I resisted the urge to swig back some more bourbon because I was starting to feel really hammered. And I was probably slurring my words, but fuck it.
“He wasn’t a good man. He was a self-absorbed asshole who put himself before anyone else. He did what he wanted. Fucked whom he wanted. Hurt whoever stood in his way.” Fuck it. Another mouthful wasn’t going to hurt, and it sure beat the dark feelings swirling through me when I recalled what happened on this day thirteen years ago. I tilted the bottle to my lips and drank. Swallowing it down, I savored the burn as it seared the back of my throat and spread through my chest.
And then for reasons my drunk ass couldn’t even fathom, I started to tell Honey everything. “I saw him die,” I said.
She gasped softly and placed a slender hand across her mouth. “Caleb, I’m so sorry.”
I looked away and shook my head, not at her, but at the memory of that night.
“We were coming back from Humphrey,” I continued and absentmindedly fingered the St. Christopher medallion around my neck. “As a kid, I had a lot of ear infections, and on that day we had traveled to see a specialist about another procedure I needed. On our way home, my dad said he needed to stop at this bar real quick. Said he had to pick up something for chapel at the clubhouse later. Said he’d only be a couple of minutes, so Mom, Chastity, and I sat in the car and waited for him. Chastity was young and impatient and she started complaining, so my mom got her out and took her across the road to the park while we waited. I sat in the car. I was a moody fourteen-year-old. It was getting dark. The stars were out. And I remember looking out the window, up at the stars, when the door to the bar burst open and a man tumbled through it and onto the path outside. My dad appeared in that doorway, looming over him, and it was obvious he had thrown him through those doors. There was a lot of yelling. And I can still see it today, thirteen years later, my dad’s big booted foot as it laid into the man on the ground. I remember thinking how mean and vivacious my dad looked. How big and terrifying. He was yelling at the man on the ground. Then there was a bang. And my dad stopped yelling, and the anger on his face turned to surprise. He looked down at his chest and stared stunned at the blood stain spreading across the fabric of his shirt. When he fell to his knees, I hurried out of the car and went to him, calling out to him, reaching for him.” My breath left me in a tortured huff, and I ran my hand through my hair before raising the bottle of bourbon to my lips again. I slung back another mouthful, the searing pain in my throat and chest barely registering in my alcohol-soaked brain. “His eyes were glazed. And he had this weirdly resigned look on his face like he always knew that this was how it would end. He fell to his knees and into my arms. I was terrified and I didn’t know what to do, what to say. And then he was gone. I looked down at him and I saw his eyes go vacant as he died. He went limp, soft. So heavy in my arms. He was a big man and I couldn’t hold him. I had to let him roll onto the concrete because I was fourteen and no match for the weight of a two-hundred-pound, six-foot-five man.”
My hearted thundered in my chest. I’d never told anybody that story. Other than the detectives immediately after the murder. And even then I’d kept to the facts.
But in a strange way it felt good sharing the burden of what I had carried around with me every day for thirteen years. Watching my father die and not knowing what to say to him in those last moments of his life. I was the last person he saw. The last person he heard. Felt. Touched. And I’d always felt I’d let him down in those final moments of his life.
Now with bourbon cascading through my veins, I felt the heavy weight of it on my shoulders.
Honey rose up on her knees, moved across the bed closer to me, and placed her cool hand in mine.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” she said gently and her words were like music to my ears.
I turned to her, unable to keep the tears from my eyes. When I struggled to swallow she pulled me into her arms and wrapped them around me, and I settled with my head in her lap, engulfed in the softness of her.