33. Clara
Chapter 33
Clara
T he fry in my mouth catches as I try to swallow it down, a choked cough turning into manic laughter.
Forever? I met these guys less than three months ago, and I’m being offered forever by the one guy who resents me being here? How? What? Why?
My thoughts spiral around my hysterics, Trips glaring at me, fury lining his features. “It’s not a joke, Clara.”
I shake my head, trying to get this emotional overload under control. “I know,” I giggle, unable to stop.
“Then why the fuck are you laughing?”
I try another sip of my drink, the sweet, spicy burn turning my cackles into snickers. “You pretty much just proposed to me, Trips.”
His brows drop, followed swiftly by a look of pure horror. “That is not what this is. Not at all. It’s a fucking business. ”
I snort, my eyes watering. “It might be a business, but you just promised me forever, with money as no issue, no secrets, just a lifetime of the five of us together.”
He watches me as I continue to chortle, my food forgotten. He shovels two huge bites of his shepherd’s pie into his mouth, nostrils flaring. Yanking a $100 bill out of his wallet, he tosses it on the table, before forking in one last bite and standing. “Consider the offer, Clara. I’ll see you back at the house.”
He’s gone before I’ve even wiped the tears out of my eyes. Forever. He’s crazy.
Taking a few bites of the fish, I discover the edges are perfectly crispy. It’s a shame Trips is missing out. I try a bite of his shepherd’s pie, and there are these tiny little onions—so good.
I’m alternating between the last few nibbles of both dishes, as I’ve been on a steady diet of yogurt and peanut butter without Walker, when someone slides into Trips’ chair.
“Clara, it’s been a while.”
Officer Tom Reed might be wearing jeans and a plaid shirt, but he’s unmistakable. I take my time chewing the beef I’ve pulled from Trips’ plate, needing a moment to think. He looks younger sitting across from me—probably not even thirty yet. Swallowing, I wipe my mouth with my napkin. “Hello.”
He eyes my half-drunk whiskey ginger but says nothing about it. “How are things?”
I shrug, dipping a fry and swirling it on the plate, not wanting to talk with my mouth full. “Things are fine. What brings you here? To my table specifically? ”
He smiles, and it looks genuine, unlike all the practiced faces he gave me when I was locked in a box with him. “Would you believe happenstance?”
No. No, I would not. He shakes his head, reading my answer on my face. He throws up his hands. “It’s the honest truth. I was picking up some takeout and saw you and Westerhouse over here.”
“Trips left a while ago. Your food must be cold waiting for you.”
“I ate at the bar.”
I nibble at my fry, thoroughly slathered in ketchup, chasing it with my drink. Tom raises a brow but lets me have my alcohol. “I thought you took care of my stalker problem?” I ask.
He laughs. “You guys netted that up nicely for us, didn’t you?”
I eat another fry.
“You’re right. None of my business. Your ex was a piece of work. It’s better he’s off the street. But, you know, I could have sworn you and Westerhouse being a thing was just some weird piece of this chess game you all are playing with the law. My money’s on Lee or Pierce as your actual boyfriend.”
Tom leans back in his chair, obviously enjoying the sound of his own voice. “Then I see you and Westerhouse here, on a Friday, obviously on a date, having some sort of serious conversation. I’ll admit I stayed to watch—I was curious. Then you start laughing, say something about Westerhouse proposing, and he stomps off. So maybe there really is something there? ”
He waits, wanting some confirmation from me. I give him nothing, trying to piece together why he’s even talking to me. He shrugs. “Fine then. Maybe there is something there, maybe there isn’t. So just in case, I figured I owed you a warning, as your ex on a platter led us to four other fucking pedophiles. Once we’ve rounded up the whole ring, I’m going to be front-page news. I’m even being promoted to a regional task force, all because your case landed on my desk. So here’s your reward: don’t get mixed up with the Westerhouse family. They’re rotten to the core, poisoned crown and all. And that apple didn’t fall far from the tree.”
I stab another tiny onion, chewing it, the gravy salty and full of some herb that Walker could name just by smelling the plate. “Thanks for the warning,” I say.
