Page 13 of Turkey Trouble

Her father committed suicide. What?

“I can tell you she won’t forgive you for doing this. She’ll love you, and she’ll miss you. But she’ll be pissed forever, and she’ll struggle to make healthy, functioning relationships later in life. If a man shows her romantic interest, she’ll question his motives. And if an older man shows her paternal affection, she’ll reject it, even when that love is given freely and without strings attached. She’ll always struggle with vulnerability. Because she’s vulnerable right now, in this moment, and instead of caring for her heart the way you, her father, should, you broke it in your selfish desire to not feel like crap anymore. She deserves answers, Phil, and just maybe, if you can be brave enough not to do this, she won’t be quite so screwed up later in life the way I am.”

“I’m not trying to hurt her,” he hiccups. “I’m trying to make this a clean break.”

“Clean breaks still require extensive time and medical intervention to heal. The bone will always be weaker because of the trauma it sustained, and the site of the injury will always be at risk of future fractures.” She slowly straightens her legs, lifting her hand and dragging him up until he has two choices: stand and go with her, or stay and allow his arm to be elevated over his head. “Don’t be her weak spot. Be her strength and respect her enough to allow her closure.”

“We done?” Micah steps forward, ominous and deadly. He’s pissed, and somehow, as I stand and my cuffs rattle against Phil’s, he presents a key he shouldn’t have and disconnects us with a fast one-two snick. “Go.” He grabs my collar, rough and mean, and yanks me from the ledge. But panic lances up in my blood, because Minka remains back there, holding Phil’s hand. “You, too.” He snags her wrist and tosses her my way. Then he stands over Phil, towering over the man and terrifying him with a single look. “Jump now. Dare you.”

“What?” His shoulders bounce with sobbing shudders. “What do you?—”

“You put my family at risk.” He grabs Phil’s jacket, knocking him back a step until the guy yelps and cries. He shakes him, teeth rattling and skull swaying with the momentum. Then he turns and shoves him toward us. “Not as brave as you thought you were, huh? You wanted attention, not a funeral.”

“Come on.” I release Minka and set her behind my back, but then I grab Phil and carefully turn him. “I have to cuff you until this is all straightened out.”

“What?” Panicked, he stares over his shoulder. “I didn’t do anything wrong!”

“You threatened to jump over a populated area. If you’d landed on someone, they would have died too.”

“What the hell is going on?” Fletch emerges at the top of the stairwell, the door swinging against the brick wall and his breath racing. His chest heaving. His entire fucking youth, gone now that he’s thirty something and a dad. “Detective Malone! Dude?”

“No dead body here.” I snap the cuffs into the place and gently nudge Phil forward until Fletch takes him. “Where’s Mia?”

“With the fuckin’ ballerina on the road!” He looks Phil up and down. “What the hell? It’s Thanksgiving, man.”

“Which is statistically when cases spike and DBs stack up at the morgue.” Minka twines her fingers with mine and tugs until I glance down. Then she stands on her toes and whispers, “I have a teeny, tiny, horrifyingly uncomfortable thong string stuck somewhere in my stomach. Because you made a promise to be home at five-thirty, and having been able to trust your word in the past, I showered and dressed and presented myself like a stuffed roast just out of the oven.”

“I’m sorry.” I press a kiss to her dimpled cheek and hold on for as long as she allows it. But of course, she breaks the moment first. She always does. So I pull back and search her eyes. “Your dad?”

“Thanksgiving, two-thousand and nine.” Her shoulders come up in a gentle, dismissive shrug. “Long time ago. I don’t wanna talk about it today.”

“Are you sure?” I cup her face, while Fletch escorts Phil into the stairwell, and right on his heels, Micah and Felix follow. “I want to support you, Minnnka. Today’s a painful day for you and I didn’t even know it.”

“Today’s a day for family,” she murmurs. “I was trying to make that family about me and you. But then Felix turned up with two dozen of his closest whack jobs. The Mayor. His kids. Cato. Tim is apparently making arrangements. Oh, and we have a turkey in our kitchen, and not nearly enough seats per backside ratio.”

“You’ve been begging for a me and you day for weeks.” I draw her up to her toes. Frozen, no doubt. “I can get rid of them all in under two minutes. I’ll lock them out and throw down the hammer. Felix is a dick when he wants to be, but he listens when it’s important.”

“I guess I’m kinda okay with the idea of stuffing all those people into our tiny apartment.” She lowers to flat feet and startstoward the stairs, dragging me along, though it only takes two steps for me to catch up and move her faster.

I need to get her out of the cold and a pair of fuzzy socks on her feet before she catches pneumonia.

“We can do something with them all tomorrow,” I argue, leading her into the concrete stairwell and down. “They’ll still be in the city, and we can still have tonight for us. You asked for alone time, and now I know what today means, I’ll make?—”

“Oddly…” She wraps her arm around mine and snuggles in to rest her cheek against the ball of my shoulder. “I guess I got a little more closure just now. Something my dad didn’t do for me, Erin’s dad could. What I definitelydon’twant…” She glances up with a grin, ignoring Felix’s worried stare as he waits at the next landing. “Is for everyone to make this weird and annoying. I want to drink and fight and eat turkey. I especially want to eat the potato thing Mary sent all the way from New York.”

“She did that for you, Doctor Cutie.” Felix holds the door for us to pass through. “And I’ll make you a deal: I won’t mention the dead dad thing, if you don’t mention how much you hate me. For just a night, pretend you think I’m the shit.”

She rolls her eyes and taps his stomach as we pass. “You are the shit. You’re shit. You’reallthe shit.” Then she looks to me. “Can I borrow your phone?”

“Uh…” I reach into my pocket and hand it over. “Sure. Why?”

“Because I made a promise.” She unlocks the screen and jumps to my call log. Hitting a name I shouldn’t be surprised to see, she puts the call on speaker and waits just two rings for the doctor on the other end to answer. “Aubree?”

“I told you you weren’t having a quiet night with Archer.” She walks, her breath racing and the noise around her growing quieter as she gains distance. “Dinner at your place?”

“Did you see us on the news already?” Minka frowns and allows me to lead her downstairs. “That was quick.”

“No. My parents don’t even have the TV on.” She slams a car door, then tosses her phone so the clatter and bang echoes through our call. “Felix there?”

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