Page 16 of Monk
“I was going hang all of my hunting trophies in here. I thought the deer heads would look good mounted on that wall over there,” my dad says as he walks into the room.
“Glad you held off,” I reply with a small laugh.
He drops my bags next to those I’ve carried in, then turns and looks at me. Without a word, he pulls me into an embrace so tight, I feel like he’s about to crack my ribs. As it is, I’m having trouble breathing. Despite that, it feels nice. Even though he was never very touchy-feely when I was younger, it still somehow feels like home. I take a step back and look up at him.
“You’re getting soft and sentimental on me, old man?”
“I can still turn this into my trophy room, you know. Maybe make it my skinning room, too.”
I laugh and shake my head at him. “That’s really gross.”
“Teach you to call me soft.”
He pauses for a moment, his gaze fixed on mine, and in his eyes, I see such a complicated tangle of thoughts and emotions. But more than anything, I see that he still loves me. And for that, I’m grateful. Given the tumult and acrimony between us the last few years, he ought to have turned me away. Frankly, part of me is surprised he hasn’t. But I’m thankful for it.
“This is your home, too. Always has been, and you’re always welcome here,” he says. “You know that, right?”
I feel the emotions rising in me like the tide, threatening to pull me under. My eyes burn and my cheeks flush with warmth, and all I seem able to do is stand there, doing my best to not start blubbering like an idiot.
“You stay here as long as you need to figure out—well—everything you need to figure out. You’re safe here, honey.”
I give him another long hug, squeezing him as tight as I can. “Thanks, Dad.”
He leans forward and kisses me on the forehead before turning and walking out of my room, closing the door softly behind him. The feeling of being safe—of being home—is overwhelming. But not nearly as much as the exhaustion that’s crept up on me again. That feeling of being drained latches onto me, and my entire body feels weak.
I look at my bags—at the bag of cash in particular—and decide that I’m going to deal with it in the morning. It’ll be safe until then. That decided, I stagger over to the queen-sized four-poster bed I got way back in high school and collapse onto it. The mattress is so soft, I feel like I’m lying on a cloud.
I pull the pillows over to me and give brief thought to getting undressed and ready for bed. But it’s nothing more than a thought as the darkness of exhaustion reaches up and pulls me under.
Chapter Six
Monk
I lean back against my bike and take a drag off my cigarette. I look up at the sky and exhale, my plume of smoke drifting up toward the thick clouds overhead. A couple of our guys, Max and Eric, are leaning against the van, copping a smoke while we wait.
“They’re late,” I say.
“They’re always late,” Cosmo replies as he steps up beside me.
We’re standing in a vacant parking lot in the shadow of a derelict warehouse that’s situated in an unincorporated stretch of land well east of Blue Rock Bay that’s about halfway to Fresno. Once upon a time, some folks banded together and tried to make a go of it out here in the middle of nowhere. Their attempt at making a home out here went tits up, and now all that’s left are tumbleweeds and a host of dilapidated buildings. It’s a modern-day ghost town, which of course, makes it perfect for the business we’re doing out here.
I take another drag and look toward the road. “I hate people who can’t manage to be on time.”
Cosmo laughs. “Anybody ever tell you you’re a little anal retentive about shit?”
“You tell me all the time.”
“Yet you never seem to hear me.”
“Oh, I hear you,” I say to him with arched brows. “I just think you’re full of shit.”
His sudden laughter booms across the empty parking lot, startling Max and Eric, both of them instinctively reaching for the 9mm handguns tucked into the back of their jeans. I wave them off, showing them there’s nothing to be worried about, and they relax and go back to talking and smoking.
“I didn’t think it possible, but I may have found somebody wound tighter than you,” Cosmo says.
“Yeah, well, having to deal with these clowns will do that. Why do we deal with these guys anyway?”
“Money,” he replies. “Theirs spends as easily as anybody else’s.”
