AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I laid my head on his flannel-covered shoulder. “I miss you too, Dad. I’m sorry I don’t come home as much these days.”
“You’re busy.”
The sadness in his voice was obvious. I sat up.
“Dad?” I asked, turning to face him. “Are you okay?”
He frowned. “Yeah, Pips, why do you ask?”
I pulled nervously on one of the buttons on the mattress. “It’s just…well, Bubbe mentioned you’ve been going to the track again.”
“Oh, that’s nothin’, sweetheart. Just hanging out with some of the guys. You know how they like to watch the horses.”
His eyes flickered nervously around the room. He always was a terrible liar. Just like me.
“Yeah,” I pressed, “but Nick mentioned that Victor’s been coming around the bar sometimes too.”
Dad shrank at the mention of the name, but he didn’t say anything.
“Dad,” I said, trying to be gentle. “Do you need help again?”
It had been three years since I’d had to deliver a thick envelope of cash to an unmarked office in the Navy Yard in exchange for a promise to leave my dad alone. I had really thought it would be the last time.
“Yeah, well, it’s a funny thing, sweetheart,” Dad whispered. His long fingers—the ones that made such beautiful music––tapped a silent melody on the mattress. “These guys, you know them. They’re always needing a little something more.”
“Dad…” I started slowly. We’d had this conversation many times before, to no avail. “You don’t have to stay here. Whatever you owe, I can just give it to them, and you can come live with me in Boston. You can get away from all of this.”
“Pips, I can’t just leave your grandmother. Plus, I’ve got four years left until I make pension, and my band is here. I’m not leaving New York, kid. You know that.”
“But, Dad—”
“Skylar, it’sfine,” he said, clearly forcing himself to meet my eyes. “It’s nothing to worry about. It’s done. He just asked me if I could look into something for him—you know they’re always interested in government employees. I said I couldn’t do it, and he said okay. I don’t owe him anything, I promise.”
“Yeah, but Bubbe and Nick said—”
“Pips, Ma gets so far into other people’s business she has to make it up as she goes, and Nick’s a paranoid alcoholic who’s scared of his own shadow. That ticket was a friend’s, Skylar. They don’t know what they’re talking about.”
Dad slung a thin arm around me and pulled me into his side. I sighed contentedly at the familiar scent of clove cigarettes and coffee that permeated the soft flannel.
“You don’t need to worry about me,” he murmured into my hair. “I’m the parent here. You just need to get yourself back up to school and kick some ass, all right? That way you can defend your old man if I actually do get locked up one day.”
I didn’t find his weak joke the slightest bit funny, but there wasn’t much else I could do if he insisted everything was fine. He had promised me years ago that he was out of the life for good. I wasn’t convinced, but I didn’t have anything else to go on either. And I wasn’t about to hand-deliver an invitation for Victor Messina and his thugs to come back into our lives, considering how hard it had been to get him out in the first place.
“All right,” I said. “Just be careful, old man, will you?”
“Don’t worry, baby. I always am.”
I smiled weakly and nodded. I wanted to believe him. I really did.
Twelve
Ireturned in Boston early Sunday afternoon after enjoying a first-class ride that also gave me plenty of time to finish my readings before classes started. There was no signature on the card that accompanied the ticket, but a typed note was paper-clipped to the envelope: “Be safe, Red.” It was only after I opened the ticket that I realized Brandon and I hadn’t exchanged numbers. I had no way to say thank you, no way to confirm our plans unless I called his office, and I had no intention of setting off water cooler gossip.
On Monday morning, I was in the front row of the in-class component of the Family Law Clinic. Eric sat in the row behind me, tapping away on his phone after waving a brief hello. I wondered who he was talking to so early in the morning.
When the professor strode in as the clock struck eight, my stomach fluttered with a bit of characteristic first-day jitters.
“Good morning, everyone,” he said.
