Blood in the Past (Blood for Blood Series) (7 page)

Lyla faced the difficulty in being there head on as she scuttled around grabbing whatever items she wished to salvage. She knew she needed to be there to move forward, and she intended to take her mother with her. She grabbed her mother’s blown-glass oil lamps from the master bedroom nightstands, a gift from LeeAnn that Lyla had coveted for years. She stopped to admire the painting above the headboard. It depicted the Philadelphia Art Museum from the riverbank, drenched in the orange glow of sunset. The canvas was three feet by two feet, and Lyla and her mother had worked on it in tandem, using a postcard as their inspiration. Lyla wished she could take it with her, but it was too cumbersome—and would be too suspicious.

Lyla tiptoed around the blood stain that had soaked into the floorboards and found her mother’s tortoise shell reading glasses and matching case in the bathroom. Her mother hardly used them, but sometimes she wore them perched on her head to hold her bangs back or she would chew on the temple tip when she read. Lyla sniffled at the image and jogged back downstairs to snatch her mother’s bone china tea set from the dining room cabinet. Lyla found only three teacups, but without time to search for the fourth, she cushioned the remaining pieces of the set with the old T-shirts she’d brought. The trinkets clamored against each other in her bag as she returned to the living room.

Lyla took nothing of her father’s.

Standing over the couch, she withdrew the plain white, tapered candle from her bag and lit it with the metallic Zippo lighter her mother had given her when Lyla graduated pre-med. The engraving on the lighter read HOME IS WHERE YOUR STORY BEGINS.
Ironic
, she scoffed, since her story had just begun. Her mother. Then her father. Death was Lyla’s story. With that thought, she held the lit candle near the magazines on the coffee table. The paper ignited slowly at first, the flames only gently caressing the surface of the pages. She blew on them gently to coax the fledgling fire to swell.

Satisfied with the lit magazines, Lyla pulled the whiskey from her bag. The cap crackled when she twisted it open. She sloshed it all over the couch and her father. One of her mother’s oil lamps tumbled out of her shoulder bag and smashed against the edge of the table. The flames dancing among the magazines ignited the lamp oil. Lyla stepped back as the fire spread from the table to the carpet and beyond. It crawled up the sides of the couch with red and orange fingers, clawing at her father. The flames licked the drapes and formed a fiery tent above her. Just as a boom of thunder shook the old house, Lyla backed out of the room where the fire raged and consumed her father’s body. She exited the way she came, never looked back, and tried to forget that she was ever daddy’s little girl.

Outside, embers flitted and flurried around her. Safe from the blossoming inferno, Lyla lingered in the back yard for a few moments to bask in the heat of her childhood home. It burned despite the rain. Almost in defiance of it. Something about the burning home beckoned her like a setting summer sun on the horizon. When the flames took over, triumphant in their fiery invasion, Lyla sprinted into the street, a mask of panic plastered on her face, along with her wet hair.

“Help! My father! Someone help!” she screamed, fighting to be heard against the roar of the storm. The neighbors emerged from their homes, some to help, some to gape. One of the next-door neighbors—the same one from the funeral—approached Lyla.

“I called 911,” he said. “The fire department’s on its way. Lyla, are you all right?”

Lyla heard the neighbor perfectly, but she stared at him with wild eyes, pretending to be too distraught to understand him. He clasped her hand and led her farther across the street, presumably to distance them from the house in case it exploded. Before long, they heard the sirens in the distance. A sedan pulled up and screeched to a stop, beating the fire trucks to the scene. In the flickering light of the burning home, Lyla saw a large, rigid antenna standing out from the back of the sedan’s roof. A barrier separated the front seat from the back. It was an unmarked police car.

A man with boyish features, betrayed only by the creases around his eyes, jumped out and grabbed her shoulders. “Is anyone inside?” He shook her and demanded again, “Is anyone inside? Is your father in there?”

Lyla didn’t have to feign confusion anymore. The stranger’s mention of her father had genuinely taken her aback.
Does he know me?
She thought of the car he’d pulled up in; he probably worked with her father. He may even have attended her mother’s funeral. She wondered if he’d heard about her father’s date.

“He’s unconscious,” she sobbed. Through her tears, mustered by thoughts of vengeance for her mother, she managed to add, “I couldn’t move him.”

Lyla felt a jab of guilt when the man sped toward the house. He shouldn’t have gone in. He should have waited for the fire department.

He never came out.

WHEN JASON BRIGHTHOUSE
Jr. crossed through the doorway, home early from class, something seemed off. The air felt wrong. Two police officers stood in the foyer, blocking his view of his mother, but he heard her wailing. Instinctively, he welled up, too, that familiar stinging sensation prickling his face. She peered past the officers at him, her bronze hair frizzed and her jade eyes rimmed with red. Her eyes told Jason his father was dead.

The cops tried to console them. “You both should know that he died valiantly while trying to save a fellow officer from his burning home,” one of them said.

