Otterly Scorched

by Tara Sivec

  I had every intention of telling Dax about his dad and Nanci as soon as I walked back into my house last night after having over an hour to sit out there, sober up, and think about how I could break this news to him as gently as possible.

  Then, I walked inside, and he started saying all those heartfelt words to me and thanking me, and it completely broke me in half. Thanks to my dimly lit house, at least he didn’t see the tears I couldn’t stop from falling down my cheeks before I quickly swiped them away.

  I chickened out. I couldn’t tell him. Not right then. Not when he was pouring his heart out to me and just looked so happy. I stood there looking at that man, thinking about all he’d been through, knowing I would do anything I could to make sure he never felt one second of pain again, and I opened my mouth and told him I loved him.

  And was shocked as hell to realize I meant it.

  God, I hope after this he knows I meant it and didn’t just say it to distract him.

  There was no way I could wait any longer to find out what’s going on with his dad and Nanci, for my own sanity. Waiting until the sun came up and having to lie to Dax’s face about where I was going definitely wasn’t going to happen. Leaving him a note that said I got called out on a work emergency was bad enough, but at least I didn’t have to look at him when I lied this time. I know the only way Dax is ever going to forgive me for anything is if I can give him back his otters.

  “We’ll just go in there, kick Martin’s ass, take the otters back, and Dax will forgive me,” I pep talk myself, heading up the mountain of stone steps to the archway that leads to the front door.

  “He’ll be so busy crying like a girly man to have Chris and Lincoln back that I’m sure he won’t have time to think about how you lied about Ryan, lied about Nanci, lied about why you were asking about the employee handbook, lied about why you let him go crazy with that dinner party, didn’t tell him his father is still a piece of shit, and continued to not tell him any of these things for hours, and hours, and hours, and then lied about what you’re doing this morning,” my dad says, patting my back as we finally get to the top of the stairs and walk through the archway.

  Let’s not forget taking my mom’s advice of screwing Dax’s brains out to distract him.

  Glaring at my dad as I stop in front of the massive oak door, I press the doorbell and listen to the gong sound blare through the house a few times on the other side.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” my dad scolds while we wait for someone to answer. “You go to your mom for advice. You come to me for the battering ram. Which is still in the trunk, and I still have time to go grab it; just say the word.”

  Wondering why I didn’t just do this on my own, I shake my head at him, pressing the doorbell again, not feeling bad in the least that I’m waking up the whole house so early in the morning.

  “You’re not getting the battering ram.” I sigh, leaning to the side of the door to try to look in one of the huge stained glass windows that are on either side. “Where did you even get all this stuff?”

  “Buddy of mine’s son works down at the station and let me borrow a bunch of things for breaking into Ryan’s house,” he says, trying to look into the window on his side of the door and not having any more luck on seeing something than I am. “Since your boyfriend is a buzzkill and wouldn’t let me use any of it that night, I figured I should get some use out of it before I have to give it back. If it makes you feel better, I won’t go get the ram.”

  Right when I can relax about one thing on the long list of things stressing me out this morning, there’s a loud click, and then my dad’s voice is suddenly amplified by a thousand.

  “Martin Trevino! We have you surrounded! Come out with your hands up!”

  As soon as the siren sound starts blaring from the bullhorn my dad has held up to his mouth that I didn’t even see him hiding behind his back, I quickly snatch it out of his hands. The neighborhood pitches back into silence again, aside from a dog barking across the street.

  “What the fuck?” I shout at him when I hear locks finally being engaged on the other side of the door, and the porchlight is turned on, illuminating the area all around us.

  “I said I wouldn’t get the ram. I promised nothing about the bullhorn,” he replies, pointing at the door as it starts to open. “Quit your bitching. It worked, didn’t it?”

  I turn away from him just in time to see the door flung open the rest of the way.

  “Oh thank the good Lord,” Dax’s dad mutters when he sees us, leaning against the doorframe in exhaustion.