He stands up, offering his hand to shake. I wipe my sweaty palm on my jeans before clasping his. “Be careful,” he says.
“Always.”
He scoffs, strolling out of the restaurant. I watch, making sure he’s gone before I turn back to my plate. A shuddering laugh-cry escapes, but I bottle it back up. This isn’t the place.
Twice in less than a week, people in power, people who should see right through me, think I’m in on this, that I’m some kind of criminal mastermind. That I’m a part of this team instead of the fucking seam ripper tearing the damn thing apart while trying to find a safe little corner to stitch myself into.
Shit shit shit.
I’m just figuring out who I don’t want to be .
Can these near strangers somehow see who I’m becoming? Do they know where I fit? They respect this version of me. They think I’m smart, strong, a leader.
If only I felt that way.
My dad shows up Wednesday afternoon to bring me home for Thanksgiving, parking awkwardly next to the new giant white panel van that showed up a few days ago. It somehow has Illinois plates.
Because I haven’t agreed to an official “probationary period,” I don’t know anything else about the trip to Chicago this weekend. I mean, besides the existence of this new van and the fact that the guys have been spending every free moment outside working on it.
I haul my backpack and a paper bag of toiletries and shoes out to my dad’s old beater. It’s a competition between his car and Jansen’s for which one would be more likely to leave parts trailing it down the highway. My dad hops out, pulling me into a hug, my bags banging against his legs.
“Clara-girl! How’s my big-time college girl doing?” He gets my bags, tossing them into the back. I slide into the passenger seat while he hurries to the other side of the car. “How’s your semester going? Are you acing all your classes like always?”
I laugh. “Of course, Dad. You know I won’t let anyone beat me. ”
He squeezes me one more time. “I’m so glad you’re coming home for the weekend. Your mother’s been wanting to talk to you. It’s time the two of you clear the air.”
“I’m not the one who needs to apologize, Dad.”
He tsks. “You know how your mother gets. Just say the words and you’ll be fine.”
I shake my head, watching as we speed away from the house. No one’s there to see me off. No one even checked in on me for the last couple of days. I never expected to feel lonely in a house full of people I care about, but there you have it. I was.
My dad chatters about the liquor store on the way home, the rush they’re expecting this afternoon, the new personalities he has to manage. I smile at the right points and laugh when it’s expected, but my mind is back in my room, listening to the creaks and groans of the house as the guys get ready for Sunday.
And I want to be there.
“Dad—what makes someone a good person?”
My dad stops his story, glancing at me before turning back to the road. “That’s a tough one, Clara-girl. Any reason you’re asking?”
I watch the stripes on the road flashing by. “I don’t know. I just feel like maybe we can’t tell who’s good and who’s bad, not really, not without knowing them. So how do you know? How can you tell?”
He peeks at me, taps the wheel with his pointer finger, then swallows, his face grim. “Did I ever tell you about your grandfather? ”
My dad never talks about my grandfather. He’d let Abuelita talk about him, but Dad never jumped in. “No.”
His hands are tight on the steering wheel, his eyes locked on the road in front of him. He doesn’t want to talk about this.
I’m about to tell him to forget it, to tell him some stupid story about Emma’s sister, but he dives in before I can form the words. “My dad, he was a hard man. What mattered to him was that we were the perfect family. We had to wear the right clothes, always say ‘yes sir, no sir’ when we talked to him, always had to present our best selves. And we were praised for it. ‘Oh, those McElroys are always so put together, so polite, so…good.’”
Dad blinks back tears, some memory catching him. Two exits later, he sighs, clearing his throat. “But we weren’t any of those things. We were terrified of our dad. Anything we did wrong, any sign that we didn’t fit into the perfect image of his family, we were punished. And I don’t mean we were grounded.”
He shakes his head, tears shining unshed in his eyes. “I could deal with it. I thought if I took the brunt of it, then Mama, my little sisters, they’d be safe. But of course, that’s not what happened. One morning, I found my little sister Tiffany in the bathroom, bruises on her wrists, on her arms. She wasn’t even crying. She told me she’d lost the present she was supposed to give her teacher for Christmas, but she hadn’t told Dad because she didn’t want to get in trouble again. Again, Clara.” He blinks back tears. “How many times, and I hadn’t noticed?”