Their words sounded far away. Only his mother’s sobs were up close and personal. She and Jason had spent their whole lives trying to prepare themselves for that moment while praying it would never come. Being a police officer came with risks, especially in Philadelphia. But they had expected bullets, not back drafts.

The two officers poured out more information. Words tumbled from their mouths and spilled down the fronts of their cheap suits. Cheap suits. Like the ones his father wore. The men were fellow detectives. Jason should have known the department wouldn’t send mere beat officers to notify the next of kin of one of their own. Jason teared up at the thought of him and his mother being reduced to ‘next of kin.’ Instead, he tried to focus on the men’s words, which were doing so little to quell his tears. He tugged his fingers through his thick, curly hair, eventually settling his head in his hands. As he listened, sniffling, eyes closed, he learned that his father knew the other man, another detective.

“We think Detective Brighthouse heard the call over the scanner and recognized the address. Though he was off duty, he’d been driving around in the vicinity of the residence and rushed to save his colleague.”

Jason felt as if the words were coming from another household, happening to another family.

But the second officer continued. “The detective he attempted to save had a wife and daughter. Unfortunately, his wife committed suicide earlier this week. Perhaps he didn’t want the family to be struck with two tragic losses in one week.”

But why didn’t he think of his own family?
Jason returned to that question over and over. He wished he could be strong, proud of his father’s selfless act, but Jason stubbornly refused to chase away his selfish thoughts.

Before Jason and his mother fell asleep on the couch, neither wanting to retreat to their own rooms, his mother spoke. As far as he could remember, it was the first time she’d done so that day. She said, “He must have thought if it were him in a burning house, he’d want someone to help him return home to us.”

Those words touched Jason. He knew they were true. He knew she echoed his father’s sentiments exactly.

***

Three days later, Jason and his mother sat huddled together against the chilly air. The motorcade for the dual funeral for Brighthouse Sr. and his colleague was tremendous, snaking through the city for blocks, but nothing compared to the actual turnout. Hundreds of men and women came to pay their respects to the two fallen detectives.

Jason recognized some of the uniformed officers from the Police Athletic League and family barbecues. Strips of black cloth cut across each of their badges. A sea of solemn faces swayed to the bagpiper’s rendition of “Amazing Grace”. With everyone so lost in their collective grief, hardly a body remained still when the rifle squad shot three volleys into the air. The resounding crash rattled Jason’s chest, but he sat motionless, among the few who didn’t flinch.

Desperate for something to focus on besides his own grief, Jason watched the honor guard split to fold two separate flags. They placed one in his mother’s trembling hands. They brought the other to a young woman across the aisle. She acted oddly disinterested in the ritual, all but tossing the flag onto the chair beside her. Jason recalled the detectives’ mention of the daughter who had lost her mother and father to isolated incidents in the same week. Judging by her front-row seat, that was her. Her demeanor confused Jason; her body wasn’t heaving with sobs, nor was she clutching any used tissues.
Strange for a daughter who’d lost both her parents
. Up until then, he’d empathized with her; he wasn’t so sure anymore.

She sat alone, empty seats flanking her on both sides. A man around her age sat directly behind her and rubbed her shoulders, but she continued to stoically observe the services as though he didn’t exist. The sheer black scarf around her head fluttered in the breeze, and the large, dark sunglasses either shielded her from prying stares or served to hide her emotionless eyes. Jason feared it was the latter. Something about her utter stillness and defiant posture troubled him.

Beneath the scarf, her hair was as black as the damp soil of the freshly dug graves. She resembled a picture of Jackie O. he had seen once. Maybe that’s how she sneaked through Jason’s grief and grabbed his attention while so many others had gone unnoticed. When her father’s casket disappeared from view into the fresh grave, she stood to toss in a single rose. Jason watched her movements and studied her face. The other mourners repeatedly lifted tissues to their eyes and noses, lifting their sunglasses if necessary. Not her. Her features were fresh and young, but she appeared worn, as though the compounding tragedies had aged her.
Then why wasn’t she crying?

While ushers lowered the casket of the woman’s father into the plot beside her mother’s, another group of men transported Jason’s father’s casket to a separate part of the cemetery. The crowd split, and Jason noticed another young woman. She approached from the road, watching her footsteps.
Is she just now arriving?

She stood alone, and he watched her as he had the other woman. She clung to the outskirts of the crowd, making no attempt to interact. She sobbed uncontrollably. The tears shimmered on her chocolate skin and made her eyes glisten like glass. Delicate, wide, grief-stricken, her eyes displayed the emotion he expected to see in the other detective’s daughter. Just as Jason wondered who she was, the outcast woman left without approaching either casket.

When he scanned the crowd a few minutes later, he noticed both women were gone as the bagpipers eased into “Danny Boy” to call the fallen men home.

***

Jason and his mother arrived home from the funeral. She sat in her husband’s favorite, worn-leather armchair in a near-catatonic state and stared at one of their wedding photos on the mantle. Jason thought about sitting on the carpet at her feet, to comfort her with his nearness, but he knew better. When he’d tried to console her on their way home from the funeral, she’d ignored him.

