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I shook my head, slightly averting my eyes. I trudged into the kitchen, pulling a Black & Tan out of the fridge. I came over and sank into the chair across from him.
My father looked up, maybe feeling the heat of my eyes. “Hey, Lindsay.”
“I was thinking, Dad… about when you left….”
He continued flipping through the deck of cards. “Why do you want to go through that now?”
I kept my gaze on him. “You took me down to the wharf for some ices. Remember? I do. We watched the ferries coming in from Sausalito. You said something like, ‘I’m gonna get on one of those in the next few days, Buttercup, and I won’t be back for a while.’You said it was something between you and Mom. And for a while I waited. But for years I always wondered, Why did you have to leave?”
My father’s lips moved as if he were trying to frame a response, then he stopped.
“You were dirty, weren’t you? It was never about you and Mom. Or the gambling, or the booze. You helped Coombs murder that boy. That’s what it was all along. Why you left? Why you came back? None of it had anything to do with us. It was all about you.”
My father blinked, trying to spit out a reply. “No…”
“Did Mom even know? If she did, she always gave us the party line, that it was your gambling, and the alcohol.”
He put down the deck of cards. His hands were trembling. “You may not believe it, Lindsay, but I always loved your mother.”
I shook my head, and I wanted to get up and hit my father. “You couldn’t have. No one could hurt someone they love that much.”
“Yes, they can.” He wet his lips. “I’ve hurt you.”
We sat there, frozen in silence, for a few moments. The washed-over anger of so many years was hurtling back at me.
“How did you find out?” he asked.
“What does it matter? I was going to find out eventually.”
He looked stunned, like a fighter hit with a solid upper-cut. “That trust, Lindsay… it’s been the best thing to happen to me in twenty years.”
“Then why did you have to use me, Dad? You used me to get to Coombs. You and Coombs killed that boy.”
“I didn’t kill him,” my father said, and shook his head back and forth, back and forth. “I just didn’t do anything to stop it.”
A breath came out of him that seemed as if it had been held inside for twenty years. He told me how he had run after Coombs and found him in the alley. Coombs’s hands were wrapped around Gerald Sikes’s throat. “I told you things were different then. Coombs wanted to teach him a little respect for the uniform. But he kept squeezing. ‘He’s got something,’ he told me. I shouted at him, ‘Let go!’ When I realized it had gone too far, I went for him. Coombs laughed at me. ‘This is my territory, Marty-boy. If you’re scared, get the fuck out of here.’ I didn’t know the kid was going to die…. When Fallone came on the scene, Coombs let the kid drop and said, ‘Little bastard was trying to pull a knife on me.’ Tom was a vet; he sized it up fast. Told me to get lost. Coombs laughed and said, ‘Go…’ No one ever disclosed my name.”
My eyes stung with tears. My heart felt as if it had a rip in it. “Oh, how could you? At least Coombs stood up. But you… you ran.”
“I know I ran,” he said. “But I didn’t run the other night. I was there for you.”
I closed my eyes, then opened them again. “It’s truth time. You weren’t there for me. You were following him. That’s why you’re back here. Not to protect me… to protect yourself. You came back to kill Frank Coombs.”
My father’s face turned ashen. He ran his hand through his thick white hair. “Maybe at first.” He swallowed. “But not now… It changed, Lindsay.”
I shook my head. Tears were running down my cheeks, and I angrily wiped them away.
“I know you think that everything that comes out of my mouth is a lie. But it’s not. The other night, helping you escape, was the proudest moment of my life. You’re my daughter. I love you. I always have.”
My eyes were still wet, and words came out I wished I could grab back. “I want you to go. I want you to pack up and go back to wherever you were for the past twenty years. I’m a cop, Dad, not your little Buttercup. Four people have been killed so far. You’re involved somehow. And I have no idea how much you know or what you’re hiding.”
My father’s face went slack. I could see in the evaporating glow of his eyes how much this hurt.
“I want you out,” I said again. “Right now.”
I sat there, my arms folded around Martha, while he went into the guest room. A few moments later, he came out with his things packed. He looked small suddenly, and alone.
Martha’s ears stood up. She sensed that something was wrong. She moseyed over to him, and he gently patted her head.
