“You don’t get it!” she says, tears welling up. “Every single thing I ever won, every time I ever did anything I was proud of, that woman just kept knocking my feet out from under me about it. I told her not to touch my boxes.”
“Jessica,” I say, putting my hands on her shoulders, “let’s go talk to your dad.”
“What’s the point?” she asks. “This is how everything is in my life, and it’s the way it always will be. Every time I think I’m about to make some big stride, something comes along and tears it away from me. I’m sorry I’m crying,” she says, pulling a tissue from her purse. “I’m just so pissed off!”
I don’t know how to put it any other way, so I just repeat, “Let’s go ask your dad about it.”
“Will you stop saying that?” she yells, but she finally notices the anticipation on my expression. “What?” she asks. “What’s that face?”
I just smile and pull her in for a hug.
“I think you’re in for a pretty awesome surprise,” I tell her.
She takes a minute and dries her eyes before we go back out of the room and down the stairs.
“Dad?” she calls.
“In the kitchen!” he answers.
We go into the kitchen and Harold is standing over a pan of bacon.
“You kids hungry?” he asks.
Not wanting another elbow thrown at me for causes that I’ll never understand, I just stay quiet.
“Dad, have you seen my boxes—the ones that were in the closet?” she asks.
“They’re not up there?” he asks.
“No, Dad,” she says, “they’re not up there.”
“Huh,” he says and turns off the burner on the stove. “Did you check under the bed?” he asks.
“They wouldn’t fit under the bed,” she answers. “There were at least three boxes, overflowing with stuff.”
“Well, let’s go take a look,” he says and leads the way back up the stairs.
We follow him up, but of course the boxes haven’t magically appeared in the closet.
“Huh,” he says. “Maybe they ended up in the storage room.”
With that, we follow him back down the stairs and into the garage or, as he called it, the “storage room.”
The place is packed with stack after stack of boxes and loose items. I stand in the doorway so as not to break anything, but Harold walks through the space effortlessly, his muscle memory knowing well how to navigate the mess.
“Do you see them anywhere?” he asks.
“No,” Jessica says, following closely her father’s footsteps and looking over every box in the garage.
“Well,” he says, “I don’t know what to tell you. I guess we must have thrown it out. Hey Eric, this is your first time here and we haven’t given you the tour yet. What do you say we—”
“We’re going, Dad,” Jessica says, trying to contain her hurt and frustration.
I’d love to just tell her now, but her dad shakes his head as the empathy comes over my face.
“What do you say, Eric?” he asks.
“Sure,” I tell him.
“Well, you’ve already seen Jessica’s room, although I’m sure this isn’t the first time you’d be able to say that, huh?” he asks.
Yeah, I’m not stupid enough to answer that question.
“I would show you the room me and her mother share, but frankly I don’t know you that well,” he continues.
As endearing as this surprise is sure to be, I can’t help thinking that Jessica’s family is pretty all-around strange.
“Let me show you the basement,” he says.
“No Dad,” Jessica protests. “You’re not dragging us down there. The place smells like feet.”
“I cleaned,” he says. “Well, it’s been a while, but the smell’s gone anyway. Come on,” he continues.
Reluctantly, Jessica comes up to me and I take her hand as we follow her father back through the house and down the stairs.
The basement is unfinished and either it has no windows or they’re so deftly covered that no light comes into the space.
“Sorry,” Harold says, “the light switch hasn’t really worked all that well down here for a while.”
The thought occurs to me that what he told me over the phone could just have been a ploy so he could get me into his dungeon and do god-knows-what to me for dating his daughter.
“You’re not scared of the dark, are you, Eric?” he asks.
“Nope,” I answer and Harold takes Jessica’s hand, leading us as a chain through the nearly pitch black basement.
“Your hands are sweating,” Jessica whispers back toward me. “Don’t worry. He’s probably not going to try to kill you.”
“You know,” I say, feeling a lump in my throat grow as I am now walking blind, “maybe we should go. It is starting to get a little bit late, and I’ve got a new business strategy to implement tomorrow, and I’ve got to talk to—”
“Oh, nonsense,” Harold says. “We’re almost there.”
After another ten, slow feet, we come to a stop and, in front of me, I can hear a doorknob turning and a door being opened.
Do I really think that Harold brought me down here to torture or threaten me? Of course not. At the same time, I am starting to get the impression he wouldn’t feel too bad if I were to trip and injure myself.
I really have no idea how to take this guy.
“All right,” he says. “Jessica, you stand here.”
She lets go of my hand, and I can hear the shuffled sound of him positioning her in the middle of the room.
“Eric,” he says, “well, it doesn’t really matter.”
With that, he flips on the light, blinding all of us for an instant.
“What do you think?” Harold asks.
My eyes adjust to find what he told me about over the phone.
The room is filled with trophies and framed certificates, all on shelves or in glass cases.
“Oh my god,” Jessica breathes.
“Hey, looks like I found your stuff,” Harold says in an overly affected voice.
“When did you do this?” Jessica asks, “How?”
“Well, it took me a while to build the shelves and the glass cases, well, we had to buy those, but it was your mother that set everything else up,” he answers.
Hearing Jessica describe the sheer volume of her various awards and recognitions, I had no idea it was this extensive.
“These are all yours?” I ask.
“No,” Harold says. “The other wall over here is Kristin’s. Now, if you’re going to want to pack up all this stuff, I can grab some boxes, but—”
“That’s okay,” Jessica says. “I can’t believe the two of you did this.”
“She was always proud of you,” her father tells her. “I know she doesn’t always know how to show that, but you and your sister mean the world to her. We’re both proud of you. You can take whatever you want, but as for me,” he says, checking his watch, “I’ve got to get back to the hospital. They’re taking your mother in for a scan to see if they got everything they needed to get.”
Jessica turns to face her father and, without a word, she throws her arms around him.
“I always thought she didn’t care,” Jessica says.
“She always cared,” Harold answers. “She’s just a bit rough around the edges.” He laughs. “Why else do you think I’ve put up with her this long?”
Jessica smiles and wipes her eyes and says, “I think it looks better here. We can go back to the hospital with you.”
“That’s all right,” her dad answers. “They’re just going to do a scan and it’ll probably be a while before they get the results back and get a doctor to look at them. I’ll give you a call when we know something.”
“Thank you,” Jessica says, “for everything.”
Harold looks over at me and says, “Now, I want you to know that no matter what happens between the two of you, this is my little girl, so you’d better—”
“It’s okay, Dad,” Jessica interrupts, tears still falling from her eyes. “He’s a good man.”
Harold gives me the stink eye anyway just to drive his point home, then turns and exits the room.
Jessica turns around to face me and says, “You know, I meant what I said. You could have taken advantage of me earlier, but you pushed me to come and do something that I’ve wanted to do for a while. I don’t know how you knew it was this important, but you knew.”