“He’d never hurt us on purpose,” I’d told the dispatcher, which is maybe why, when I dared come out from where I’d hidden the boys away to answer the door, I’d found they’d sent my dad’s two closest friends to calm him down and assure us that it would be right as rain in the morning. That we’d see how sorry he was. DS Day and DI Mallory had showed up to our house twice more before I gave up calling—one more time than it should’ve taken me to learn. They wouldn’t even take him from the house, or take us until he could sleep it off. It was before “Memories of You,” before I’d learned to hold my infuriating smile and wait to stand between him and the boys. We had no warning, no defense, and Day and Mallory made sure we had no escape.
When I opened the door and the same two officers were on our stoop, that memory dug its claws into my brain. That memory was why it took me a while to realize that they were my second miracle of the night. I would never in a million years expect those two to help anyone, least of all me.
“Heya, Jimmy Junior,” DS Day said, barging through the door. “Where’s the monster hiding himself?” He headed off to the kitchen without my answer.
“Mori.” DI Mallory nodded his head as he, too, invited himself into the house. He flung down his bag and coat by the bottom step of the staircase, stopped a moment to stare at me oddly, then followed Day into the kitchen, where the junior officer was loudly patting Dad on the back and laughing at his own dumb jokes. I stood in the hall, watching them warily.
“Right, well, Mallory here got this idea that you’d want to come down to pub with us for the first night in months. And I tell him, ‘Naw! Moriarty’s got better things to do than take a pint with the likes of us.’”
My dad laughed without smiling and downed the rest of his tumbler in one go.
“So, let’s have it,” Day said. “Who’s right? Mallory says you’ll never pass up a free drink. I mentioned that, didn’t I? First round on whoever loses. And I say you’ll keep to your hidey-hole, where the real spirits are. Who’s right?”
“The gents ask about you, James,” Mallory said. “You should show them you’re good for more than putting in your shift.”
And that’s when the miracle happened. Instead of mumbling them out the door, my dad said, “Yeah. All right. Let’s go.”
Then he left the house. I stood dumbly by the stairs for probably longer than I should have, almost as though I were waiting for him to come back in the door. But he didn’t, and soon I managed to snap myself out of my shock and walk slowly and calmly into my parents’ room. My dad’s room.
It was his room, though it still smelled like Mum’s pungent perfume. I caught a bit of sandalwood from the jar of cologne on the dresser as I walked by, but mostly it smelled like Mom—even down to the undercurrent of urine from when she’d accidentally overturned her commode. Near the end. When she could still stand enough to sit on a commode. He’d spent more than an hour on his knees rescrubbing the carpet after she’d passed. It hadn’t worked. Or maybe he’d missed something.
I forced down the wave of emotions that threatened to overtake me and started my search for Mum’s box. I’d watched him pack up her things not even three days past her funeral, drunk to oblivion, sobbing like a small child, with “Memories of You” playing over the stereo. I might have stopped him, or asked for a few things of my own, but it was the first night we learned what that song would mean for us.
Freddie got the worst of it again. I hid him away with a sack of frozen peas and sat on the stairs as a sentry, to make sure Dad wasn’t going to attack us again while we slept. But instead of the giant monster of fury I’d stared down to get him away from Fred, I watched a lost child crawling around the floor of his room, sobbing out empty threats to no one and everyone. “They did this to you. I know they did it. They won’t get away with it. They won’t.”
I didn’t sleep that night, even after Dad crawled to his bed, too drunk to remember to close his door. I just stared at the box in the middle of the floor and wished I had the courage to sneak in and steal it away. Instead, I went in the next day and picked up the few things he’d forgotten to pack. Nothing worth keeping, really. Just all that was left crumpled on the floor.
Maybe it was the remembrance of that night that kept me from taking the box down from where I spotted it in the closet. I stared at the garish pink rose pattern the way I had stared that night and caught myself breathing heavily, like I’d just woken from a nightmare. I looked over my shoulder, like a paranoid freak, then turned back and grabbed the box before I became too worked up.