“Yes.”
“My name is Nikki. I’m from the police…” The woman continues, but I’m not listening. I know her tone. When she instructs me to sit down, and asks if there’s someone with me, I say yes and continue standing, because I’m familiar with exactly what this is.
And I’mglad.
“I’m sorry to tell you that your father had a fall this evening.”
“Where?” I hear myself ask.
“Down the stairs in his house. It was severe.”
Where my mother died.
“He was pronounced dead at the scene,” she says gently. “It was quick. His neck was broken. He didn’t suffer.”
That’s more than he deserved.
I say appropriate things about thanks and yes, it’s tragic, and I understand the next steps. Then I hang up, and let the feelings emerge.
I breathe through them. Shock, yes. Disbelief. I wait to see if grief will come through, but all that fades in is the memory of the time my mother broke her hip. Combinedwith her Crohn’s that meant she needed to go to the toilet suddenly, it was awful for her for months until it healed. My father wrinkled his nose and called her disgusting. A shitty wife.
And there were the times he blamed me for ruining his wife. Making her flabby.
I’ll do my duty, as I always have, and ensure he has more dignity than he gave me and my mother. But I don’t think I can mourn him. Except perhaps sadness for the loving father-figure I would have liked to have in my life.
“Callie, are you okay?” Reid knocks on my open door.
All that comes from my mouth is a whimper.
He takes that as an answer, and enters. He must have washed up, because he’s in a pair of jeans and nothing else but the new bandage.
Whatever he sees in my face has him across the room and pulling me to him.
“What is it?” His voice is gruff and low.
My brain swirls. “My dad. He’s dead.”
“Sweetheart, I’m sorry.” Reid’s brows pinch together, but he doesn’t seem surprised.
And the thought shudders down my back, even as I lift onto tiptoes and press into his solid heat.
Reid knew.
My heart lifts and twists. I don’t know how he did it, but I’m not a mafia boss, and Reid is. He killed my father.
“I’m not,” I whisper.
He brings his hand to my temple and smooths my hair from my face.
“Good girl,” he murmurs. “So brave. So strong.”
We stand there for a long time, and there’s this awareness. He knows that I know. I want to say thank you. I want to tell him the secrets of my heart, because I thinkhe’d understand why I can’t be sad about my father’s death.
“What do you need?”
“Probably just some sleep,” I say, because it seems wrong to ask Reid to hold me.
I almost ask him to come to my bed tonight.
