Death Watch Page 5

  She laughed, and he gave a low, rusty rumble, as though laughing was something he hadn’t done in a while. A warmth crept inside and stayed there. Not all memories were bad. Not all life had been intolerable. She finished her salad.

  “You couldn’t have driven all that way without stopping,” her father noted firmly. There was a lull between innings. He looked up from stirring his coffee and added, “though you look like it.”

  “I stopped one night.” McKenzie wrapped both hands about her mug. She saw a faint disapproval come and go across his face as she dragged the coffee near. “Believe me, this much caffeine isn’t going to faze me.”

  “But something did. TV said this was the Boomerang Generation, that the children came back. Your mother and I thought we’d never see it.”

  She took a deep swallow. The sugar-and-cream-laced brew went down hotly, settled into a banked fire in her stomach. It felt good. She could not bear to tell him the whole story, so she doled out what she could handle. “I’m divorcing him.”

  She was not sure what she wanted to see in his face— but it might have been carved of granite now. “I’m all right,” she added. She’d carefully brushed her wet hair dry so that he could not see the patch where Jack had assaulted her with the knife. She did not want him prying further. Not yet. Maybe never.

  “No, you’re not, or you wouldn’t be here. Then what are you going to do?”

  How should she know? How could she have any idea, yet? She put a finger into her cup and swirled the cooling coffee around, deciding. “I don’t know. I’ll get a job. I don’t know about the rest. I guess I’ll have to do it one day at a time.” She drained her cup. The spaghetti still sat on her plate, and she picked up a fork. It was good, better than she expected. He’d set out Parmesan cheese; she sprinkled it over and kept eating.

  She stared, wondering what it was he was thinking. For the first time it suddenly struck her that she looked more like him than she did her mother. Both had hazel eyes, sometimes gray, sometimes greenish-brown. His hair had silvered, hers had stayed honey golden. And their faces were somewhat squarish, while McKenzie remembered her mother as having a distinctive heart-shaped face, right down to the hairline dipping in the center of her forehead.

  Yes, she definitely looked like her father: broad forehead, a nose best described as stubborn echoed by a definite jawline which could easily be seen if it clenched. Handsome on a man, not even close to pretty in a woman. McKenzie sighed. Their similarity in looks gave her no ability to read his mind. She never could understand him, knew he would never understand her. There was no bridging the gap between them, and there was still that little girl inside of her who was mortally afraid of him, despite the love. Now that she was grown, the love had gone, retracted, curled up in itself, along with the memories.

  “Young for a divorce, but at least you don’t have any baggage. Your mother wondered if you’d even married him.”

  His bitterness surprised her. Had they thought her pregnant and desperate? Her mother had never given her the chance to discuss it. She’d told Mac that she’d betrayed them, losing her softball scholarship and dropping out of school. It had been years before Mac had even tried to talk to her again. That, too, had been Sarah’s doing. More friend than teacher.

  “I told her I did.” McKenzie looked down quickly into her coffee cup before speaking again, forcing lightness into her voice. “You raised me to be traditional, didn’t you? I never lied to Mom, not even about that.” There was no pat answer in the coffee mug. She had not put much cream in her coffee, just enough to mellow the dark java. Now its rich color reminded her of trusting eyes, playful eyes, puppy eyes. What would she have done if Cody had been human? Could she have struck back, finally? What if what she’d seen had been her rage, bubbling over, instead of blood? What if she were like her father, violence bottled up, terrifyingly destructive if it were loosened? How could she live with that, either?

  “You won’t get anywhere in life by quitting,” her father said.

  Her head snapped up. McKenzie said, “How can you say that?”

  Night had fallen. One of the bulbs in the overhead kitchen light had burned out, giving the illumination a rich, burnished glow. The radio was on in the background, the sound banked to the monotony of the baseball game, only an occasional burst of noise telling that something had happened. She had always liked eating in the kitchen nook, but her mother had insisted on using the dining room. Her father had often not been home for dinner. It had seemed massive with just the two of them. And here he sat now, talking to her about quitting. Just which of them had quit first?

  “I can say it because I know.” Walt Smith’s hands grew white-knuckled around his coffee mug. “You lost your chance at college, now this.”

  “Well, I didn’t ‘quit,’” she threw back at him. “I escaped. While I was still—” she stopped, biting back the word, young. A lot of good it had done her. She didn’t feel young anymore.

  “Still what?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.” She muffled a sigh.

  “Damn right I wouldn’t. If you’re going to come home now, we’ve got to have an understanding.”

  “Who says I’m going to stay?”

  Walt sniffed. “Where else have you got to go?”

  She stayed silent. Nowhere, unless she wanted Jack to follow her.

  “I don’t mind it,” he added. “I’m doing it for her. All I want to know, McKenzie, is why couldn’t you have come home while your mother was still alive?”

  Why couldn’t he have been sober then? But she didn’t let herself say it. “I wasn’t tired of the Seattle rain, then.” She tried to keep her voice light, but she could hear the edge on it. “Do we have to do this now? I’m really tired.” She felt stretched and brittle, like a rubber band on the brink of snapping.