He clears his throat. “Dad ran into the teacher at the grocery store and mentioned the gift to her. Once he realized it never made it, he lost it. He screamed at Tiffany all night, he shook her, he told her she was a failure, that she’d shamed the family. My sweet little sister had bruises, was icing them in secret on the bathroom floor after being kept up all night, all because she lost a stupid gift.”
He glances at me. “She was only seven. She’d just learned how to read, for God’s sake. So what if she lost some fucking fancy pen? God, I never forgave him for that, the way he took the sparkle out of my little sisters’ eyes. Both of them. Over and over again, their lights kept being dimmed.”
I curl up in my seat, scared of where this story is going. “As I got older, I got madder, Clara. I realized my family wasn’t perfect, despite what everyone else thought. My dad, even if everyone thought he was great, he was a bad man. And I just wanted someone to see it, to tell me I wasn’t crazy, that we really were broken, hurting, literally bleeding to be something we could never ever be.”
He pauses, signaling a lane change, working up to the next part of his story. “When I was fifteen, my dad went out of town to deal with some issue with his parents’ estate. I called my aunt, my mom’s sister. I told her what had been going on, asked her to come, to rescue us, to fix it. And Adriana was there, braiding my sisters’ hair, talking to my mom in Spanish so fast I couldn’t always follow it. But at the end of the week, nothing changed. My mom refused to ‘uproot’ us, she said that I was exaggerating, that she and my dad had normal fights, just like any couple. That us kids were fine, that we were safe.
“When my dad came back, he figured out what had happened. I don’t know if he guessed or if Mama let something slip, but either way, that night was the last I spent in that house. It was long, it was bad, and even now I don’t like to remember it. The next morning, I dragged myself out to the street, forced myself to my feet, spit blood in the gutter and vowed I would never go back until my father was gone.”
He holds my gaze. “I kept that promise, Clara.”
“Oh, Dad.” I reach for one of his hands, and he lets me take it.
“I left my sisters there, my mom there, left them with him and just ran. And I’ll pay for that choice for the rest of my life. My mom forgave me. I still pray that my sisters will let me back into their lives. I did a lot of things, Clara, after I ran away. Things that should have sent me to jail, things that I regret with every bone in my body. I stole—food, clothes, drugs, and so many damn cars. I camped in empty houses, trashing them. One after another, I saw friends of mine overdose, go to jail, sometimes just disappear—there one day, gone the next.
“But then I met your mom. She saved me, Clara.”
Tears streak down my cheeks, imagining my dad, younger than me now, so alone, so scared, so broken. This rock in my life, set on such a shaky foundation.
My dad pulls his hand from mine, downshifting as he zips onto the exit. “Here’s the thing—after all that, all I did, all the shitty choices I made, I don’t know if I’m a good person or a bad person, Clara-girl. I can’t guess how God will judge me. I know I try every day to be a good man, to make loving choices. But I’m not all good or all bad. And as much as I hate to say it, we’re all bits of good and bad, Clara, even you. You’re a light, mija, but lights need shadows to shine. ”
I wish I could reach over and hug him. He shoots me a sad smile, wiping a tear from my cheek. “It was a long time ago, Clara-girl. But you’re right. You can’t always tell what’s rotten from the outside. Sometimes you can only find out by being in the middle of the stench. But you find a center that holds? One that doesn’t cut you down, but builds you up? That’s nothing but good, Clara. You hold on to that as tight as you can. That’s a safe place to grow, to change, to heal.”
The silence in the car is thick as we whip into the driveway. I look over at my dad, a little grayer, a little more stooped than he is in my memory, and I realize how little I know about him, about my mom. How even in the middle of this family, I can’t tell good from bad, not really. “Thanks, Dad. For sharing.”
He clears his throat, nodding, before getting out of the car, a long moment passing before he pulls my stuff from the backseat. I give him some space, fiddling with my purse until he makes it into the house.
A place that builds me up, that doesn’t cut me down? A place built by four criminals, circling around me in their own ways, at their own pace, but circling, protecting, giving me room to grow. To heal. To change.
To become.