The hours tick by, my head droops forward, and I feel my eyes start to grow heavy—until finally, someone steps outside, walking towards me.
I look up to see that it’s an older doctor with kind blue eyes and shoulder-length gray hair. She smiles softly when I practically jump up from my seat.
“Is he okay?” I ask, not bothering to let her introduce herself.
“Right now, your father is stable, yes,” she says.
Hearing that he’s alive almost brings tears again. He’s the only family I have left. I can’t lose him.
“Thank God,” I whisper, wringing my hands together. “Can I go see him?”
“You can see him in a minute, but I wanted to talk to you before then.” She sighs and looks at me meaningfully. “He’s been pretty badly beaten. He says that he doesn’t know by whom, but I’m not sure I believe that entirely. Either way, he’s going to live. He’ll just need a few weeks to recover. He has a broken wrist and some pretty badly bruised ribs, but he’ll be okay.”
“Thank you so much,” I say.
“But…”
I freeze. “What is it?”
“With an assessment of assault like this, I was obligated to report it to the police. So, two officers are here, and they want to ask you a couple questions.”
Shit.
The doctor reaches for my hand and gives it a soft squeeze before she heads back into the room to talk with him. I think it was meant to be a reassuring gesture, but all I feel is dread.
I’ve been down this road before. It never ends well.
As the doctor vanishes through the swinging double doors, two police officers step out. Before I can take a seat, they’re in front of me.
“Hello,” I say warily, looking between them. One has a thick mustache and beady eyes, and the other looks like he’s probably a rookie, with a clean-shaven jaw set at a hard angle. He looks about my age, maybe a year or two older.
“Good evening, Ms. Elwood,” the older man says. “I’m Detective Mendoza. This is Detective Sharpe. Our condolences for the unfortunate circumstances.”
“Yeah, thanks.” I look down at my feet and then back up at them. “Is there something I can help you with?”
Mendoza, the older one, has a kind twinkle to his eye. Almost sympathetic, or at least, as sympathetic as a police detective can be. He clears his throat. “Well, I was hoping you’d have more information about your father’s attack. You were the one that was with him when it happened, yes?”
“No,” I correct, “I was in the bar waiting for him. He came stumbling in, really badly beaten up. I don’t know who would’ve done something like this.”
“Really?” the young officer blurts. He looks at me skeptically. He doesn’t seem nearly as nice as his partner. Downright aggressive, actually, as if I’m the suspect here. “He seemed to have some kind of idea. Seemed nervous when we started asking some questions, mentioning some names. Matvei Morozov, in particular, seemed to strike a chord. Does that sound familiar?”
Matvei Morozov? I haven’t heard that name in years.
I knew Dad got mixed up with some bad things when I was a little girl, and that name always seemed to float around whenever those bad things got brought up.
Back then, I didn’t think anything of it. In fact, nine-year-old me thought it was normal. I thought all dads stayed out late and came home at sunrise with rolls of crisp hundreds bound in rubber bands. So when the cops came by one day, I didn’t know that I shouldn’t tell them those things. I didn’t know that what my dad was doing was wrong. So I told them everything I knew about Dad’s comings and goings and things I’d overheard—bets and loans and vigs—even when I didn’t understand it. I smiled as I spilled the beans.
Dad tried covering for himself. He said I watched The Sopranos with him too much and that he should only show me age-appropriate shows from now on. Somehow, he got out of that jam, though I can’t possibly imagine how. Maybe the cops took pity on an alcoholic gambler with a sick wife and a precocious little daughter.
Anyways, that was all back then. But ever since Mom died, he’s sworn to me that he was changing his ways. He promised he was getting out of the mess and cleaning up his act for me. I was the last family he had. He wanted to be