~~~
‘Dad!’
My father rolls in his sleep, snorting before mumbling something incoherent.
‘Dad! Get up! Ryan’s here.’
I punch him in the arm. I might do more to suggest he pass out on his bed, not the couch, but it’s been this way for the best part of a year.
His detective partner, three month’s new, rings the doorbell for the fourth time. I’m almost surprised Ryan Caldwell is on the other side of the door this morning.
Most nights he crashes here with my father after listening to his drunken ramblings on why our mother left him; how she screwed up Emily’s life – all the reasons my sister is in a grave now.
Perhaps Ryan, for all of his twenty-five years, is saving my father’s face in the station on the days he doesn’t show. If nothing else, Ryan’s getting cheap rent for the effort. He’s moved into the spare room, his clothes in the laundry, and his dishes on the sink.
I stride toward the door. ‘I’m late. I shouldn’t even be here.’
I haven’t lived at home since I started uni, but I seem to haunt this place since Emily died.
‘I’m up, I’m up.’ My father peels himself off the couch, his grey hair tangled, his shirt edging over his belly.
‘You’ll slip at work,’ I tell him. ‘You’ll miss something. You’re probably close to screwing up someone else’s – ’
I stop myself before I say ‘life’. I’m only ever a few words away from telling him what I really think: that he’s a shell of a father, and he’s the reason Emily is dead. Not our mother.
I fling back the front door. Ryan greets me with a wink. ‘Hey there, Luce.’
‘Here!’ I toss him a notebook, patterned with flowers and hand-drawn scribbles. ‘I got hold of this yesterday. Try Mark Rimmons first. Maybe that’s what the R stands for in there. He was a kid at her school.’
‘When are you going to give this up?’ My father stands behind me, his breath stale. ‘No one killed her. Your sister chose to die.’
I turn to him. ‘It’s more than you’ve got.’
A dull anger flashes in his eyes. ‘I’ve told you. I can’t get involved.’
‘Where did you get this?’ Ryan asks. A fair question, given Ryan canvassed our house only weeks ago, looking for evidence that Emily’s death was a suicide.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ I sling my bag over my shoulder. ‘What matters is that you read it, and find out who she was talking about.’
My father speaks. ‘We’ve been through this, Lucy. Let it go.’
I laugh. ‘Why? Is this too much police work for your friend?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘But if anyone had a reason to kill Emily, Ryan would have found out what it was by now.’
Ryan nods in support of my father’s wise words.
Of course he would. He’s young, and if I really think about it, he’s probably waiting until my father runs himself so far into the ground that he can snap up his job.