on who you were asking and if your definition of good precluded murder. “Umm…yeah…he is a good man. He has always had my back.” That much was true. With Torres she always had someone on her side. That is why she married him. She probably shouldn’t have, he had only asked her out of a misplaced sense of loyalty. It wasn’t particularly fair to him, to saddle him with her and her daughter. If she was a better person, she would have said no, for his sake, but she wasn’t, and she wasn’t proud. She would take whatever he offered because he was all she had left, the only person on her side.
And he would take care of Alejandra. Beth wouldn’t let her be orphaned again. When things went downhill with Torres, when he finally realized who she was, he would still be there for Alejandra, and that was all that really mattered. She might be a shitty person but she was a devoted mom.
Her dad nodded. “You said he worked with you. What does he do now?”
Beth sighed. The truth was too complicated to contemplate retelling. “He is a carpenter.” Again that much wasn’t a lie. He was also a soldier and a special agent and a drug runner and the head of a hit man squad, but she left those details out.
“Does he earn a good living?”
Joe Cummings was acting the part of a father, making sure his daughter was well looked after.
Surreal: this attempt at family normality. He didn’t have the right to know about her life. Why would he even care? He hadn’t even seen her in over twenty-five years. They were strangers. “We do OK.” The truth was they were more than comfortable now. The Department of Justice had offered Torres a settlement. They were more than happy to throw money at him in return for him keeping his mouth shut about Patterson setting him up. He would never need to work again if he didn’t want to. Torres couldn’t not work; it went against everything he was. He had returned to carpentry, starting with a playhouse for Alejandra that was about the size of the apartment Beth had grown up in. The playhouse had polished wooden floors and granite worktops. News of the tiny garden mansion spread through the neighbourhood and in a week, Torres had orders for three more. One person even requested a house with running water. As Paige always said, “Thank God for people with more money than sense.”
He wiped at his face. “Thank you for coming, Beth, for telling me in person. I can’t believe she’s gone.” He squeezed his eyes together.
“I know. I pick up the phone to call her at least once a day. Every time I hear something funny I want to call her and tell her. She liked to laugh.” It was a stupid thing to say. Who didn’t like to laugh? Paige laughed a lot, that is what she meant. She laughed at everything. She could make a joke out of anything. Even when Torres was gone and their mom’s disease was getting worse, Paige found things to laugh about. She missed that, the levity that Paige brought to her life. Would she laugh again the way she did with Paige? She hoped she could, for Alejandra.
Beth sat down again. She could spare a few more minutes with him, it was after all the last time he would spend with his only family. That is what she was; begrudgingly she admitted it to herself, she was his family. For this one moment she would be that for him.
She spent another hour talking with her father, answering questions and talking about her mom and sister. They both knew this would be the last time Beth came to see him. She didn’t say it, but they both knew. They would go back to being strangers again. Eventually he would die and Beth would think about him for a few minutes or a few days and then he would be gone again like he never existed. She should be sad about that, but it would be like missing something she never had.
Eventually she stood up. “Take care…Dad.” She reached out and embraced him. It wasn’t for her, or even for him, it was for Paige and her mom. They loved him, and Beth loved them.
Her dad began to cry again. His arms tightened around her. He didn’t want to let her go. She understood that feeling better than most. This was the moment, the one before he lost everything in his life. She closed her eyes and willed it to last a little longer because she knew the sting that would follow…and the darkness. God she wished she could go back to the moments before she lost Paige.
“I’m sorry,” he managed to say between sobs.
Beth’s legs went slack; muscles that she didn’t know were tight, loosened. They were words she didn’t know she needed to hear. “Thank you.”
With those two words, the pain and bitterness she had carried for thirty years, washed away.
Beth couldn’t remember where she had parked but then she realized she was looking for her SUV not the small red Prius she had rented at the airport. She took a deep breath and looked around at the bare trees. The leaves had already turned and most had fallen. This was California, her home; the place she had worked so hard to come back to. But it didn’t feel right. It wasn’t the same. This wasn’t her home. For over a decade every decision she made was about getting back here. But now all she wanted to do was get back to Texas to her sassy five-year-old and her scary-looking tattooed husband. They were her home now, for as long as Torres chose to be there, he would be her safe place.
As she slid the key into the lock, there was a sharp tug on her ponytail. Her head snapped back.
In an instant Beth spun around, just in time to see the peroxide blonde from inside swing at her.
Without having to think, Beth stepped to the side, preventing the punch from landing on her face. She used the momentum of the swing to spin the woman around. Beth slammed her hard against the side of the car. She still had a hold of her arm; that alone was enough leverage to keep the woman in place. Suddenly she saw the little girl staring up at her.
Beth shook her head. “Seriously? You attack me in front of your kid? Some people really should not be parents. I told you not to mess with me. You really should have listened.”
“Fuck you, bitch.”
Beth pulled up on her arm. It was a small movement designed to inflict maximum pain.
“Ouch, you mother fucker,” the woman howled.
“Please stop swearing in front of your child.” Beth turned and smiled down at the little girl. She reminded her so much of her own daughter. “Mommy is having a hard time remembering her manners. But I’m helping her remember. That is nice of me, isn’t it? Good manners are very important.”
The little girl’s dark brows knit together, not sure what to make of Beth.
Beth lowered her voice to a whisper so the little girl could not hear her. “You’re not very tough now without your gang. Bet you wish you had a gun right now or a baseball bat.” Beth gave her arm another small pull upward. “Did I forget to tell you I have a black belt in karate? Yep I did. Must have slipped my mind. Also forgot to mention I am a special agent with the DEA. So you just assaulted an officer of the law. Never a good idea. The court frowns on that. Do you have anything sharp in your pocket I could cut myself on?”
The woman didn’t answer.
“You really need to learn to play nice.” Beth pulled up on her arm again, not stopping until the woman bellowed. She hated that she had to do this in front of the little girl. Life would be so much easier if parents put their children before their need to be assholes.
“No, no I don’t have anything.”
Beth
