Didn’t matter. The tears came, and I grabbed for the blanket, pressed a corner of it to my eyes in a stupid and doomed effort to hide the fact I was crying. Damn it. We’d already been barely scraping by, and the only reason we were even doing that well was because the house was old and paid for, which meant we didn’t have a mortgage or rent to deal with. Oh yeah, and because we hadn’t shelled out for flood insurance since we’d never flooded so why the hell would we need anything like that? And what bank in hell would lend me money to buy a new trailer? And clothes and furniture and a car…Fuuuuuuuuuuck.
“Angel!”
I turned to see my dad looking around frantically. “Where’s the jacket I had on?” He stood and began to dig through the blankets on the cot. “Where’s my goddamn jacket?”
Sniffling, I gestured toward the foot of his cot. “In the trash bag on the floor there. Needs to be washed.”
He grabbed the bag and yanked it open. I watched him, frowning.
“What’s so important about your damn jacket?” I asked.
He muttered something about goddamn water as he pulled the sodden jacket out and fumbled through the pockets, anxiety visibly increasing.
“Dad? What’s wrong?”
He abruptly pulled a soggy sock stuffed with something out of an inner pocket and heaved a thick sigh of relief. “Here, Angelkins,” he said, voice shaking as he held it out to me. “You hold on to this.”
Baffled, I took it from him and peered at the contents. Inside was a thick roll of bills.
I jerked my gaze back up to him. “Oh my god, Dad. Where did you get this? How much is in here?”
His shoulders twitched up in a shrug. “Not all that much now with everything gone, I guess. ’Bout twelve hundred. You should hold onto it.”
Holy shit. I carefully rolled it back up. “Where’d you get it?” I repeated. I’d never in a million years suspect my dad of doing anything illegal to get that money, but…damn, twelve hundred dollars was a solid chunk of cash for us.
“I been doing a little work in the last couple of months,” he said, looking down at his hands, almost as if he was embarrassed to be telling me. “Carl Kaster’s been letting me clean up the bar after closing and paying me cash under the table. I was saving it to buy new furniture, maybe a new stove that I’m not always worryin’ is gonna burn the house down.” Pain slashed across his face, then he let out a dry chuckle. “Can’t burn the house down now, huh?”
“I think we’re pretty safe from that,” I said with a strained laugh. “That’s why you’ve been out so late.”
“Yeah,” he said, then shrugged. “Mostly.”
So he hasn’t been going out drinking every night. The “mostly” part clued me in that he was still drinking some, but it sure as hell wasn’t as much as before if he could actually hold a job. The relief that rushed through me allowed a few pesky tears to sneak out, and I pretended to rub my eyes to wipe them away. Didn’t matter that he wasn’t staying totally dry, not right now.
I shifted to sit on his cot and put my arms around him. He leaned into me and let out a low sigh.
“I wanted to make it better,” he murmured.
“It’ll be better,” I assured him, forcing myself to believe it too. “We’ll figure something out. I mean, it’s corny, but we still got each other.”
He pulled me into a hug, then straightened and peered at me. “Now tell me about this ‘medical condition’ that don’t look like any kinda condition I ever heard of.”
“Oh, man.” I blew out my breath, then looked around to make absolutely sure no one was even remotely close enough to overhear. I’d known that someday I’d have to tell him, but, well, I’d sort of hoped that it would be fifty years from now or something. “Last year, right before I got the job at the morgue, I, uh, overdosed and nearly died.”>I hovered near my dad as a medic checked his head, and I listened to a relief worker comment in hushed tones about how the flooding had wiped out a small trailer park. I knew the place—a collection of six or seven trailers with almost exclusively elderly residents. I figured there had to be other casualties as well, but no one had any hard numbers. The only possible bright side was that the worst of the flooding had been on our side of the road since the bayou ran behind our property, which meant that, apart from the unfortunately located trailer park, probably less than a dozen houses had been affected. Moreover, at least half of those were fishing camps that weren’t usually occupied during the week.
“You don’t need stitches,” the medic told my dad, and I yanked my attention back to him. “You probably have a mild concussion, though,” he added.
“I ain’t goin’ to no fucking hospital,” Dad snarled before the medic could even get the suggestion out.
The young man flicked his eyes up to me. I gave him a very slight shrug and shake of my head to let him know that arguing would get him nowhere.
“All right,” he said to my dad. “But be sure to get as much rest as possible. And if you have any dizziness, headache, or blurred vision, let one of the volunteers know as soon as possible.”
Dad grumbled something that sounded like an “Okay,” and with that the medic moved on to treat the tool-stealing teen, who looked like a scared rabbit as he cradled his left arm to his chest.
The sun broke through thinning clouds for the first time in a week as another volunteer took us gently in hand and guided us toward the gym entrance.
Looked like it was going to be a damn beautiful day for the end of the world.
Chapter 18