42. Indie
Chapter 42
Indie
W e’re trapped here. There’s no leaving this house any time soon.
There’s a lull in the storm, but according to the news, it’s only going to last for a few hours so there’s no point in going out there and clearing the roads just to have to do it all over again after the next leg of the storm. Apparently, we’re to expect similar snow fall for the next few days.
At some point, Tripp had passed out and we’d moved him to the couch where Ram and Beau had doctored his feet. I’d tried to move, but his arms had stayed tight around me, refusing to let go, so I’d ended up having to lay on the couch with him. Any time I tried to move, he’d stir and start getting worked up again. Eventually, Ram told me to just stay there, so I did. It isn’t until the next layer of snow starts falling that I’m able to remove myself from his arms and stretch. My hips scream at me for the strange position I’d held for too long.
Beau had brought a bag of frozen peas over for my neck, but I know that it’s going to be sore for a while. When I’m finally able to look in the mirror, I can see the bruises beginning to ring my neck, in the very distinct shape of fingers.
“He shouldn’t have done that,” Ram rasps, his eyes on the bruises as I touch my fingers to them. “He’s never gotten that bad.”
“He needs help,” I murmur. My eyes flick to the bottles and bottles of liquor lined up in the cabinet. “Real help.”
Ram’s eyes follow mine. “If I dump those out, he’ll just go find more. I’ve tried that before.”
“If he has access to it, he’s going to keep drinking it,” I argue, but then I sigh. “I understand he won’t quit until he wants to. I. . . I’ve seen it before.”
Ram tilts his head. “What do you mean?”
Tripp sits up with a start on the couch, a horrified scream on his lips from whatever nightmare was haunting him. Beau rushes over to him, his eyes hard, his arms outstretched. Like Tripp is a dangerous animal that needs calming.
My neck throbs and reminds me that. . . he is.
Tripp’s shout cuts off as he seems to realize where he is, his eyes wide. And then he presses a hand to his forehead as the lights register. “The lights,” he groans. “They’re so fucking bright.”
Ram flicks the switch, leaving the living room lit by only the yellow glow of the table lamps rather than the bright white overhead lights.
“My head,” he groans, and then he seems to notice his feet. “Ow. What the fuck?” Beau had bandaged them up. They’d been cut to hell by the glass. We’re lucky he didn’t suffer from frostbite after being in the snow, but Ram had managed to wrestle him inside fast enough.
“What do you remember?” Beau asks, his voice vibrating with anger.
Tripp picks up on it, and his face twists with confusion. I’ve never heard Beau sound angry. In fact, he’s always happy, always teasing, so to see this man angry on my behalf hurts my heart.
“Uh. . . I woke up in my room at some point. Everyone was asleep.” Tripp rumbles. He rubs his chest, his confusion growing. “I came out to the kitchen. I. . .” His face twists. “I pulled out a bottle of whiskey. And then. . .” He shakes his head. “I drank just the one I think.”
“Try three,” Beau grunts. “Three bottles.”
Tripp blinks. “Three,” he repeats. He wiggles his toes and winces. “What happened to my feet?”
Ram steps around the couch and crosses his arms. “You woke everyone up rummaging through the kitchen, breaking all the plates while you looked for the ring.”
Tripp frowns. “But. . . I tossed it.”
“Which was exactly the problem,” Ram grunts. “Because you were past the point of understanding. You kept looking for the ring.”
“The glass? My feet?” he asks. “How bad did it get?”
Beau’s face twists. “Why don’t you ask Indie, fucker?”
Tripp’s eyes widen. “Why? What. . . what did I do?”
Ram reaches for me where I stand in the kitchen, lingering back in the shadows, knowing that this isn’t going to be an easy conversation. I hesitate before slowly padding out to the living room and into the lamp light.
Tripp’s eyes latch onto my face first, taking note of my somber expression. I’m not angry with him. That would be wasted, but I am disappointed that he’s gotten this deep. Pain demands to be felt, and pushing it aside, pushing it away, it does nothing but build up. He’s going to have to face it soon.
Ram flicks the light back on and Tripp winces, shielding his eyes like the sun is overhead. But the light is necessary for him to see.
His eyes drop to my neck, and I know he sees them, the large finger marks there. He drops his hand, and a look of true horror covers his face. “Your neck?—”
“You almost fucking killed her!” Beau snarls. “She was seconds away from passing out before we got you away from her!”
He leaps to his feet clumsily and takes a step back. His eyes well. “ I did that?”
I nod. “You were incoherent. I got too close. I’m not mad?—”
“I fucking hurt you!” he shouts. “Don’t make excuses for me!” He slaps his hand to his forehead. “I could have killed you,” he whispers, horrified.
Ram tilts his chin up. “I think it’s time you get help, hermano .”
“Help?” Tripp repeats. His eyes trail to the kitchen shelf where liquor bottles line them. His expression changes from horror to resolution. “Get them out.”
“It’s not the flip of a switch—” Ram starts.
“I understand that!” Tripp snarls. “Get them out first. I can’t be trusted around them. We figure the rest out as it comes.”
He starts to hyperventilate, and I realize the strength it took for him to say that. He can’t pour it out. He doesn’t trust himself.
The next few hours, Tripp sits on the couch, his back ramrod straight as he listens to us pour out bottle after bottle into the sink. Thirty bottles of whiskey. Thirteen bottles of rum. Three bottles of vodka. The last ten beers in the fridge. Naomi’s moonshine.
