Bubba stood at full attention. “Yes, Daddy—Sir,” he answered.
Miller pointed toward the door. “Then get the hell out of my sight before I put a whoopin’ on yer ass.”
22
Thomas was in full lather as he screamed at Sin. “You will not go to that den of evil as long as I’m still breathing,” he yelled.
“If you’ll just calm down, I will try to explain,” Sin said.
“There is nothing to explain, the answer is no!”
“So, you really haven’t changed, have you?” Sin arched her hip to the side in defiance. “All that bullshit back at the hospital was just the cancer talking. You’re just as impossible as you were when I was seventeen.”
“Get out of my house!” Thomas screamed.
“This sounds familiar,” a voice said from the front door.
They turned and saw Carmelita. Her arms were crossed and she was tapping her foot.
Sin pointed at her father. “I told you he was a stubborn old fool. Now do you believe me?”
“She wants to go to Heap’s church tomorrow. Can you believe that?” Thomas yelled.
Carmelita took a deep breath and exhaled through pursed lips, accentuated with fire engine red lipstick. “Sit, both of you.” They both stared back defiantly. “Now!” She pointed a red painted nail towards the couch.
They sat like scolded children.
Carmelita stood in front of the couch and eyed them both. Her gaze stopped on Thomas. “Have you learned nothing in seven years?” He opened his mouth to talk, but one wagging finger stopped him in his tracks. “You have spent the good part of the past seven years telling me how you never gave your daughter the chance to explain herself and how if you ever had the chance to do it again you would never make that same mistake again . . . and here you are, repeating history.”
“That’s right,” Sin chimed in. “He is the same fool he’s always been.”
Carmelita’s laser-like stare now burned in Sin’s direction. “I don’t want to hear a word from that mouth of yours. You are to sit there and hear what I have to say.”
Sin crossed her arms and slouched into the cushions like a child.
“Let me guess how you brought up the topic of going to the Church of the New Son.” Carmelita threw her hair back and placed a hand on her arched, full hip, imitating Sin. “I’m going to Heap’s church tomorrow and I don’t want to argue about it.”
She sounded so much like Sin that both Sin and her dad cracked an involuntary smile.
Carmelita ignored their expressions. “You both have a lot of growing up to do if you want this relationship to last. I’m going in to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. While I’m there, I expect the two of you to work this out. If I hear either of you yell, I will walk out the door and I won’t be back.”
They watched as Carmelita walked into the kitchen. They sat on the couch, staring straight ahead.
“I don’t hear any talking,” Carmelita called out.
Sin turned toward her father and curled a jean clad leg up and under, so she was sitting on her foot. “Dad, you know I love you, and I wish I could tell you my exact reasons for needing to go to Heap’s church tomorrow, but I can’t.”
“Why not?” Thomas asked. “Do you know how that is going to make me look to the people of this island when they see you show up?”
Sin closed her eyes and began to draw her bottom lip into her mouth. She wanted to tell her father everything, but she knew the information would put him in danger. She thought so hard, her lip began to bleed. The taste of blood had her recalling Charlie’s voice in her head telling her that she needed to stop that ‘tell.’ She pressed the side of her finger against her cracked lip and concentrated on her father’s eyes. “I’m not supposed to tell you anything,” she murmured, “so you need to promise not to say a word to anybody,” she pointed toward the kitchen, “not even, Carmelita.”
Thomas nodded.
Sin dabbed her lip with a napkin―no blood. “The main reason I came back to the Keys was because I heard you were sick, but there is another reason. There has been a series of deaths around the Keys and the gulf, and I was asked to look into the situation while I was down here. Part of that looking involves me going to Heap’s church tomorrow.”
Thomas sat quiet and seemed pensive. “If there have been bad things happening down here, why would they send a soldier, why wouldn’t they send in one of the agencies to look into it?”
As the words left his mouth, Sin could practically see the light bulb above his head turn on.
“You’re not in the military are you?” His voice rose in pitch and amplitude with each word.
Sin put a finger to her lips and shushed him. She glanced toward the kitchen to see if Carmelita had heard anything. Convinced she hadn’t, Sin looked back at her father. “That is all I can say. You can assume whatever you want, but you know what they say about assuming.”
“When you assume, you make and ass out of ‘u’ and me,” Thomas answered.
Sin nodded. “So you understand why I need to go?”
“Not really, but I trust you. I made the mistake of not trusting you when you were younger, and I promised myself I wouldn’t make that mistake again.” He took his daughter’s hand in his. “Old habits are hard to break. Forgive an old man?”
Sin leaned and kissed her father’s cheek. “If you will forgive me for keeping secrets.”
He nodded.
They both heard Carmelita clear her throat as she came in with a tray of espresso.
“When this is over,” her father said, “I want you to tell me the truth—all of it.”
Sin swallowed hard. “Okay,” she breathed.
“That’s what I want to see,” Carmelita beamed. “Love between father and daughter.”
“Amor entre familia, mi
