As predicted, he’s sprawled face-down on the unmade bed in the master bedroom, an empty Stoli bottle resting on the nightstand. Heading to the back door, I find it unlocked and grit my teeth. This isn’t the safest neighborhood, so Mom always made sure to lock the doors to preserve what few nice possessions we had.
Stepping in, I remain quiet and cautious. The place is a wreck, the congealed remains of what was probably Christmas dinner still strewn around the kitchen and dining room. Jesus, he couldn’t even tidy up after Mom’s stroke?
It makes my gut roil to stand here and envision the incident, which my brother said happened while Mom was in the middle of saying grace. Her words apparently turned to gibberish halfway through before she collapsed. Dad was making fun of her when it happened.
The table is only set for five, but the fact that our brother Marco wasn’t able to come home for Christmas doesn’t offer any absolution. My younger brother is a Navy SEAL, and a saint, so no doubt he spent the holidays saving lives in some remote part of the world. I know he’d be here if he could, but I’m glad he isn’t, because I wouldn’t be able to face him after what I’m about to do.
I turn down the narrow, dim hallway and step into the master bedroom. The room is an even bigger wreck than the rest of the house. Empty bottles litter both nightstands and the floor. Dirty laundry is scattered everywhere. For such a stickler for discipline, the asshole on the bed sure doesn’t practice what he preaches. It’s fucking disgusting, and it’s only been two days since Mom collapsed.
My hatred for him has been brewing on high heat since last night when Mad gave me the news. The rage kept me warm on the cold ride from San Diego to Los Angeles, and it was only through sheer force of will that I didn’t charge out of Mom’s room earlier and strangle him then.
Now he won’t escape it. He’s the worthless waste of space in this family, despite how little he thinks of us. His litany of insults and derision are on a constant loop through my head as I consider how to get this done. I’d do it with my bare hands, but when I spy his boots lined up as precisely as soldiers by the bed, I have a better idea.
I bend down to grab one of the boots. My fingers are sure and quick as I unlace it, then drop the boot, wrap each end of the lace around my hands, and stretch it taut with a snap. The nylon digs into my fingers as I step toward the bed, a dark haze creeping in around my vision. My focus shrinks to a pinpoint on the back of my father’s shaved head where the ball chain that holds his dog tags lies across a neck weathered deep brown from hours working on helicopter engines in the elements.
I’m already halfway onto the bed, ready to sling the garrote around his neck when the front porch creaks and the door latch clicks open. My sister’s voice is soon joined by my youngest brother, Sam’s, the sound snapping me back into myself. I freeze, blinking down at my hands.
Elle’s voice is exactly like Mom’s, and the sound forces my conscience to do an about-face. I suddenly see myself in this moment, about to commit murder. Worse, I see how my mother would react.
Fucking hell no; I want to be a better man than my father was. As much as he deserves it after all he’s done to her, to us all, I can’t do this, even though I know I can get away with it—you can’t charge a dead man with murder, after all. But I especially can’t follow through now that my youngest siblings are in the next room.
I back up off the bed and step silently into the master bathroom, pulling aside the shower curtain just enough to slip behind it, where I wait, ears trained on the rest of the house.
“You clean up the food, I’ll take care of the dishes,” Elle says with such authority she’s almost indistinguishable from Mom. Then, “What are you doing? Sam?”
I hear footsteps coming down the hall and Sam calls out, “Just making sure he’s not awake. Mad said he was drunk at the hospital this morning. Security had to haul his belligerent ass out.”
“Not surprised,” Elle says.
Through a gap at the edge of the shower curtain, I can just see the area between the doorway to the bedroom and the bed itself. Sam strolls halfway in and stands, staring down at Dad. He’s so unimpressed he practically sneers as he lifts a foot and gently kicks at dad’s leg where it hangs over the side of the bed.
“You are one drunk motherfucker, aren’t you?” he mutters, leaning over to pick up the Stoli bottle and shaking it. There isn’t even a slosh of backwash left.
What stuns me is how grown-up my baby brother looks. Last time I saw him he was eighteen, still soft around the edges despite some half-assed attempts at joining team sports in school and spending hours in the gym to prove himself. He barely scraped by with grades sufficient to graduate after his second try at senior year. We always knew he had a wicked mind if only he’d apply himself, but his true love was art, which Dad hated with a vengeance.
Now he’s twenty-two and has filled out at least as much as the Quiñones twins, but with the Santos height to boot. He evidently went full rebel after Dad’s constant insistence on a haircut and now sports a thick head of dark, wavy hair that falls to his shoulders. He rakes his fingers through it, then scratches his jaw in a mannerism straight