  Not exactly the greeting I expected. I assumed more along the lines of “Oh shit!” and then I’d have to chase him, maybe have a little fun with my stun gun.

  This was anticlimactic.

  At this point, I don’t think Dax’s dad could run from me if he tried, and it would be like using a stun gun on a wounded puppy. He looks a thousand times worse than he did last night. His salt-and-pepper hair that was a little on the messy side at our dinner party is now sticking straight up in every direction. The bags he had under his eyes are larger and rimmed with red, along with his actual eyes that are so bloodshot I can no longer tell they’re hazel, just like Dax’s, which tells me he’s been spending entirely too much time crying.

  “Please excuse my state of dress. I wasn’t expecting to entertain.” Martin sighs.

  Speaking of his clothing… or lack thereof. The wrinkled, three-piece suit he had on last night that looked like he’d slept in it for a week is still on his body. Sort of. He’s gotten rid of the jacket and replaced it with a navy-blue bathrobe with rips and tears all over the edges of it as it hangs open over his black dress pants and pale-blue button down. The dress pants have a tear so big in the right leg the fabric is hanging down by Martin’s ankle, dragging on the ground. There’s also a huge piece of his blue dress shirt that’s ripped down from the shoulder, showcasing one age-spot-covered pec, and one old nipple, the skin surrounded by angry, red scratches. He looks like his outfit was put together by Tom Hanks, when he was stranded on that island in Castaway.

  There’s blood dripping down his exposed leg onto the marble floor he’s standing on, and the white medical gauze wrapped and taped around both his hands has blood stains leaking through them.

  “What the hell happened to you?” I ask, my wide eyes continuing to take in the hot mess that is Dax’s father as he continues to hug the doorframe, so he doesn’t collapse.

  Now I don’t feel so bad about hugging a tree and screaming about cheese the first time I met him.

  “I can’t do this anymore. They never sleep, they never stop eating, they’ve ruined everything in my home, and they hate me!” Martin wails, tears starting to pool in his eyes while his chin quivers. “I just wanted to get to know my son better and learn about the things he loves and make him stop hating me. Nanci promised me it wouldn’t go this far, and I haven’t slept more than a few hours in weeks, and I definitely didn’t sleep any last night, because I’m pretty sure one of them absolutely wants to sexually assault me like those poor seals, and I can’t do this anymore! I cannot!”

  Martin suddenly finds a new burst of energy, launching himself from the doorway and stumbling toward me before I know what’s happening, throwing his arms around me as I hold mine stiffly down by my sides.

  “‘Look how cuddly they are!’” Martin cries in a high-pitch, female voice, his cheek resting on my shoulder while he squeezes the life out of me. “‘Like cute little stuffed animals!’ She lied! They aren’t cute little stuffed animals. They are demons straight from the bowels of hell!”

  My dad laughs from somewhere behind me, not helping at all. “Now I see where your boyfriend gets his girliness.”

  Martin suddenly lets go of me, grabbing tightly to both my biceps as he jerks back to stare at me with his wide, squirrely eyes.

  “Take me with you. Take me with you!” he demands, shaking me a couple times before my father finally steps in, puts his hands on Martin’s sho
ulders, and gently pulls him back from me.

  “How about we go inside and make you a nice, hot cup of tea? Doesn’t that sound relaxing?” my dad asks him in the same soothing voice he used with me when I was sick as a kid, turning Martin toward the door.

  “Yeah… tea. Tea sounds nice.” Martin nods in a daze as my dad walks him inside the house, and I follow them, pulling the door closed behind me.

  We all stop in the monstrosity of an entryway, me and my dad getting our first good look at what Martin was talking about when he said they’ve ruined everything in his home. Aside from the blood trails and smears all over the white marble floor leading in all different directions, every area rug I can see in here and throughout the other rooms that can be viewed from the entryway of the wide-open floor plan have been ripped to shreds. And I’m fairly certain the area rugs Dax’s dad buys are a little more expensive than the ones my dad buys at Walmart.

