Dear Kurl,
I must have fallen asleep on the couch last night just after tucking that last letter in my pocket. When I woke up, my chest was throbbing harder than before. Lyle walked into the living room holding a glass of whiskey, and when he switched the light on and saw me lying there, he sloshed some of it out of the glass. “Jesus Christ, Jonathan!” he said.
“Sorry. I fell asleep,” I said. I got up on one elbow. “What happened to your face?” There was a bruise on Lyle’s cheek, right next to his nose, with a bloody scratch in the middle of it. When he sat down in the chair opposite me, I saw that the knuckles of the hand he was holding the glass with were all red and scratched, too. I sat up. “Did you get in a fistfight?”
“A brief one, yes,” Lyle said. “What? Is that funny or something?”
I pulled my mouth out of its smile. “No. It’s just… sort of shocking. Who did you fight with?”
“The owner of the Ace,” he said.
“Axel?”
Lyle made a noise in his throat. “Don’t tell me you’ve been going there, too?”
“No, I just know who he is,” I said, and my heart started to pound at the possibility of betraying Shayna by accident. Just because Lyle knew my sister had been there didn’t mean he knew everything.
But he did know everything, apparently. “Did you know that asswipe has been letting your sister perform?” Lyle said. “Putting her onstage! Giving her drinks, and God knows what else!”
“How did you find out?”
“Bronwyn called me,” he said. “She said she thought I should maybe go and ‘check in on her, sometime.’ Like it was no big deal. Like maybe one day I’d be like, ‘You know what, I think I’ll just go swing by the Ace today for a casual beer or two.’”
“So did you bring Shayna home?” I said.
“I should call the police, is what I should do.” Lyle took an enormous swig of his drink. His hand was shaking. “That son of a bitch.”
“Lyle,” I said. I didn’t think I’d ever seen my father so upset.
“That slimy, shit-sucking son of a bitch!”
“Lyle!”
He looked at me. “What? I’m sorry.”
“Is Shayna here? Did you bring her home?”
“She wanted to go to Bronwyn’s house; there’s some kind of party there tonight.” He sighed. “She was pretty upset with me.”
“I can imagine,” I said.
Lyle drained his whiskey and then just sat there, staring at the carpet and rattling his ice round and round in his glass.
I went into the kitchen and drank some water. My ribs were a volcano of pain. It didn’t seem like the right time to tell my father about my afternoon adventure, though.
I lifted my shirt and marveled at the way the bruising had ripened to an Italian-eggplant purple. Then I fished around in the vitamin drawer until I found the bottle of Percocets from when Lyle threw his back out last winter. Take 1–2 tablets by mouth every 4–6 hours as needed, it said. I swallowed two pills and put the bottle in my pocket.
“I think maybe I should go back and get her,” Lyle said, when I returned to the living room.
“Crash Bron’s party, you mean? That doesn’t sound like the best plan to me,” I said. “Here”—I held out the baggie I’d filled with fresh ice—“put this on your face.”
“Thanks,” he said. “It’s just… I said some things to Shayna in the car. I told her some things about your mother.”
“What things?”
“Well, she heard some things, when I was arguing with Axel, so I had to say something. I had to tell her the truth.” Lyle had lifted the ice pack to his damaged cheek for only the briefest of moments; now it sat forgotten on the arm of his chair.
I could tell that he’d already decided to tell me whatever he’d told my sister, and I had the sudden impulse to yell, “No, wait!” When I asked myself what I wanted him to wait for, the answer was for my ribs to stop hurting. Please, Lyle, would you mind just holding off with your big confession until these pills kick in? Naturally I didn’t say anything, but I felt all the muscles in my body tighten a little, all at the same time, as if I were bracing for impact.
“Jonathan.” Lyle looked me in the face a moment, but then his eyes skated sideways to the cushion next to me. “The truth is, Raphael had a drug problem. A very serious one.” He shot me a quick glance and looked away again. “And Axel Duncan was her dealer. He took a lot of her money—our money. He took… Well, he took everything. He took everything from her.”
Lyle stood up abruptly and stalked toward the hall. “I have to go get Shayna.”
“Dad!” It was the same part of me that had wanted to yell, “No, wait!” a moment ago.
It stopped him. He turned around.
I wanted to ask him more about Raphael, but instead I said, “How about if I go to the party instead? You drive me there, and I’ll make sure Shayna is okay.”
Lyle rubbed a hand over his face and winced when his palm hit the bruised part.
“Okay?” I said.
“Okay,” he said, and sighed. “Okay, that’s a good idea. Are you sure?”
“Sure,” I said.
Yours,
Jo