“Dad?” I flicked the switch in the foyer and then the living room just around the corner. He wasn’t asleep on our old gray couch, his usual spot.
A spike of fear lodged in my stomach. What if that woman already found out where I lived?
“Dad!” I went straight to his room and pushed on the door. My worries drained away, only to be replaced by sadness. He lay passed out on his bed next to an empty bottle of Jim Beam. He had his iPad in his hand, stuck on some sports channel. “Oh, Dad…” He had sandy blond hair and light brown eyes—my eyes. I got my short stature and dark brown hair from my mother, though she wore hers short in all the photos I’d seen. Mine was nearly down to my waist now. I hated cutting it because it reminded me of her. Felt wrong not to let it grow.
As for my dad, he’d been in good shape before his accident—liked working out during his time off. He said he wanted to stay healthy because of me. I had no other family, and he worried about leaving me all alone.
Looks like I should’ve been the one worrying. I shut off the iPad and kissed his forehead. I knew he’d been struggling with pain, but he swore he had things under control. Maybe taking that job in Tampa had been a mistake.
I shut his bedroom door and went into the kitchen, confronted by an overflowing trash can under the sink and piles of dirty dishes on the white tile counter. The beige linoleum floor was sticky, like it hadn’t been washed since I left. It broke my heart.
“You all right?” Jack came up behind me as I began emptying the dishwasher.
“He promised to have the maid service come by.” I started stacking the clean plates in the cupboard above the sink. “He swore he wouldn’t do this.”
Jack remained silent for a long moment while I powered through my task.
“People in pain do not always have the wherewithal to keep their word, Jeni.”
“Yeah. No shit. But from the look of this place, he didn’t even try.”
Jack didn’t argue. He didn’t offer any words of comfort either. I appreciated that, because coming from him, it wouldn’t be genuine. Jack didn’t seem like the caring type. He was…I didn’t know.
I started tackling the glasses, and he grabbed the trash container, taking it outside. When he returned, he began collecting empty beer cans left around the living room along with old microwave-dinner containers. In an hour or so, we had my small house back to a humanlike condition, but there were no words for how guilty I felt. I shouldn’t have left him to fend for himself.
“It is not your fault, Jeni.”
Jack leaned his towering frame against the counter, folding his strong arms over his chest. I ignored how powerful he looked, and how his every movement gave off an air of authority. I swear, he looked like he’d been built in another time, when Greek gods walked the earth. His flannel shirt looked awkward on him.
“What do you want for dinner?” I asked. “I checked, and there’s microwave lasagna and frozen broccoli. We have soup in the pantry.”
“How about this?” Jack held up a bottle of bourbon. “It was between the sofa cushions.”
“That works, too.” I went for two small glasses in the cupboard and placed them on the freshly cleaned tile counter.
He filled them halfway.
“That’s a lot. I’ll have to eat something.”
He nodded. “Be my guest.”
“You’re not going to eat?”
“The dead do not need to eat.”
I shook my head and placed the frozen tray in the microwave above the electric stove.
“I saw the photo of your mother in the hallway,” he said. “You look like her.”
I supposed I did. My light brown eye color was from my dad, but everything else came from her. My dark hair, my small frame, and my large breasts. I even had her round face and pale skin.
“Well, hopefully, I won’t die like her.” I took my glass, raised it toward him, and washed down a mouthful of the smoky liquid. The heat instantly scorched my throat and soothed the gnawing ache in my stomach.
“How did your mother perish?”
I didn’t like talking about it, so I let the image from the police report flash inside my head. I’d seen a copy hidden in my father’s desk years after it happened. How he got the photo, I didn’t know.
“Unpleasant.” As usual, Jack’s eyes were a void of emotion. He was always paying attention to everything around him, but he was completely detached. Unless it’s anger. I could almost understand.
“Some rich asshole ran her over with his car. He was drunk. His lawyers got him off with traffic school.”
Jack bobbed his head. “Sounds like my kind of people.”
“What?” I snapped.
He looked down at me with shrugged brows. “You don’t honestly believe I am one of the good guys, do you, Jeni?”
I sighed with contempt. “Why are you like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re trying to convince me you’re evil while also demanding I help you. It’s counterproductive.”
“I want there to be no misunderstandings on your part about whom you are dealing with. I am not a good man, Jeni. And I am here for one thing and one thing only.”
“Which is?”
“Revenge.”
“I don’t fucking get it. You say you can’t remember who—”
He held up his hand to silence me. “We have gone through this already.”
He was right; we had. Someone had taken away his memories. Someone had wronged him. He knew that much. He also seemed very certain that he was evil.
“What if you’re wrong?” I asked. “What if that feeling inside is just your pain? What if you’re like me?” Genuinely and irrevocably pissed off at the world.
“It changes nothing, Jeni,” he said calmly. “Either way, I will find out who threw me to the bottom of the ocean inside a safe, where I drowned and came back to life, only to repeat the act over and over again. I will find out why. Then I will kill them.”
Oh God. Was that what he went through? Given all the crazy shit happening, I hadn’t given it much thought. I sort of just assumed he’d been put in that metal box and died once. It never occurred to me that he’d kept coming back to life inside that watery tomb.
An image of him gasping for air and choking on water filled my mind. Horrifying. “What happens when this is all over?”
“I will take my rightful place among the dead.”
“You honestly think you’re undead?” I wanted to roll my eyes but wouldn’t dare.
“I am much more than that.” He opened his mind, flooding my head with not so much memories but emotions. Or memories of emotions? I had no words to describe it other than his feelings were not the kind a person had when wounds were fresh. They were old, older than my scars about my mother. They were what a person felt after the dust settled and left an indelible mark, like falling off your bike as a kid. The details were fuzzy, but deep inside your brain, the pain lingered. Only, for him, the distance felt greater, the memories older.
“How do you do that?” I asked. “The mind-sharing thing?”
He polished off his bourbon and poured another. He wasn’t going to answer.