  Martin starts shaking next to my father, mumbling under his breath and looking around nervously. I walk around them to peek farther into the home without moving out of sight from the two men, feeling like I’m back in my detective days and I just walked into a house that’s been burglarized.

  Books are ripped to shreds and littered all over the floors.

  Lamps have been knocked over, dragged into the middle of rooms and out into hallways, the shades trampled and torn and the chords chewed completely through.

  Framed pictures have fallen from walls, and what I’m assuming is probably a real Van Gogh is lying in the middle of the doorway to the kitchen with muddy footprints stamped through the center of it.

  Every side table has been clawed, gnawed on, and in some cases completely broken apart.

  There are scratches and bite marks on all the walls, and the curtains and their heavy rods have been ripped from them, taking pieces of plaster and leaving big holes behind.

  Every chair has had the seats split open and the guts pulled out and shredded all over the place, and every couch has tears through every inch of the fabric, like Freddy Krueger walked through here on a rampage.

  Every cupboard and drawer in the kitchen and butler’s pantry have been flung open, and pots, pans, and every piece of silverware and dry good item has been dumped and strewn all over the expensive marble tiled floors.

  There are ripped articles of designer clothing draped on top of tipped-over chairs, and there are leather shoes that probably cost more than my mortgage with bites and chewed-off soles in the middle of the formal dining table. There are broken marble statues and vases and dirt and soil flung literally everywhere from several large potted plants that have been tipped over and, yep, torn to shreds.

  Now I understand the analogy when Dax referred to them before as ferrets on crack.

  “Jesus. Don’t people like you have a maid? Or an entire staff of maids?” my dad finally speaks to Martin when I make it to them in the middle of the entryway after walking back from the kitchen.

  “They quit. Every last one of them. Michael has been with me for twenty years, and he walked out on me last night when I was at the dinner party! They couldn’t take the squeaking either. Do you hear it? The squeaking? I hear it. It never stops. Just squeak, squeak, squeeeaaakkk!” Martin says, his eyes looking crazier and crazier. “I finally had to lock them in my office. I couldn’t take it anymore, never knowing where they’d be, or what they’d ruin, or when they’d jump out at me and attack, or demand food. I had to lock them in there. I had to!”

  My dad gently removes Martin’s fists from the front of his shirt where he had grabbed on and clung to him.

  “There, there, we’re here to help. Aren’t we, Harley?”

  “I don’t know. I came here to kick his ass. I still kind of want to kick his ass.” I glare at Martin, but it’s not as full of rage as I thought it would be. The guy has seriously seen some shit over the last month. And he said he only wanted to get to know his son better, and dammit… I think I believe him. I mean, what other possible explanation would there be for this man to put himself through this kind of hell… and ruin a fucking Van Gogh?

  I feel a little bad about how many awful things I thought about him over the last twelve hours, but not bad enough to still not be pissed at how he went about getting to know his son better.

  “Show me where Chris and Lincoln are right now.” I point at the disaster of a man shaking like a leaf in front of me. “And then you’re going to call your son, and you’re going to tell him what you did. I’m not lying for you anymore. You should have just tried to talk to him like a real father months ago, instead of doing something so ridiculous and so upsetting for him.”

  Martin bows his head in shame, nodding in agreement with me.

  “I know, I know. It was a stupid idea. It was just supposed to be for a few days, so I could see what Dax’s life is like and I’d have something to talk to him about, and then Nanci just kept telling me to keep them for a little longer, and I used to like the woman, but she scares me now, and there was just so much hissing.”

  “From the otters or from Nanci?” my dad jokes.

  “Okay, so this ointment says it’s good for all infections, so we’ll just assume that means rabies, and you can—”

  My head whips around when I hear the woman in question’s voice, and she looks up from the small tube in her hand, paused in the doorway from the formal sitting room. That room must lead to a different part of the house, since she wasn’t in there a minute ago when I glanced inside at the mess.

