Delusive (44 page)

"Why would he do that?” I asked, my shock and hurt bled through my question. She knew all along and never tried to tell me the truth. “Why would
you
do that and not tell me?”

“You are our father’s advocate and you always have been,” she explained in a monotone with a sigh, denoting the conversation was boring her. “Any time I say anything to prove he’s a mentally unstable liar, you fly off the handle. The reason why he kept lying to you? To keep the idea of her alive for you. There is a reason you separated our mother into two parts after the accident. Frankie and our mother. You couldn’t let go of her, either. Just think, all the time you thought she was alive in a room you could never go in, why didn’t you ask our father why he couldn’t let her go?“

“I never felt that she was really alive,” I explained, “even if she was…still here."

“That’s not an answer, Leina. Did you ever ask Dad to let her die in peace when you thought she was still with you?”

“No,” I said solemnly. “The idea never crossed my mind.”

“She was still alive for you no matter how many times or ways you call our mother’s death a loss, an accident, what have you. Never once did you state she died when I was still around you, or when we talked on the phone. I bet you never did to anyone else, either.

“She died the moment she was hit by a car. Being brain dead isn’t living. She was corpse being kept alive by machines for a day. Keeping her alive, keeps the reason for your revenge alive. She was a reminder you couldn't see—didn't want to see."

"He…loved Frankie so much,” I said more to myself than her. “I can’t understand why he would treat her death that way, or why he would let her go so soon. He would've done anything in his power to find the money to keep her attached to machines. I would have done the same thing if I knew the truth.” I kept searching for answers to my questions. I wracked my brain for the answers. The only ones I could come up with were the ones I’d rather not believe; the man I thought my father was, was all a lie.

"You really don't know all of it, because you’re still living in a fantasy world. How can you not remember how our parents really were together?” She paused and I could’ve sworn I heard the sound of water rushing in the background. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter now. I wanted to do things the right way to make the right people pay for the wrong things they've done. No one at work would take the case seriously. All I had was speculation. Because I wanted to keep my job, I let it go.

“You can change that for me. I'll put you in touch with some agents in the Los Angeles area. They will take good care of you and make sure you stay safe while you do what you need to do to take down the people responsible for our mother's death.”

The Feds were never an option for me in the beginning and they never would be. If and when my head became clear again and I decided to finish my mission, I would stick to the original plan. At this point, my plan was all I had left to keep me sane.
 

But I had to know why my sister easily shirked her desire to take the Caris down with me. “Why aren’t you offering to help when you’ve wanted to see Natanael get his just desserts just as badly as I have?”

“I’m sorry, Leina. I have my hands full here. The agency in L.A. will help you on your end.”

“If I do it your way, what happens if I’m discovered before I can get the information? You know how the Caris deal with things they want to disappear.”
And now I knew firsthand.
“Wouldn’t you want to make sure I’m safe, see this through, or at least…see me before something happens to me?”

Muffled voices were heard during my sister’s silence. “I have to go. I’ll text you the information for the department in L.A. Take care of yourself and good luck on taking them down the right way.” She hung up on me.

The right way? There wasn’t a right way, just an efficient way. If the Feds were able to get Natanael in their clutches, he would get some sort of deal for immunity because they would want the bigger players in the game, players who were higher up the chain of crime than Natanael. He would never face justice for what he did to my mother if I took the moral high ground.

I RETURNED TO Ipomoea on the next flight out through LAX. Despite everything, I was willing to forgive and forget with my father if he could be truthful with me. There was nothing my parents could’ve done that I wouldn’t have forgiven them for; all I needed and asked for was his honesty.
 

He owed me the truth and Roth's clue might’ve forced it out of him. It had to.

MY FATHER’S CAR was in the driveway—but the other one wasn’t. I could hear the roaring motor of what could've been none other than what was once Frankie's prided Nova coming from the garage. I ran into the house and tried to access the garage through the kitchen.
 

Dense thick air that smelled a little like gasoline and motor oil burned my throat. I covered my nose because it began to create a catch in my throat and made it hard to breathe.

The instant the door—leading to the garage from the kitchen—was opened, plumes of thick, grayish smoke rushed in, filling the house with barely breathable air. Coughing and blinking the sting out of my eyes, I ran my hand up the wall until I found the door opener. The mechanism churned and the motor purred as it opened the door and poured daylight into the otherwise dark space.
 

I stepped down the short concrete steps to move into the garage. I felt around until the smoke began to clear and rounded the vehicle to stand on the passenger side. With the smoke fading away, I saw a figure in the front seat. I bent down to the window, cupping my hands around my face to block out the shadows and took a closer look.

My father sat in the driver’s seat, the soft music from the 8-track stereo played inside the vehicle. He was dressed in his pajamas. Through his closed eyes, there was a grimace fixed on his face.
 

I tried the door, but it was locked. I made my way around and opened the driver’s side door. His body moved stiffly, leaning to the right.
 

I touched his cold, hard shoulder, not sure what I’d expected when I knew the truth. He’d been there for a while. Alone in the dark.

It was the second time it had happened and the first time I’d been too late.

It was too late to save him.

THE POLICE WERE long gone after having asked the preliminary questions to file the report. The when, what, who, and where. They gave me half-hearted “I’m sorry for your loss” before they left.

It had been hours since they took my father’s body to the morgue. I couldn’t bother with arrangements, or to tell my sister the news. Honestly, I didn’t think she would’ve cared.