  He shoved his plate aside. “Yes. I think we need to get some things settled. You. That’s the key word. You weren’t thinking about her. Once you left here, you never looked back.”

  “Should I have?”

  Walt rubbed his hands together as if they hurt him. “You left me alone with her.”

  She pushed her own dinner aside, unable to taste it anymore, unable to force it down. Strange, the way it had turned out. She had always thought her father would be the burden on her mother. It had always been that way, and then the sudden turnaround. “She didn’t tell me she was ... she was dying. I didn’t know until it was too late.” Her eyes filled. She rubbed them dry with a paper napkin smelling of oregano and basil and tomatoes.

  “Don’t cry in front of me, dammit. You’re a tough kid, always were.” Her father’s chest puffed up. “Why couldn’t you have been here watching her cry her eyes out, night after night?”

  “Instead of you? She never asked me.” She felt her expression grow hard. Maybe it was just his turn.

  “You should know what you put her through. What kind of coward are you?”

  Her diaphragm clenched. For a moment, she couldn’t find enough breath with which to answer, but when she did, the words spilled out like water over a dam. “Are we talking about me, or you? What kind of a coward am I? Well, maybe it’s genetic, Dad, maybe I got it from you, because I can sure remember her sobbing over you.” Her voice rose with every word. “Are we keeping score? Are we? Just like a damn baseball game? If we are, make it twenty years for you, eight for me!”

  “Don’t you talk like that to me in my house.”

  His house. That was the smell she’d smelled. A house devoid of her mother’s presence. Only two years gone, and yet it was almost as if she’d never been.

  McKenzie tried to take a deep breath, suddenly afraid. She had no place else to go. There was nothing left but this tenuous relationship. She had to retreat. Let sleeping dogs lie. “I’m sorry, Dad. Nothing about this is easy.”

  He examined his gnarled hands. “You were a mouthy enough kid when you left. You thought life was easy.” He got up, took the coffeepot, and refilled his cup. He waved
it in the air, offering it to her, but she shook her head. “We always did argue.”

  Argue. Their voices used to blast the air, send her skittering to her room where a stack of pillows couldn’t muffle the explosions, words she knew she couldn’t aim at him, for the hurt, the harm it would cause her mother. Arguing. Her mouth twisted. “If that’s what you want to call it. You and Mom, you and me.”

  “That’s what it was, by God. We never fought. And we never hurt each other. Never.”

  No. McKenzie’s gaze slid around the room, across the cabinet doors, where spackle lines marked new paint over old holes. Kicked in, punched in. The dishwasher in the corner was old now, but she could remember the unit it replaced—front door torn off by her father in a rage. They all used to cower when Walt Smith went on a rampage. He must have been following her glance. His face reddened slightly. “I’m not drinking now.”

  Something broke inside of her. That was the last thing she wanted to hear, to know. Too little, too late. Her poor mother. She couldn’t have lived long enough to see that. She found her mug shivering in her hands and set it down firmly on the kitchen table. “Congratulations.”

  “Is that all you have to say?” A shadow crossed his eyes, a shadow that seemed to settle into the crags of his face. He stared.

  “I could say I wish to God you’d done it when Mom was still here. She used to pray for that.” She put her feet under her, feeling the kitchen floor, the old hard linoleum with its speckled colors, ready to move quickly if she had to. “Maybe you never hit her, but you beat her down all the time. Too much booze, not enough money, no steady job, no future. You beat on both of us!”

  He got to his feet. She could see the kitchen curtains ruffle with the evening breeze. “Don’t you blame me for your mother’s death! Don’t you say a goddamn word about that! I was here, you weren’t. I held her hands when I brought her home after chemo. Tried to coax her to eat. I was the one who held her head when she was too weak to vomit by herself.”

  “It couldn’t have been that hard for you,” McKenzie said bitterly. “You had a bottle to hide in afterward.” Her throat worked. McKenzie forced herself to take a breath, whistling it inward between her lips.

  “You don’t like it here, get the hell out! I’m doing this for your mother.” His voice thundered through the tiny kitchen. It brought McKenzie to her feet, too.

  “Don’t do me any favors. I don’t want any from you. You should have been the one who died!”

  “Goddammit, I’m your father. Don’t stand in my kitchen and tell me I should be dead!”

  “Why shouldn’t I? Do you think I never wished it! I wanted you to die every night we had to drive to some bar and Mom had to drag you out. Had to beg you to come home. Had to leave me sitting in the locked car in some scummy side street while she went in looking for you. Why the hell do you think I left home as soon as I could? Why ?”

  “That was between me and your mother! You had nothing to do with it.”

  “Didn’t I? Didn’t I? Well, I’ve got news for you, Dad. It was my life, too! I couldn’t have friends over. Every year I went to school, teachers looked at me with pity and whispered behind my back. I didn’t go to the junior prom, because there wasn’t enough money for a new dress and your liquor. She went to all the assemblies and meetings and plays. You never showed for anything but the games—and when you did show up, dammit, for graduation, you stank! You were a stinking drunk! So I bailed!”