The fucking rubbing alcohol goes in the safe in the living room after Ram changes the combination. That was at my request. I’d watched my dad struggle with this, watched him try it when there was nothing else in the house. This is the beginning, but at some point, things will become more of a challenge.
When we finish, we all sit back down in the living room, silent. Tripp’s eyes flick to me and hold, his gaze haunted by his actions.
“I’m sorry I hurt you,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t blame you,” I admit. “Not really.”
He shakes his head. “How can you be so calm?” he croaks. “I’m a piece of shit?—”
“You weren’t choking me. It wasn’t me you saw,” I say, shrugging. “You thought I was your dad.”
His eyes darken and he looks down in shame. “I’m broken. . .”
“You’re hurting,” I correct him. “You haven’t addressed your trauma and it’s eating you alive.” I stand up and move over to him, tilting his chin up until he looks at me. “You’re trying to fight back against something that you already won a long time ago, Tripp. You won’t get anything else from him. Tearing yourself up over that does nothing but prolong your pain.”
“How do I move past it?” he croaks. “I’m not a whole person anymore. Parts of me died in that house. Those parts aren’t ever coming back.”
“Forgive that little boy for what he had to do to survive.” I glance between them. “All three of you survived that house against all odds. I don’t even know the full extent what happened, but the picture is painted.” I take Tripp’s hand. “You are a good man, Tripp Savage.”
His face scrunches up. “How can you say that with the marks of my fingers around your neck?”
I sigh. “I worked halfway around the world with people who woke up screaming, thinking there were bombs dropping on us. Many of them would lunge for anyone trying to calm them down. War is a brutal thing, and those brave people were there, stuck in it, having signed up for something they had no idea about.” I straighten, my hand staying on his. “Most of them were kids coming from bad situations to begin with, coming from poverty, and a lot of them thought that was the only choice they had. They were following orders, but it haunted them there and it followed them home.” I meet his eyes. “PTSD is like that. Trauma, especially in childhood, doesn’t go away just because you move out of that house. It doesn’t disappear just because he forgets who you are. Pushing those feelings inside a box?” I shake my head. “They only leak out the sides, Tripp. You have to face them. You have to give that little boy who grew up in the shadow of this family’s legacy the chance to heal.”
Tears trickle down his cheeks and he wipes at them roughly, as if he’s trying to hide them. This is a man used to repressing his emotions, who sought healing in a bottle instead of the support system he has. And now here I am, reaching out my hand with his marks on my neck.
“How did you get so smart?” he grunts, sniffing a little.
I smile gently at him. “I just know a thing or two about this.” When he tilts his head, I sigh. “Like you, I’m still trying to heal the little girl inside me. I grew up. . .well, I had a good life even if it was simple. We lived in a two-bedroom apartment in the city, just down the street from the Chinese food market my parents opened. Things were good. I had dreams about being a journalist. I was getting good grades.” I sigh. “And then when I turned fifteen, everything changed.”
Beau sits down on the couch beside Tripp and loops his arm around him. “What happened?” he asks me.
“My mom got sick. Cancer. It was fast, too. I worked at the store while my dad took her to hospital visits, but it didn’t matter. A year later, she died, and my dad was never the same.” I look away then, my own memories haunting me. “He started drinking, and at first, that’s all it was. He was sad. He was grieving. I understood. I was grieving, too, because I lost my mother, but Dad? He lost the love of his life. So, I worked at the store. I kept it open after school as best as I could. And things were surviving. Until it became too much for me to handle. Six months after I took over, the store began to fail, and I knew we were going to lose it. The men in suits started showing up after I pleaded with my dad to wake up. He’d be drunk in the back room, raging at the shelves, wasting product we needed to survive. There were a few times where I caught him with a handful of pills. Once, I caught him with a noose around his neck. He didn’t stop drinking, but. . . the business got better after the men in suits conducted their business. He kept me out of it, and I didn’t ask. When I finally graduated high school, I took off and I didn’t look back.” I look at them. “I stayed away until last year, when I came home briefly while I was looking for a new job in the States. Being a war correspondent was what I needed before, but I grew out of the need to chase a high.” This time, it’s my tears that fall as I recall the memory. “I went over to have dinner with my dad. To celebrate that he’d been sober for a whole year. He was going to the meetings, got his token.” I laugh, but it doesn’t feel genuine. “He was so proud.”
Ram sits next to me and wraps me in his arms. “You don’t have to tell us.”
“I want to,” I admit, my eyes flicking to Tripp’s. If it can help him, I’d tell him everything. I’d share every memory with him of finding my dad passed out in a pool of his own vomit. I’d share how I’d had to go to the funeral home alone to collect the urn because Dad had been too drunk to come with me. Whatever it takes to show him that you can heal.
“While having dinner, the feds showed up. Arrested the both of us. I had to testify in court against him once they finally realized I didn’t know what was going on.” I straighten. “Apparently, my dad had been laundering money for The Crows. That’s how the store survived. Not because he got his shit together. My mom was a good person, a sweet person. And when she died, she took my dad’s good with her. Part of me was angry with her for a long time because of that.” I shake my head. “As if she could help that she got cancer.”
“The phone calls,” Ram murmurs.
I nod. “He calls all the time. I never answer. There’s nothing left to say.”
Tripp rubs his chest. “Fuck. It’s going to hurt, ain’t it?”
“Yeah,” I admit, smiling at him. “But I promise, on the other side of that, it’s worth it.”
As if the world decided that was the perfect moment, the power cuts out, and we plunge into darkness.
“Don’t worry. There’s a generator,” Ram announced cheerfully. The power kicks back on. “See. What did I—” The power cuts again. “Well, shit.”