CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
JAKE
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The weekend was bad. Twice I had to take off to find my father. One night it took me over an hour. He didn’t go to his usual joints, and by the time I found him, I was furious.
The hurt in Caylee’s eyes as I left was both frustrating and difficult as it nudged up against the rules of my family. Which is probably why, when I half carried the drunk asshole inside, I started yelling at my mom.
“I’m sick of this! Put a damn tracker on him or something. Don’t let him out of the house.”
“Don’t you use that voice with me, young man,” Mom yelled back. “You know this isn’t my fault.”
Fuck.
“Wown’t swpeak to yo mwotha like wthat,” Dad drawled, wiping the saliva on the arm of his shirt.
“Get in the shower.” I pushed him towards the stairs, hating my fucking life. I sighed, dropping my head, my hands planted on my hips. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
“Language, Jake,” Mom said, wrapping her arms around her dressing gown.
My head lifted. “Really, Mom? You’re worried about my language when I end up here at least three times a week dragging that excuse of a husband home filled with liquor. I’m surprised his liver is still functioning.”
“Can you blame him?”
“Yes.”
We both stared at one another, the memory of my sister flashing before us. How I never stopped Dad from driving that night, when I could have.
Should have.
How I lived. How she didn’t.
Can I blame him? No. No I can’t. Not when I was there, too.
Dad has to live with the fact that he was the one behind the wheel when it happened.
But I need to live with the fact that I lied to the police.
That he never did time because I stayed silent when Dad opened the glove box, pulled out his stash of vodka and smashed it over the dashboard.
Making it look like the smell of alcohol was from the accident.
Becca had gone flying out of the car.
We’d survived because we were in the front seats with airbags.
Becca hadn’t wanted to go to the store and refused to put her seatbelt on. I’d done nothing but sit sulking in the front seat, annoyed by my drunken father forcing us to go with him.
It was a perfect storm.
The other driver was also drunk.
He was the one who was charged with manslaughter. My father was never tested because I lied.
I told the police I was holding the bottle, and it smashed.
Correction: Dad said that’s what happened, and the cop asked me if that was true.
“Yes, sir.”
That was my lie.
From that day on, the motherfucker has gone out every night drinking and driving. It’s only a matter of time before he kills someone again. Which is why when Mom calls, I get in the car and find him. Then drive him home.
I have to live with the guilt and shame. I won’t have another life on my conscience.
If I’d spoken up (which I could have, I was fourteen, old enough to have made Dad stop and wait for Becca to put her seat belt on) she would still be alive.
Christ, the nightmares I’ve had over the years. The sound of the brakes screeching, the metal grinding, the glass smashing.
Her scream.
The blood.
Seeing her little body lying off in the distance.
I threw up that day, and I’ve done it many times since remembering the scene of the crime.
I don’t want Caylee to know any of this. I don’t want anyone to know. I want it to go away.
I want my father to fucking die.
And ask any son how it must feel to think that about his father. It’s soul destroying.
I love him.
I just don’t love his behavior.
It’s destroyed so much. Our family. Our relation. The lives we could have lived.
All because he fucking drinks.
I will never forgive myself for not doing something, anything differently to change the outcome.
I lost Becca.
Every day I wonder what she would look like now, if she had lived. I doubt she’d be wearing her bright pink butterfly necklace still, but whenever I see one, I think of her.
She always made me play GI Joe with her dumb dolls while she dressed up Barbies in tissue paper wedding dresses. I told her it was stupid, but I still did it, holding Joe at the altar while Becca said all the vows.
“I do,” I’d mutter as if I hated it the entire time.
I didn’t love it, and I preferred playing with my friends, but I loved my sister from the moment she was born. In my eyes, she glowed. With her big blue eyes and blonde hair, I thought she was an angel.
She wasn’t.
She was cheeky, manipulated all of us to get what she wanted, and it worked. But she did it with a smile and seemed to love life with a passion no one else I knew had.
Maybe we all shielded her from Dad’s drinking. I know I tried. I wasn’t so lucky. I was old enough to understand the adult language when he first lost his job, then when he couldn’t find another one.
Eventually, he was offered a job that was beneath him and chose instead to go to the bar and drink.
Which he’s never stopped doing.
Mom got a job helping a local bookstore with their bookkeeping to pay the bills and keep us all afloat. She’s been there since but was recently told they were investing in software.
Soon she won’t be needed.
“We’re ten years until we retire; this is bullshit,” Dad said two nights ago when I popped by. “Utter bullshit. You’re lucky you have a job where you can’t be replaced, Jake.”
The fuck?
I’d kept my mouth shut for too many years. His victim mentality was starting to grate on my nerves. I knew better than to upset him, but the words fell out.
“I’m not lucky; I’ve worked my ass off to get where I am.”
“It’s not the same,” he grumbled.
“It is the same. Do you not think I’ve had competition and people wanting my job? Had it threatened and had to fight to keep it? I have!”
“Things were different back then—”
“No, they fucking weren’t—”
“Jake. Stop.” Mom shook her head, looking panicked. “Please don’t fight.”
“I’m not fighting. I’m trying to make him understand he can’t stay angry at BlackTop Engineering forever. Life sucks. Get over it. Take another job and work your way up.”
“At my age?” Dad looked disgusted with me, and that was the problem. His ego was in charge, and until he got over that, he’d keep going to the bar, living in the past and hating the three men who took his job away.
The fact that the other fifty people who were laid off had moved on with their lives and taken new jobs over a decade ago seemed to go right over his head.
I’m surprised I didn’t get a call that night after midnight. I’d expected it and fortunately, slept through the night. With Caylee in my arms.
I know my message didn’t get through, and I’m not na?ve enough to think anything will change. It hasn’t for years, and I’m fully prepared that the old man will die of some alcohol related disease...or an accident.
Taking someone with him.
And if Mom doesn’t find another job with her minimal skill sets, I could be supporting his fucking habit.
In some ways I’m glad Becca isn’t here...
I immediately regret the thought.
If she were, I know I’d be an uncle, holding her little mini me in my arms like I see Caylee doing with Zara, love pouring from her eyes.
Cole is a lucky fucker. He has a wife he loves and a beautiful daughter.
I wonder if I’d be married with kids if I weren’t hindered by this family shame.
“You better not be talking about us to your fancy friends,” my father has warned me many times.
“Fuck, Dad, I’m not.”
“He most definitely will not. Won’t you, Jake? Your dad wasn’t to blame. They took his job. We don’t want the neighborhood to know our stuff. It’s private,” Mom always adds.
That was drummed into my mind repeatedly from a young age.
If I’d told the truth, Dad would have gone to jail.
It would’ve been my fault.
We would have lost Dad, too.
But here’s the thing... I did. I did lose him. He was already half lost, drinking at the bar every day. But after Becca died, that last piece of him vanished.
And so did my childhood.