  They faced one another. She could see the purple in his face, the hurt and anger in his eyes. She could see her own face mirrored slightly in them. He blinked.

  A mockingbird ran a trill of song from somewhere in the backyard. Though the skies had darkened long ago, she had no idea of the time. It was later than she thought. The mockingbirds always started up after eleven, closer to midnight. The Dodger game droned away on the radio. Her throat ached. Through the kitchen window, through their own curtains, with faded bantam roosters on barnyard fences, across the driveway, she could see the Ethelridge curtains ripple, just a little.

  Her father’s expression closed. “You were just a kid. There were things you didn’t know. Anyway, it couldn’t have been too damn bad. You came back!”

  She choked down an angry sob, determined not to cry. Not here. Not now. “I’m not a kid anymore! And it’s a little late for you to catch up.” She brushed her hair back from her hot face, unthinkingly.

  His face changed immediately. “Good God, what happened to you?”

  Her jaw trembled. “Nothing.” She tossed her hair, flopping it back into place.

  “That’s not nothing!” Her father reached out, caught her with strong fingers, turned her chin.

  She pulled back, breathing hard. “Don’t touch me! Don’t ever touch me! Just leave me alone!” McKenzie bolted for her room, unable to keep it together for another second. She slammed the door behind her and pitched face first onto her bed.

  The old chenille spread was worn and dusty, but it muffled her sobs as well as it always used to. The floor creaked outside her door. After long moments, he knocked.

  “Mac? Mac, honey, open the door.”

  Her teeth chattered as she clenched them together. He should have been the one who died. He should have left them alone to live happily ever after.

  “Go away!”

  A pause, and then her father hit the door with his fist. The paneling boomed under the blow, rocking in the threshold, but it held. “Goddammit! Who the hell do you think you are?”

  She froze in fear, waiting, but no other sound came for a long moment. She didn’t know what she would do if he came through the door. Didn’t know anything except that the lump in her chest felt as though it were swelling until it burst, and when it did, she would. She wasn’t going to take this anymore! Not Jack, not her father! She found herself shaking as she tried to hold herself together.

  The door boomed again. She jumped and held the pillow to her as if it could muffle the explosion. Suddenly she thought of Jenny Atkins. God, not Jenny, I haven’t thought of her in years. Jenny, who’d told her about the terrible things stepfathers, and occasionally fathers, did to their daughters. Who’d made her fear her own father, already aberrant, made her fear the same kind of twisted, sick things from him. Every time he drank and they fought, and she took refuge in her room, she’d feared that it would not keep her safe just as Jenny’s room had never kept her safe.

  As she cringed and held tight to the bed, she thought of all the years she’d spent in fear and humiliation. When had she ever been free of it? She couldn’t remember.

  What had ever happened to Jenny? McKenzie bit her lip. The waiflike girl had disappeared in their junior year. One day at school, the next not. There’d been rumors. Jenny was pregnant, and gone. Or worse. Jenny’d been pregnant, and taken her own life. Even worse. Jenny’d been pregnant, and her own father had killed her. Mac had vowed to find out. She’d tried to enlist her mother’s help but had been discouraged by her instead. That was the Atkins’ family business. Her mother had frowned. Leave it be.

  And Mac had, sensing a house of cards that, if it came tumbling down, might well catch them, too. After all, Jenny’s stepfather drank, too. And inside, privately, she’d been mad at Jenny for making her fear her father in that way, as well.

  Hadn’t everything else been enough?

  The door banged. “Dammit, Mac, open up!”

  “No!” The pillow muffled her voice, but she knew he heard her. His fist seemed to drum through her aching head. She squeezed her eyes shut more tightly.

  He left, roaring down the hallway like an angry bull. After long moments, though she did not think it possible, the warmth of the spread lulled her to sleep.

  Chapter 5

  The assassin slipped down old alleyways, where asphalt crumbled under the weight of battered trash cans. The streetlights glowing orange on the facing side of the neighborhood cast only a thin glow here, but it was enough for him. Stucco garages opposite him held the ghostly tra
cings of tagger marks, painted over yet stubbornly remaining, shadowy etchings under new paint. A ginger cat darted across his path and disappeared in tufts of Bermuda grass which had never seen a weed whacker.

  He liked the older tracts, with the alleys dissecting their stucco depths. By the sixties, most had disappeared from the newer tracts, as developers realized how much gold existed in California real estate and had found a way to cram square footage into every nook and cranny of a development site. But for him, like the ginger cat and now the drab opossum which froze as he passed it, the alleys remained a quaint and preferred corridor of travel.

  He turned to look at the possum. Its scaly, ratlike tail hung over the block-wall fencing, its shoulders under an altar of oleander sprays. The creature skinned black lips back from needlelike teeth as he raised a hand toward it. The stalker paused, and grinned. If he’d had a light, this nocturnal sack of fur would be frozen in submission.