As I sat on the front steps, I couldn’t move, nor could I think of going back inside the house. Nothing about what I’d seen or heard in the past few days seemed real. His death felt like an ethereal dream I’d soon wake up from. It didn’t
feel
real to me. I halfway expected to wake up and to find him standing over me, ready and willing to tell me the truth about everything. I would’ve forgiven him, and together, we’d struggle to move on with our lives.

But it was all real, and a reconciliation would never happen. He hadn’t left a note to say goodbye like he did the first time when I was able to save him. It was as though he was so angry at me, he felt no need to explain.
 

The fact that I wasn’t there to save him would torment me for eternity. I had abandoned him. I did everything he warned me against because my heart began speaking to me in a volume louder than his words ever had.
 

I wouldn’t allow myself to feel his loss. The same way I wouldn’t allow myself to feel the loss of my mother. Frankie. My mother. Holden was right. I disconnected the two after the accident. My mother died, but Frankie lived on through the help of machines.
 

I was wrong. I’d lost my mother, Frankie, a long time ago and I never mourned her.

The last time my father attempted his own life it was—what I now know to be—the day after Frankie was disconnected from the machines. I remained strong for him and kept his attempt a secret by never taking him to the hospital and never disclosing to any curious person why his voice sounded the way it did, or what the marks on his neck were. Because I kept it a secret, his successful attempt was on my conscious. I should’ve gotten him help, and I didn’t.
 

His death was my fault.

TWENTY-NINE

I WAS ABLE TO return to work the very next day after giving Claudia my sob story. It could’ve been she felt guilty, or it could’ve been she was scared of the repercussions—if any remained—of firing me. Either way, she allowed me to work again. I filled my days with working at La Dentelle and packing up what was left of my belongings in the rental house to send them off to storage.
 

I hadn’t slept in days, coffee was my fuel, and mindless reality show binge-watching kept my mind off Elias and my father’s death for more than one second at a time.

After doing a walk-through and spending my entire Sunday cleaning the house, I realized I had nothing else to do and nowhere to go. The day was especially hard because I caught Jaco following me around, watching me work in the mall again. When I confronted him on the way to my car after closing, what he had to say was unexpected.

“You broke his heart, you know.” He sucked his teeth and looked suddenly guilty as though he told me more than he should have.

“I didn’t mean to.”

“We never mean to do dirty shit like that unless we’re heartless dicks. I didn’t think you were one. Fucking him up something serious, yeah. But never an evil bitch who wanted to wreck his world.”

“I deserve that.”

“Yeah…maybe you did before your father died. But, you don’t now. He wanted to be there. He just can’t.”

“It would be nice if he would come around. I…”

“You what?”
 

“Never mind.” Shaking my head, I dismissed the thought. “Are you going to follow me home?”

“Nah. Not this time.” He opened my car door for me, hesitating before he closed it. “He misses you, too. He won’t say it, but I know he does. He’s not right when you’re not around.”

I didn’t get a chance to respond. He was several car lengths from me by the time I could.

Blinking out of my daze and bringing myself back to the present, I picked up my phone intending to call the cheapest hotel I could find and make reservations. But, I was faced with what I tried to ignore—another call from the crematorium, wondering when I was going to pick up my father’s ashes. I let the call go to voicemail.

Standing in front of the open front door, I stared down at my phone. My hand hovered over the number for the facility. I was torn between confirming a time for pick up and avoiding it altogether.

The slamming of a car door, shocked me out of my reverie. The solar powered street lights were on, setting a strange glow on the night. Red cars appeared a greenish-brown and blue cars appeared black instead. The noisy sprinkler system created a mist and a fog over the yard.

I looked across the sprinkler-soaked yard with a lone palm tree to a car parked in front of the house along the drive—a Nova. Elias stood at the end of the drive, waiting.
 

When he decided to move up the walk, his movements toward me were a blur.
 

He stood on the bottom of step in front of me, looking at me with the same empty eyes my father had the last time I saw him.

I stepped down to greet him at the step as though I was reluctantly pushed. I leveled my eyes at him, unsure of what I should say. I often felt like I was shadow boxing with him. I thought I could at least keep up a few more rounds, even with the emotional exhaustion I pretended wasn’t there having an effect on me. There was barely anything left of the stronger version of myself to continue to endure in Elias’s ring.
 

We stood there, silently staring at each other.
 

“I guess you’re here because you heard about my father?” I asked, partially wondering why it took him nine days since my father died—and twelve days since the last time we saw each other—before he could come around.

“I really don’t know why I’m here,” he stated reticently. “It might be that I do know, and it’s not a reason I want to share with you.” Glancing beyond me, he looked at the barebones interior of the house. “Are you moving?”

I shrugged, because I really wasn’t sure what my next move was. “Do I have a reason to skip town as soon as your back is turned? Or did you come here to…finish the job yourself?”

Through a glare, he squinted at me as if I held a gun to his head while daring to ask him for peace. “Why the fuck would you ask me something like that, Leina?” Exasperated, he pinched the bridge of his nose.

I cringed at the name he called me. He might as well have said it while stabbing me directly in the chest. “I don’t know what else to think,” I said apologetically.

Dropping his hand from his face, he expelled a long stream of air through his mouth. “My need to protect you hasn’t magically gone away.”

In a pensive state, I watched his shiny black shoes. With his right hand twitching, he took one small step forward. I knew what he wanted to do, but for some reason or another held back from doing it. I made sure he didn’t need to continue to torment himself by giving him eye contact. “How long have you known the truth about me?”