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My life seems to have gone along smoothly up until now, only for Father to die and the finely placed walls he’d built around me to crumble.
“What did this man ask you exactly?” I ask, voice kinder than it’s been the entire time I’ve been here.
The man smirks. “I wondered when self-preservation would kick in. He wanted to know about any girls who escaped the fire. Marge, of course, gave him the rumor mill’s account, nothing I can do about that. She’s my wife, after all, and the town does still talk about that night. But he didn’t seem to believe her. So, there’s that.”
My ears fill with a fog almost too dense to hear him through as panic strikes fear through me. My insides boil and roll, sickness churning in my stomach. Someone’s onto me? Someone knows. Someone at least suspects enough to come calling.
“I’m paid for my eyes and ears, is all. So, I called you on my scheduled day. Other than that, all has been silent. The house is still vacant, of course, since you own it.”
My head flies up, ears clearing. “Excuse me?”
His pupils constrict as fear floods into them. “Mmm, you did know you own that home, right? I mean, your father did before his passing, so I only assume it passed to you.”
Why?
“Why would he buy it?” I whisper.
Clearly my thoughts were too loud, because the man scoffs as he picks up his beer to take a deep drag of it. “To keep enemies close. You’ll understand. I mean, enemies aren’t always in the shape of flesh and blood, are they? I reckon that house and the memories and left behind evidence it holds were a threat to your father.”
My blood has turned to molten lava in my veins. Soon, I’m almost sure it’ll bubble through my skin like acid and cause a show for all the souls who came to drink and revel at The Bluefish tonight.
“Excuse me,” I mutter as I slide out of the booth, eyes darting around the bar for the restroom sign.
“If it’s all the same to you, I’ll be leaving,” I hear him say before I pad as fast I can to the bathroom, pounding through a stall and hitting my knees as my stomach empties violently into the toilet bowl.
What my father had done for me to keep his legacy alive and intact is bad enough, but this? This is too much. He’d bought the fucking house where I defiled an innocent girl, where he’d burned evidence of that incident to ash. There was no evidence he’d condemned an innocent man to life in prison. Not only that, but he’d also been keeping snitches in the town, making sure nothing of what I’d done—what he’d done—came to light. No matter how many years have passed, it feels like it happened last week with all the visions and memories plaguing me lately. A lot is fuzzy, but I’m too much of a coward to want to face anything else. I don’t want to see it all.
I wipe my mouth, sitting back on the cold tile floor and breathing past the emotions rolling through me like a freight train out of control. My world is coming to a head, and it’s all my own making. My father nurtured the things I’ve done in my past by hiding them, by protecting me. Now, he’s gone, and I have to deal with the fallout.
Flushing the toilet as I stand, I turn and move to a sink, washing my hands and face before taking a long look in the mirror. Recent weeks are showing plainly on my face. Purple circles are under eyes that harbor disgust and fear within them.
I know when I close my eyes tonight, memories will come and there’s nothing I can do to stop them. There isn’t whiskey strong enough to drown the disgusting past. My mind’s trying to remember while my sensibilities try to fight it.
I’m clammy when I head back to the booth. I’d absently heard the man say he was leaving, so finding the booth empty should be less alarming than it is. How could he drop all this news on me and then leave?
Because he doesn’t know what I’ve done. He doesn’t realize the extent of his news.
Sliding back into the booth, I let my head rest on the faux leather that’s patched with duct tape in a few places, the scents of the bar lulling me back steadily.
“Can I get you something, sugar?” a woman asks, voice raspy from years of smoking.
My eyes open and meet the eyes of the woman who I’d locked gazes with earlier. Instinctively, I look for the man in the shadows she’d been with. Her gaze tracks mine, not reacting.
“Do you want a drink? Pardon me for saying so, but you look like you could use one.” Her beaming, unaffected smile meets my eyes as they lazily find her face after realizing the booth in the shadows empty.
“Whiskey, neat. Please, make it a double,” I croak through my scratchy throat.
She nods. “Coming right up.”
She moves behind the bar, smiling to patrons as she ambles through her tasks fluidly, filling two beer orders while she readies my drink. She’s at home here, somewhere I wouldn’t be caught dead working. I find her fascinating, if only to take my mind off everything in my life that’s crumbling.
She drops my glass on the table. “Made it a triple, and it’s on the house. You look like you need a friend, so let Jack soothe you.”
She saunters off.
Of course, she’d given me Jack Daniels.
I stow my disgust and down the liquid fire. It sears through me like a steak hitting hot coals, my eyes shuttering against the rush of foreign drink in my body. A few more, and I’m ready to leave, sauntering out into the cold night and fumbling with my keys. Knowing I shouldn’t drive, but not wanting to sit inside the stale Bluefish any longer, I plop into the backseat of my Audi and snicker to myself. Libations have a thick grasp on me, and for the first time in weeks, I don’t care what happens when I shut my eyes because there’s no choice in shutting them. My body is too weak against the hold of Jack Daniels.
