In Our Darkness - 12. Chapter 12: A Father’s Love

Kat didn’t know why she was still in touch with David Andrews after 6 years. There was no point in keeping in touch, as she never had any news for him. The case had gone cold, and she doubted they would ever find the responsible party at this point. Their weekly phone calls consisted of Kat trying to talk David out of whatever crazy new idea he had in regard to the case. The poor man was wasting all his money, and what was even worse was the fact that his energy and motivation to find the guilty party seemed to have no bounds. While his wife stopped calling the station half a year after the accident, David continued fighting the battle on his own. And Kat continued indulging him, even though he wasn’t her responsibility.

She couldn’t explain it. It was an ugly mixture of loyalty, pity and guilt. The two of them were the only people who seemed to want to catch the person who did this, everyone else decided it was the proper time to move on. She admired his relentlessness and the way he made himself a pain in her ass. He was her worst critic, yet she couldn’t help but think that if someone killed her, she’d want a father like David in her corner. Fighting for her every day, never quitting, never giving up, never taking no for an answer, never taking a dead end as a finality. She had heard a lot about how deep a mother’s bond to her child was, but he showed her that a father’s love was deafening.

So it was no longer a surprise for her to see a call from him at 11:00 pm. She picked up, and quickly discovered from his voice that something was not right. He sounded like he was gasping for breath, and like his face was swollen and he couldn’t talk. She asked him where he was and he gave her an address in a shady part of town. She inwardly groaned, realizing he was on another one of his quests to find new leads.

She drove over to meet him, and almost gasped from shock when she saw his bloody face, and the way he was holding his stomach and side.

“What happened!?” she asked urgently.

“Don’t ask,” he replied settling in the passenger seat very slowly. He was visibly in a great deal of pain.

“David, who did this to you?”

He knew she was relentless and wouldn’t stop asking, so he told her. Against his advice she went right into the building, but the apartment was already empty. It was a squatter’s place, nobody lived there. She felt the frustration build in her body. This was yet another way she would let him down. With $50,000 and a watch that cost about the same, these guys might be halfway to Mexico already. Gone with the wind.

Another scam group targeting the desperate parents of missing children. Except this one more vicious, and more ruthless than usual. They saw his fancy watch and all bets were off. They even took his jacket. Kat wanted to be furious with him, she had told him so many times not to fall victim to these online scams, but he looked so beaten down. There was no point in beating a dead horse.

“Let me just make a call to the station. I want these assholes shut down on the web before they target anyone else,” she told him and he nodded. After she hung up she said, “Alright, now let me take you to the hospital.”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Fine? You can barely move.”

“I’m fine,” he said firmly, and then he asked her if he could stay the night at her place. “Elisabeth asked for a divorce, and I don’t want to explain my face to a hotel concierge.” Then he added, “And you’re my only friend. I swear, I’ll leave first thing in the morning,” he told her almost pitifully, and after a minute she reluctantly agreed. She knew it wasn’t a bright idea, but she had a soft spot for him.

They drove the 30 minutes back to her apartment in silence. She thought about how strange and unlikely their friendship was. Two people who probably would have never crossed paths, now meshed together in tragic circumstances, desperately hoping for one common result. And now she was crossing every work boundary and letting him crash at her place. How far she had come from the idealistic version of herself she imagined when she first became a detective.

“Wow, your place…doesn’t exactly ooze warmth, huh?” he commented when they finally got to the apartment, while taking in the monochrome and minimalist decor she chose for the apartment.

“I’m never here long enough to decorate, and I’ve got everything I need. I’ll be cozy and warm in the nursing home when I’m 80.” He looked at her surprised and laughed, and she unexpectedly laughed as well.

“Let’s do something about your face, I don’t want to wash blood from my couch pillow cases tomorrow morning,” she said grabbing a bowl and filling it with warm water. She picked up a hand towel and dipped it in the water, then started to slowly cleanse his bloody face as he sat on the couch.

They determined he was badly bruised, but nothing had been broken. Still, she advised him to see a doctor in the morning.

“You think I’m an idiot for doing this, don’t you?” he asked her. She wanted to say yes, but then she thought about it. Did she think he was an idiot?

“No, I think you’re a good father. And I think the love you have for Andrew is anything but idiotic,” she swallowed, not used to making emotional statements, but he looked so broken down and she wanted to tell him how she really felt, police procedure be damned. “And I’m really sorry he never got to experience the wonderful life he would have had with you as his father, and the amount of love he had waiting for him at home. It would have been a great home. And if you can be proud of anything, it’s that.”

He sat there, his eyes glued to her face as she tried to dab away the last of the dried blood. She could tell he was touched that she called him a father, he told her he hadn’t heard that phrase in a long time.

He grabbed her wrist with his large hand and its long fingers, and it felt like time slowed down. She knew she should shake herself awake and save them both from making this very stupid mistake, but sometimes no matter how much you can see a mistake coming, you just choose to deal with the aftermath instead of trying to avoid it in the first place. That’s what she did. She gave in to the deep and desperate kiss that followed. The kiss of a sad man whose wife was leaving him and who had an empty black hole in his chest because his son was dead, and who was longing to forget about it for just one single night. And she kissed him back with the kiss of a sad woman who was a constant disappointment to her mother, to her boss, and to herself.

The two sad people meshed their bodies and felt each other’s warmth and consolidated their pain for just a little while. Afterwards, they both agreed they did a dumb thing, and smiled sadly at each other like good old friends. Without needing to say too much, or explain, or promise that it will never happen again.

She told him she would go sleep in her bedroom and he was relieved because he had the sudden urge to cry. Her sadness was manageable, his was defeating.