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For a second or two, he looked utterly confused. Petra had enough time to wonder if it was the beer fogging his memory, or if there was something new to worry about. Then he smiled and nodded.
“Right, yes. Thank you. You take good care of your papa.” His gaze lifted above her head. Seeing the tidied kitchen, he began to smile, but it faltered as his attention fell on the table. “Pete ...” he began.
“I know, Dad,” she said to stop him from making up some pathetic excuse. “But you promised.” She wanted to tell him how it hurt when he broke his promises, how it was more than her worry for him and what he was doing to himself, that it was also a little chip in the bond between them. But saying so would serve no purpose beyond guilt, and that would make him drink more.
“It’s hard without her.”
“I know, Daddy. And it would be hard without you.”
He focused on her again. “I’m not going anywhere, Petey. I’m here.”
Unless he went to jail on this second DUI. Unless the next time he drank and drove—and of course there would be a next time—he killed himself. Or killed someone else and went to prison for the rest of his life. Unless he simply drank himself to death.
But Petra said none of that. Instead, she gave him a quick squeeze and let him go. “Good. I want you to stay put. I’m going to dump the rest of the beer. Okay?” She gave him a pointed look.
He looked at that ripped-open box of cheap beer like it was the Ark of the Covenant. Then he looked at her.
She sharpened the point of her look.
He sighed. “Yeah, okay.”
Immediately, Petra turned, went to the table, collected the box and carried it to the sink.
“Did you buy bourbon, too?”
With another, louder sigh, he slumped to the cupboard. A new bottle of Maker’s Mark—he liked cheap beer, but not cheap booze—sat alone on the bottom shelf. He took it out and handed it to her.
As she took it, he said, “Don’t dump that. Take it to work. It’s a crime to waste good bourbon.”
“Okay.” She couldn’t thank him because she wished he hadn’t bought it. “Speaking of work, I need to get moving. Do you need anything else?”
He watched that bottle as she slipped it into one of the empty grocery bags. “No ... no. I’ve got what I need, thanks to you. When can you come by to stay a while?”
“How about lunch tomorrow? I’ve got a class until eleven, then I can come by and pick you up, we’ll go out somewhere. My treat.”
“You don’t have to pay, Petey. I’m your father. It’s my job to pay.”
She laughed. “When I was a kid, yes, but I’m thirty-two, Dad. And gainfully employed. Two jobs, even—and one actually pays pretty nicely. I want to take you out. Somewhere fun.”
“Okay, okay. That sounds nice. Should I dress up?”
“Actual clothes would be nice, but nothing fancy.”
“Sounds perfect. I love you, you know.”
Petra went back to her father and hugged his round middle. “I do know. And I love you.”
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~oOo~
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Almost five years ago, a strange and painful sequence of events occurred in the Maros family. First Petra’s Uncle Pete, her mother’s older brother, in honor of whom Petra was named, died of pneumonia. Eleven days later, as she was coming home after a long day spent trying to get her brother’s house and affairs in order, Petra’s mother, Marianne, was rear-ended at a stoplight, her car shoved into the truck ahead of her, and killed.
Suddenly, Petra and her father were the only surviving members of their family. The year following her mother’s death was mostly a blur for them both, for different but related reasons: her father, who had retired early only months before so they could spend the rest of their lives together traveling the world, had fallen into a bottle and stayed there, so he remembered almost nothing at all of that year. Petra had ignored her own grief to try to keep her father from leaving her as well. Almost all she remembered of that year was her father’s pain.
There was one thing more about that first year: Petra’s mother had been her brother’s sole heir. She’d died so quickly after Uncle Pete that his estate had barely even started the probate process. It took months and months to sort through all that, for Pete’s estate to transfer to Marianne’s, and then to her heirs, Petra and her father.
