Chapter Fifty-One #2
"You'll find out soon enough." I think it was meant to be comforting, but my stomach twisted with renewed dread even as Barrett reached for the cordless phone he had grabbed when we had first entered the office, pulling it apart, looking for listening devices.
I had yet to witness a full sweep, which he, apparently, did weekly, but I knew I would see soon since he mumbled about teaching me how to do it now that I was working with him.
I, for one, thought it was a little overkill, but I guessed it was kind of like how I double-checked my locks and my stove knobs before bed, even if I hadn't even used my stove that day and I always locked my door behind me. We all had our little safety quirks.
"Here. Call your mom. Then you can go meet your dad."
"I'm going to need my car," I reminded him, knowing he was down a vehicle.
"I'll be here." With that, he sat back down at his laptop, clicking around.
For all intents and purposes, I understood that I was no longer there to him. Which I actually preferred since the idea of someone eavesdropping on a conversation that wasn't going to be easy for me was disconcerting.
My mother, as expected, took the news better than I predicted my father would.
Her concerns were more about the lack of security—financially—in private investigating.
Which seemed like a legitimate concern. Barrett and I hadn't even discussed salaries—a huge oversight on my part that I knew was going to be awkward—for me, at least - to broach.
But was reminded four times during a twenty-minute phone conversation how important it was to know what I was going to be bringing in so I could adjust my lifestyle accordingly or—should the price be too low even to live off of—then I needed to consider other options
The conversation concluded with a demand to know more about That Barrett Anderson Guy because my mother had an uncanny ability to know when I was interested in someone, and she was picking up on something in the way I had talked about him.
I promised to tell her everything once I cleared the air with my father—to which she begrudgingly admitted that maybe he was right to have been worried about me after all.
It cost her to say that.
I figured it for a small bit of progress.
I never saw us all gathered around the Thanksgiving table, but I liked the idea of a future where my mother wasn't full of bitterness about my father.
"Love you too," I told her, ending the call, turning back to find Barrett still in his own world. "I, ah, I have to get going."
"I know," he agreed, giving me a jerky nod as I found my purse, lifted the keys from where he had tossed them on a stack of files, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot.
"Alright, ah, bye," I told him as I got to the door.
"Clarke," he called, making me turn back, finding his gaze on me.
"Yeah?"
"Come back here after."
A love note it was not, but I felt a warmth replace the cold discomfort that had been in my belly the moment before.
"I will."
With that, I got in my car, taking deep breaths the whole short drive to my father's place, wondering if his anger had dulled a bit with some time and space.
I was about to find out.
I stood out front of his door, listening to the shuffling inside as he made his way across the living space to open the door for me.
It never really occurred to me before that I always rang my father's bell while I usually just let myself into my mother's house.
I had a key. I had a bedroom somewhere within, still decorated how it had been when I'd been a teenager.
Yet it never felt right to walk in like it was partially mine.
It never bothered me until that moment, realizing just how deep the rift went, wondering if maybe the idea that there were some cracks that couldn't be filled was wrong, that if you were determined enough, you could find enough concrete to fill those cracks.
Maybe this was a step in that direction.
"Are those cheesesteaks I smell?" I asked as soon as the door was opened, sending the intoxicating smell wafting through the small space and right up my nose.
"Like old times," he agreed, leading me inside.
It never really changed much.
Old dark brown carpeting, wood paneling on the walls, dark curtains on the windows.
The whole place felt almost claustrophobically gloomy.
There was a giant TV on a cabinet across from two La-Z-Boy recliners with a small drink table between them, a little two-seater wood dining table near the U-shaped kitchen with mismatched appliances—white stove, black dishwasher, stainless steel refrigerator.
It was clear a woman's touch had never landed anywhere in this space.
I suddenly felt a little guilty that I had never attempted to encourage him to spruce the place up a bit.
I imagined it had to be a little depressing to live somewhere so dark and sparse all the time.
Then again, it was likely all he ever knew since he and my mom divorced.
"Sit," he demanded, waving toward the table as he went into the kitchen, coming back with two plates of cheesesteaks and fries.
He made a second trip for ketchup and drinks—a beer for him, a bottle of Vitamin Water for me.
Because he refused to accept that I was an adult and let me share a drink with him.
"Alright. Start talking," he demanded, not touching his food as I tore into mine.
Taking a deep breath, I went back to the beginning. "I know you don't want to hear this, but it all starts with the police academy..."
Once I started, there was no stopping it. He sat there in gallant, patient silence even as my story curved backward and forward, backing itself into corners, just a nonstop stream of consciousness spewing before I finally got to the parts about Barrett.
Which, oddly, was where I got a little tight-lipped.
I had no idea if it was because I was unsure of the situation myself, or because I knew my father already felt he had enough reason to be pissed with Barrett, and I didn't want to give him any more kindling for the fire.
"Honestly, I think he saw that I was spiraling, that I was in too deep, that I didn't know what I was getting myself into.
" And, admittedly, now I could see that all of this was true.
I'd been stubborn and foolish and would have likely gotten myself killed on my own.
It was a sharp little pill to swallow, but some medicine was unpleasant, but necessary, that way.
"He was stepping in to try to... protect me. Minimize the damage."
To that, I paused, watching as my father's eyes went thoughtful, his air sighing out of his nose. "I guess I can see it that way," he agreed. "And I have to respect a man who knows when he is in over his head, someone who isn't too proud to call in reinforcements."
"I think Barrett is an easy person to misunderstand. He can come off as distant and cocky to some people. But he seems to be very in touch with his strengths along with his weaknesses. He doesn't try to pretend to be some ass-kicking badass. He leaves that to his brother and his former coworkers."
"And now my ass-kicking little girl."
