”

“Go home.”

“And what about you, Cora?” he shouts over my shoulder. “Too good for me too?”

“Leave her out of this,” I warn.

“Or what?” He pushes at me, trying to start a fight.

His shove is a trigger. Drawing in a ragged breath, I have to concentrate hard on not balling my hands into fists.

Cora slips under my arm and plants herself in front of me. “Don’t touch him.”

His focus shifts to her and his expression softens into an imitation of affection. “Corabelle, tell them it’s okay.” He even uses their nickname for her from when she was a little girl.

“You said you wouldn’t drink today.” Her reply is heavy with disappointment and sadness. “You promised.”

“Just a nip to take the edge off. Nothing a cup of coffee wouldn’t cure. What do you say?”

Behind me, Mom cries. Her muffled sobs fill the silence. Dad looks at the door as though he can see through it to where my mom stands with her face in her hands. I don’t know what to do. Like everybody else, I look to Cora for some kind of direction here. She knows them better than I do. What’s going to make this right? I know it’s not my fault what happened to my family. I know it and yet the guilt is there, laying low in my belly. I’d take off if it didn’t mean leaving Cora alone to deal with them.

Cora shakes her head. “No, Dad.”

I hook an arm around her and pull her behind me. Before Dad can react or say anything else, I slam the door and lock it. Cora gasps. Mom turns her tear-streaked face toward me. For a moment it looks like she’ll say something, then she ducks her head and goes down the hall. A few seconds later a door crashes shut. There’s nothing from the other side of the front door. No knocking, no more pleading. Just silence. Cora dives for me, wrapping her arms around me and burying her face in my shirt. It takes me some time to react, and then I’m hugging her back just as hard as she hugs me.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her, my voice choked and hoarse. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s my fault. I thought he’d be okay.” She pulls away and makes a helpless gesture toward where Mom disappeared. “And her too. I was hoping they’d be…better.”

“Let’s get the f*ck out of here.”

“Wait.” She gathers up the glasses of undrunk soda and heads for the kitchen.

“What are you doing?”

“Mom’ll have a fit if I leave these out.”

Fixing. Cora’s always fixing and protecting and preventing. Another way in which my conviction irrevocably altered our family. I can’t go back. I can only go forward, but with the future so uncertain, I wonder what we’re moving toward. More days like this?

I hook a finger in the curtain to make sure Dad’s gone. He is. I open the door for Cora, giving the hall where my mom disappeared a final glance before heading out after her. Maybe all at once was too much to ask, too forced. If our family is going to find our way back to one another, we’re going to have to do it in tinier, easier-to-manage steps. Maybe I’ll give those Al-Anon meetings another try. There’s no way I can wrap my head around the changes in my parents without some kind of road map showing us how we got here. And how we can get back.





Chapter 10


Vera


I spent the weekend mostly holed up in my motel room, finalizing projects for a couple clients. I’m running low on money and could use the payday that finishing them will bring. I tried not to be drawn to that house. All of Friday and most of Saturday I resisted driving over there. Saturday evening I found myself climbing in my car, then driving down that street. I didn’t know what I expected to find or even why I put myself through going back to that time and place. Maybe it was just to prove to myself I could do it. That I could face the demons and walk away.

Of course, I went there armed. I’m not stupid. Masochistic, yes. Dumb, no.

The house looked pretty much the same. It was me—I realized—who had changed. Everyone I knew back then was long gone. Javier is smart enough to have moved the operation. My escape was a huge breach in his security, and as far as I know the only time anyone got the better of him. He’d want payback for that. He’d want Marie. She wasn’t his usual taste, but she was young and so obviously vulnerable it would be like picking low-hanging fruit. According to her Tumblr posts, he has her fooled, as he once fooled me.