“What’s up, sis?”
All Margot got back was silence.
“You there?”
“Yeah, I’m here, sorry. I was wondering if I shouldn’t have made this call.”
“What?” Margot replied, but it didn’t take her long to figure out why Melanie was being hesitant. Before Melanie could reply Margot asked, “Did something happen to Mom?”
“Mom’s okay...”
“Define okay.”
“What do you mean ‘define okay’? I think we both know what it means.”
“There are degrees and we both know it. Is she ‘doing great’ okay or is she ‘happens to have not been murdered yet’ okay?”
“Somewhere in between. I’m at the hospital.”
“What happened?”
Again a long silence.
“Are you going to make me guess?”
“She’s fine, it was just a precaution...”
“I didn’t ask you how she was doing, I asked you what happened.”
“Dad.”
“Dad? Why was he even near her?”
“He moved back in.”
“When?”
“I don’t know, two months?”
“Why am I just hearing about this now?”
..“Why do you think? You don’t exactly have an open mind when it comes to him.”
“No shit. Do you think maybe if I knew, Mom wouldn’t be in the ER right now?”
“She’s actually out of the ER. They just want to keep her overnight because she had a concussion.”
“A concussion she got from our father.”
“You don’t know that and neither do I.”
“Mom knows.”
“Yeah, but she ain’t saying.”
“Maybe I’ll go ask Dad, he’ll know.”
“For everyone’s sake, please don’t. Give yourself some time to calm down at the very least. In fact, promise you won’t talk to him right now.”
“Promise you? Like the way Mom promised not to take the dirty bastard back?”
“The ‘dirty bastard’ in question is her husband and our dad.”
“Yeah? Dirty bastards get married and have kids all the time, it doesn’t make them any less dirty bastards.”
“Just promise me.”
“Fine, I promise.”
“Do you have time to come by the hospital? I’m sure Mom would like to see you.”
“Sure. I’ll be right there.”
Margot ended the call but didn’t drive to the hospital. Instead, she went straight to her mother’s house.
Her mother lived in a similar place as the dead man she’d found today, only her mom was a much better housekeeper. There were no empty pizza boxes decorating her living room and all of her furniture matched. Margot parked in the driveway and made a point to leave her gun in the car just so there wasn’t any temptation to shoot him. As much as she despised her old man, she didn’t want to murder him.
Margot still kept a key so she let herself in. As she suspected would be the case, Dad was sitting in his chair in front of the television. Next to him was a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels and a glass with two cubes of melting ice floating in two fingers of whiskey. In some ways, she was glad to see the whiskey. There were times his drug of choice was more of the amphetamine variety.
From her dad, Margot had learned how to read the eyes to see if someone was tweaking long before she became a cop. While it didn’t really make him sending Mom to the hospital any better, Margot was strangely glad to see his pupils weren’t wide open and locked in place.
He swallowed the rest of the whiskey and then swiveled to look at her. He looked older than he really was and, if one didn’t know better, even kind of frail. If a person knew where to look, however, they could see evidence he might not be one to mess with. He was more wiry than skinny. His bent nose and the excess scar tissue around his eyes showed this was a person who’d been in a few fights. In his case, some in the ring, others in parking lots and back alleys.
“You don’t knock?”
“It’s more my place than yours.”
“You moved out.”
“So did you.”
He scratched his chin. She felt the same way standing there under his gaze as she did at times out on the streets wearing a badge. She felt like she was being sized up. If she was working, she might have gone with the preemptive strike, used some of the things she learned fighting to cause some pain before she slapped handcuffs on a person. It wasn’t like she usually had a better choice. She was maybe five foot seven and didn’t tip the scales at much more than one thirty-five. Like her old man, she was stronger than she looked and had been in a few fights, some in an octagon but others in parking lots and alleyways, just like her old man. At her size, however, she wasn’t going to intimidate anybody without showing them she could hurt them first.
Right now, she wanted him to try something. She wanted to hurt him. She stood there hoping he gave her an excuse.
Instead, his eyes softened and he said, “You come over to have a drink with your old man?”
“We both know why I’m here.”
“Yeah? Why is that?”
“Are you going to leave nicely?”
“I’m not going to leave at all.”
Margot stepped forward. “I’m not asking.”
“Come on, Margot, what are you going to do? Beat me up?”
“If that’s what it takes.”
“Don’t kid yourself. This ain’t an octagon and there’s no referee. Even if there was, you don’t fight in my weight class and we both know I taught you at least half of what you know. The half that works, by the way, not the Hong Kong phooey bullshit you wasted my money on. You’re a tough kid, Margot, and I’m proud of you for it, but you’re out of your league.”
“Don’t say you’re proud of me. It implies you had something to do with who I am.”
“Look Margot, I know we’ve had our disagreements, but I’m still you dad.”
“In name only. Are you going to leave nicely or not?”
He poured another two fingers of whiskey over what was left of the ice before he said, “Come on, Margot. You don’t even know what happened.”
“Let me guess, she fell. It was an accident. You didn’t mean to.”
“Fuck off.”
“Is that what you consider fatherly advice?”
“You’re starting to try my patience.”
“Go