"I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm not so little anymore."
"You'll always be my little girl, kiddo.
That's how parenting works. You might be grown, and I can see that, but sometimes I still look at you and see the six-year-old who came home with a fat lip because she got into it with a group of boys on the playground who told her she couldn't play cops and robbers with them because she was a girl. "
"I wiped the floor with them," I admitted, still proud of that memory even though my instructors sat me down and lectured me about how my training was supposed to be used only as protection, not to start fights.
"You sure did. I got five angry calls from moms that night."
"You never told me that!" I said, smiling as I sat back in my chair, shoulders light. I don't think I realized until that moment just how much I had been carrying around. The lies, the evasions, the guilt surrounding them.
"Oh, yeah. I was told to get a hold of my 'little hellion' before you became a menace. In retrospect, maybe they had a point. You were a pain-in-the-ass teenager."
"I was... spirited."
"Oh, is that what we call 'stubborn as an ornery ox?'"
To that, I let out a laugh, one that he joined in.
And I decided I liked this. The connection.
The openness. Gone was the awkwardness that many of our interactions had, filling silences with talk of the weather, the news, some sports team or another, talk about car shows. This was easier, more natural.
But then my father's face fell, lost all its humor, and looked downright ghostly even. And for someone who often had a bit of a ruddy complexion, that was really saying something.
I honestly had a stray, scared thought that maybe he was having a heart attack or something.
Until his head lifted, his gaze sad.
"You've been honest with me," he started, something in his tone making me tense up, sit straighter in my chair. "It's my turn to be honest with you. Whatever the consequences."
With that, he pushed his chair back, got up, left the table, and walked down the hall.
I had no idea what he was talking about, what he might have been keeping from me. Or why he would keep anything from me.
But even in my ignorance, my pulse quickened; the food I had just gotten in my stomach sloshed around ominously.
Perhaps something in me knew that what was coming was not good, that it was going to change everything again, throw everything off balance.
But before I could analyze it too much, he was making his way back, sitting down in his seat, looking down at a picture in his hand for a long moment before passing it across the table toward me, picture side down.
I don't know what I had been thinking the picture could have been of. Possibly a woman he'd had an affair with, maybe the tipping point to my mother's tolerance before filing for divorce.
It certainly wasn't about what I would actually find when I flipped the picture over.
I saw my father first, a little younger, about ten years back, though he looked mostly the same, his face full of harder lines from the long days at work, the stress, but still him.
And smiling, which was a bit off-putting in and of itself since he wasn't a man who smiled easily.
Though, when he did, it was a snapshot-worthy sight.
He was standing on the deck of a boat, the sky cotton candy blue behind him, full of puffy clouds and waveless seas.
It took a long moment to see there was another person there, that my father had his arm thrown over around someone's shoulders.
But it wasn't a woman.
It was a man.
And perhaps more shocking, it was someone I recognized.
"No," I hissed, my voice a vicious, accusatory thing as my head lifted, as my eyes found my father watching me. "Tell me this is just a coincidence, Dad. Tell me you are just showing me this because of what I just told you, no other reason."
But he couldn't tell me that.
I knew it as I watched his eyes wince, as his shoulder crept forward, curling inward, making him smaller than usual.
Guilt.
Guilt did that to people.
No.
God, no.
"Tell me you didn't have a hand in it, Dad."
But even as the words were leaving my mouth, I knew he couldn't tell me that.
I knew he'd had a hand in it.
He and the man in the picture.
Murphy.
The instructor at the academy who made my life a living hell. Who had forced me out when he couldn't get me to quit.
He was good friends with my father.
"I got a call some months ago, asking why I hadn't told him my little girl joined the academy."
Like a little kid who didn't want to listen when their parents sat them down to tell them that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the tooth fairy were not real, I wanted to stick my fingers in my ears and hum, drowning out this reality.
"Dad... no."
"I didn't know. And, well, you knew how I felt about you following my path..."
"It was my choice to make!" I shrieked, slamming my fist down on the table, watching our drinks jump at the impact. "You had no right to take that choice away from me, to make him make my life hell, to have him lie about me and get me kicked out. You had no fucking right."
I don't know when I pushed away from the table, got to my feet, but I found myself pacing, the anger too big for my body, needing a way out, and moving was helping.
"I know that."
"But you did it anyway. How could you justify that? How could you think you could look me in the face again?"
To that, his hand raised, scrubbing down his face, at a loss for what to say, knowing there was nothing he could say.
"I saw how bad it was after. When you disappeared. I thought... I thought you'd had some sort of break from the failure. That was why I had gone to Barrett. But it was too late then. The damage was already done."
"Yeah, it was," I agreed, grabbing my purse.
"Clarke, don't leave like this..."
"I need to think," I told him, unable to do so clearly with the betrayal taking over every cell in my body. "I'll talk to you later," I added on my way out the door.
I drove on autopilot, everything in me oddly numb the whole way across town.
Until I stepped into the office.
And Barrett's intense gaze found me and held.
Then it all hit me.
Yet another disappointment from my father.
Another crack in our relationship.
Another thing to come between us.
They all sucked in their own ways, little issues I carried with me daily, sometimes without even realizing it until something happened to force me to confront the abandonment, the distrust, the feeling that men could not be depended on.
But this one, this one was different.
It made all the others seem small, inconsequential in comparison.
He'd taken my dream and stomped on it.
He'd had someone beat my spirit down day in and day out.
And when that failed, he had him lie about my integrity, making me look bad in front of all the people I had been trying to prove myself to.
How could you trust someone after something like that?
In that moment, I was one hundred percent positive that you simply couldn't.
And the grief of that realization brought me to my knees just a few feet inside the door.