Page 70 of Make Me Sin (Bad Habit 2)
I tell him about all the tests, and the results. He nods, grimly satisfied. “When do they expect to release you?”
“They haven’t said yet. There was some concern about my throat closing because of swelling, but so far that hasn’t happened . . .”
Murder has renewed in my father’s eyes. I squeeze his hand.
“I’m okay, Dad. It could’ve been a lot worse; I got away.” I try to be lighthearted. “Plus, I kneed Eric in the balls and got to use Mom’s pepper spray on his sorry ass, so it wasn’t a total loss.”
We fall quiet. Because I know my father so well, I see he’s struggling with guilt over our last meeting, the awful dinner when he asked when Eric and I were going to get married. “This fine young man,” he called him. I wonder now if he’ll ever forgive himself for that miscalculation. Usually he’s even better than Grace at pegging people.
This time it’s Grace who’s won that call.
“What did you tell Mom?” I only ask because I know he didn’t tell her the truth. At least not the whole truth. He makes his living defending criminals, after all; the truth can be a very inconvenient roadblock to keeping people out of prison.
“I told her I was needed at work.” The ghost of a smile lifts his lips. “And don’t give me that look. I was needed. By my baby girl.” He strokes a hand over my hair.
Looking at each other, we share a moment of profound silence. I can see he’s carefully weighing what he’ll say next.
Finally, his voice quiet, he asks, “Who was the man who called me?”
“His name
is A.J. He’s here; he just went to go get some food. He’s been with me all night. He’s a friend of mine.” My face reddens. I drop my gaze to my hands, and pick at the heartbeat monitor attached to my forefinger. “He’s actually more than a friend. We’re . . . close.”
“I see.”
Oh God, the weight of that. The assumptions, which I know are right. My father has just figured out the whole sordid picture, without having to hear more than a few words. My embarrassment is excruciating.
But my wonderful father bypasses any awkward conversation about the identity of the man who usurped his hoped-for son-in-law’s position in his daughter’s bed, and switches into professional-lawyer mode. “All right. Chloe, I need you to tell me everything that happened. Start at the beginning.”
I do. I also tell him about my last few encounters with Eric, and his increasingly erratic behavior. When I’m finished, my father squeezes my hand so tightly I think he might be cutting off the circulation to my fingers. His eyes are bright and diamond hard.
“I’d like to kill that son of a bitch. I’d like to rip his heart from his chest with my bare goddamn hands. I’d like to burn him alive. Then I’d like to slice both his Achilles tendons, dump him in the lion cage at the zoo, and throw knives at his head while they tear out his barbequed guts.”
I’m shocked. I’ve never heard my father curse, or utter a speech so choked with hatred. I didn’t know he was capable of such violent emotion.
He sees the expression on my face, leans forward and takes my face in his cupped hands.
“I wasn’t always Thomas Carmichael, upstanding businessman, respectable, tax-paying citizen. Before I met your mother and turned my life around, I was Tommy Two-Time, repeat offender, biggest, baddest thug in Southie. All the other gang leaders in Boston would shit golden bricks when they heard my name. And if anyone was stupid enough to lay a finger on my family or friends, they’d lose that finger . . . and the rest of their arm.”
My lower jaw comes unhinged, and hangs uselessly on my chest. After a moment I compose myself enough to say, “Gang leader? You’re joking! Mom never would have married a thug!”
He kisses my cheek. “Of course not. I had to clean up my act before she’d even consider dating me.”
I sputter, “B-but you met at a country club! Playing golf!”
My father smiles. It’s a half smile, crooked and cunning. In it I see a flash of the old Tommy Two-Time, the thug from Southie who wouldn’t know Brioni from a bagel.
“She was playing golf. I was inches away from getting fired from my job as snack bar attendant for stealing beer and candy bars. When I first laid eyes on her, I thought I’d been struck by lightning. I’d never seen a woman so beautiful, so elegant. I jumped over the counter, walked right up to her, and asked her out. She put her nose in the air, looked me up and down, and said, ‘Get a haircut and a law degree, and I’ll consider it.’ So what do you think I did?”
Awed, I murmur, “You got a haircut and a law degree.”
He nods, releases my face and sits back, adjusting his cufflinks. “Nothing gets in the way of what I want. You’re like me that way. We’re both fighters. Single-minded when we set a goal. Though thank God you got your mother’s looks.”
I have to laugh. It hurts my throat, and I cough. My father pours me a glass of water from the plastic pitcher on the table beside my bed, and I drink it, my brain spinning with this new information.
“How come I never heard that story before?”
“Because one condition your grandmother had for allowing me to marry her daughter was that my sordid past be buried under a nice, thick layer of respectability. So it was.” He shrugs. “This was before the internet. People could still reinvent themselves back then.”
