Page 25 of Icy Heart, Empty Chest
I swung my legs over to get the plate. “I’m glad I made extra. I forgot how much you can put away.”
He smiled as I heaped on more.
“Still feel OK today?” I asked as I set the plate down in front of him.
“Better than I have in ages. I think you rebooted the whole system, so to speak.”
He grew more somber. “Thank you though. I shouldn’t have put you in that position. It was reckless.”
I waved him off. “None of that over breakfast. It’s all good. Good to know that the magic’s still in there, actually.” I flexed my fingers, looking down at the faint periwinkle light I could grow. He was now looking at me oddly.
“What?”
“Do you know what I’m going to ask next?” he quizzed.
“How I got the bacon so crispy and delicate?” Typical me, evading.
“Not even close.”
“How you ended up in my bed?”
“You were sick and I didn’t want to leave you alone. Try again, little nymph.”
Again with the old nicknames. I groaned. Feelings and emotions were hard.
“Tell me about your dad,” I decided.
He shrugged out of his chair to get more coffee.
“You got most of it last night actually. After I joined, he treated me more like an employee than a son, checking in on my metrics and testing, show up at drills. He’d make me go to every police meeting, every city council thing, mostly to shake hands and introduce me. I think he wanted me to head up adepartment or become a commissioner of some sort. I always did my best but never really wanted to do the same things as him. I wanted to help people, not mill around on a dead crime scene where no one was really affected. I didn’t want to just speed up the ladder. He knew it and hated it.”
He sat down again.
“So when he got sick, everything had changed. He was in denial the whole time. Didn’t want to see any of us at the hospital looking less than strong and imposing. I held back tears after his diagnosis ’cause I knew he’d berate me for it. Mom didn’t really know what to do either. I visited when I could. They’d be short, I’d talk about my day, any cases or the guys I worked with. When we got the phone call in the middle of the night from the doctors, all grief I had just exploded. Called out of work for days. The funeral was hard. All these officers came up and explained how he always did his duty and how good he was on the Magical Force. That hadn’t mattered to me. I just wanted a good dad, a good example. He turned out to be exactly the opposite. It’s funny the stuff you see as you’re getting older. He’d have these strict ideals of conduct but those tend to go out the window when you’re dying.”
My eyes started to well up. I remember how curt and cold Damien’s father could be. If we were playing as kids, he’d want Damien to be studying. Less enjoyment and more structure. Imagination was for those out of tune with reality; books were for learning, not fantasy. He’d always loathed me. I never knew why and he was enough of an adult not to say anything directly to my face.
“What about your mom?” I felt hot tears pricking my eyes.
I remembered his mom. She was sweet, soft spoken and, while she fiercely loved Damien, she wasn’t the most stalwart of women.
“Devastated. She asked me to move in but I didn’t want to be in that mansion. My place is small but there’s me in it. Nothing for me exists in there.” He set down the mug. “She called her sister and asked if she had a spare bedroom. She couldn’t live alone after all those years.” He eyed my waterworks curiously. “You OK?”
“It’s sad. I just feel bad for you.” And that was the gods honest truth. “You deserved better. When it came to him, you always did.”
He smiled, “So you do have a heart in there somewhere.”
“Hurr hurr, shut up.” I rose to get a tissue. “Also, irony.”
“Your turn.”
“My turn? What turn?”
“Tell me something about our past or your father, college, anything.”
I thought for a second, letting out a deep breath. If we were confessing, I might as well get a big chip off my shoulder now.
“The trial, then. So, I assume you were told the story of his imprisonment, how a piece he authenticated was supposedly outed as forgery and how it was his word vs another two experts?”