  “Oh no,” Nanci mutters, dropping her arm with the tube of ointment in it down by her side. “I thought we’d have at least a few more hours before we got in trouble.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Fat Back

  Harley

  “Oh my God!” I yell at Nanci while she stands there in the doorway of the sitting room, having the nerve to look annoyed, like I just interrupted dinner and not like I just caught her red-handed. “Do you even understand how serious this is? Dax called the police. There’s been a report filed. Not only have I been wasting time and effort to find Chris and Lincoln, but every employee at The Backyard, as well as half the town, have been wasting time and resources to find animals you stole! What is wrong with you?” My hands are clenched so tightly into fists at my sides I can feel my fingernails cutting into my palms.

  “Go ahead. I’ll let you get one good shot in before I pull you off of her. Make it count,” my dad says, scowling at Nanci.

  “All right, there’s no need for violence,” she says in a placating tone that makes me want to take my dad up on his offer and get in one good, solid punch to her face. “Martin has already donated a hefty amount to the Policeman’s Ball, and he’s going to give very large bonuses to all the employees of The Backyard for their time and trouble. Everything that was done here was done out of nothing but love.”

  “Bullshit!” I shout at the top of my lungs, making both Martin and Nanci jump in fear and my dad start studying his fingernails. “How exactly do you plan on making it up to Dax? Do you think you can just buy him off too, like Martin did with the sanctuary, instead of stepping up and being a real father?”

  “See? I told you she was perfect.” Nanci elbows Martin.

  “Seriously! What the hell is wrong with you people?” I rage, throwing my hands up in the air. “Do you have any idea how much sleep Dax has lost over Chris and Lincoln? How upset and worried he’s been that something really awful happened to those otters? How much guilt he’s felt that he was supposed to rescue them and take care of them, and he thinks he failed at that? You of all people should know what that kind of guilt can do to him.”

  Nanci finally has the decency to wipe the smug look off her face and bite her lip worriedly, and I keep going, since I’m on a roll.

  “You should be ashamed of yourself. It’s bad enough this dipshit went along with it instead of acting like a father for once in his life.” I point at Martin while glaring at Nanci. “But you were the only other person he trusted in this
entire world. And you lied to him. For weeks. And you made me lie to the man I love, and I am not okay with that!”

  All of a sudden, Nanci goes from looking distraught and like she’s about to start crying and never stop, to having a small smile tug at the corner of her mouth.

  “You have nothing to smile about, so wipe that shit off your face!” I order, whirling around to look at Martin. “And you! Take me to the fucking otters already!”

  Martin immediately hops into action, clearly understanding I am not to be messed with right now. We all follow him down a hallway until he gets to a closed door, where I can hear a whole hell of a lot of noise coming from the other side.

  “I can’t go in there again. I can’t go in there again! So. Much. Squeaking.” Martin holds his hands over his ears and shakes his head.

  I give my dad a look over my shoulder that says “take care of this bullshit,” and though he might be a handful, my dad understands all my looks. Putting his hands on Martin’s shoulders again, Dad starts talking about vacations on secluded beaches and hot women in bikinis, steering Martin out of the way of the door until he’s lowered his hands from his ears and looks less panicky.

  “Do you want the hockey mask or the catcher’s gear?” Nanci asks, pulling open a closet door in the hallway and yanking out both items to hold up for me.

  “You just shut up and don’t say another word to me before I punch you in the throat.” I glare at her, which just makes her smile even wider, the old hag.

  Grabbing onto the door handle, I turn the knob and slowly push open the door a crack, sticking my head inside. Even filled with as much rage as I am right now, I still can’t help but let out a little snort when I see the leather couch in the room has been treated the same way as the rest of the furniture in the house. At least Martin was smart enough to remove everything else from in here before he locked Chris and Lincoln inside. The room is completely empty aside from the built-in bookcases that surround the room that have been stripped clean of everything, the ripped apart leather couch, a few random squeaky toys and torn blankets, and a blue plastic children’s wading pool.