He turned to leave, but a sharp
thwack
, followed by the scattering of broken glass, startled him. Jason knew the source without turning around. Next to the wedding picture was a photo of a recent family camping trip. In the photo, his father tended a roaring fire. When Jason turned, the picture was gone from the mantle. He shifted his gaze to his mother. The image had overwhelmed her. He understood. Even the mere memory of the photo stirred his emotions. He was unwilling to associate his father with any kind of fire. Not anymore. Despite empathizing with his mother, he resisted the urge to stay with her. He trekked upstairs, harping on the last conversation he and his father had.

Jason had been poised on the edge of his father’s desk, toying with the various trinkets. “Dad, you’ve known for a long time that I want to follow in your footsteps. I don’t see why you’re making such a big deal of it now.” He’d dusted off a crystal pyramid bearing a plaque for outstanding service and gently replaced it near a sterling silver fountain pen. He’d lowered his gaze to meet his father’s warm, but cock-eyed, expression.

“Son, it’s the same old thing. Every father wants his children to take advantage of opportunities he never had, that’s all. You graduated high school two years ago. You’ve been working, taking classes. Your mom and I have been saving. All I’m saying is it’s time you pick a solid direction.”

Tears streamed from Jason’s eyes as he recalled how the rational discussion had quickly elevated into something more. Their baritone voices had carried throughout the house as they argued.

The fight had culminated in Jason screaming, “I can do whatever I want with
my
life!” He took a breath and puffed out his chest before adding, “You should be happy I even
want
to be like you! It’s not like you’re ever home with us. Maybe I don’t wanna be like you at all. Maybe I just want to show you that it
is
possible to be a cop and a father in the same lifetime!”

Jason opened the door to his father’s study, his fingers lingering on the doorknob. That day, Jason had slammed it with such force the frame shook. Several pictures had fallen from the walls, clattering to the floor.

Jason stood in the same spot in his father’s tiny office, sobbing, surrounded by reminders of their argument. Broken glass in the wastebasket. Fractured frames picked up and placed on the shelves. The remaining plaques and framed newspaper articles served as a mounted cemetery of his father’s esteemed career. With the setting sun filtering through the open drapes, the frames cast stretching shadows across the walls, like those of the headstones at the cemetery hours earlier.

Jason glanced at his father’s desk and the most prominent headstone of all: a custom wooden lock-box containing a replica badge and his original service weapon. His father, an old-school cop, favored revolvers. The Colt Python .357 sat snugly in the blue velvet nest of the lock-box. Jason couldn’t bring himself to touch it, to defile it with his intentions. He wanted to reach out and glide his fingers over the barrel’s grooves and notches, the textured wooden grip of the handle.

Instead, he opened the top drawer. Nestled among the pens and paper clips was another, smaller revolver: a Colt Cobra .38. It resembled the commemorative one, but it had a stubbier barrel. Jason removed it. It felt cool, but heavier than he remembered. Loaded. Jason had never held a loaded gun before. Though he’d often nagged his father to take him to the shooting range, his father never found the time. But he’d taught Jason how to use this particular gun, in case he had to protect his mother. His father had always unloaded it first. Now the added weight paralleled his heavy decision.

He couldn’t wait any longer.

Jason cocked the hammer. His father’s soothing instructions played in his head, step by step.

Keep your finger off the trigger until you have made a conscious decision to shoot.

Jason gulped and placed his index finger inside the trigger guard and onto the trigger.

Be sure of your target and everything in your line of fire.

Jason shifted his gaze to the wall on his left. Nothing of consequence was on the other side.

Press, don’t pull. Squeeze until you feel resistance.

Jason pulled the trigger.

At the last second, he flinched. Just a flicker of indecision, but it was too late. His blood sprayed the walls. The gun clanged to the floor. Jason’s body crumpled. In the end, he laid in front of the door he had last slammed in his father’s face.

***

Jason awoke to bright fluorescent lights and the smell of bleach, pine, and general sterility. A nurse scurried about his bedside. Her dark hair and eyes were somewhat familiar. That was all he could see through the haze.
Why is there a haze?
Suddenly, he was aware he wasn’t wearing contact lenses. The woman greeted him cheerfully. He moaned an unintelligible response and looked around.

Jason eyed a roll-away bed tray to his right and a thick curtain divider beyond it. A cacophony of beeping and whirring fell on his ears. Jason realized he was lying in a hospital room. On his left, his mother dozed in one of two orange, plastic chairs near the window. Jason thought it was odd that his mother was asleep.

“Excuse me, nurse? How long have I been here?” Jason’s voice startled him. It didn’t sound like his, and the words themselves didn’t sound right. His throat felt like he’d just eaten an entire pack of saltines. The dark-haired woman must have noticed the croak to his voice. She hurried out of the room and returned in a minute with a ridged, plastic cup full of ice chips.
What a beautiful woman
. A familiar beautiful.
Where have I seen her before?