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It takes less than two weeks in total for Healy to visit the empty lot more than Dad ever has.
He beats this record the third time he happens upon Holly reading on her parents’ bed. Her dad had crossed the boundary of the chain-link fence only twice that she knew of — once, to sign off on the clearing of the burnt remains of the house, and again, when she’d spotted his defeated silhouette on the hill as the coroner cleared Amelia’s body from the street below.
“You let me know if you ever want me to fuck off and let you be alone,” Healy tells her as he wanders up. His hands are in his pockets, and he makes sure to enter through the bedroom door.
Holly grins. Pats the ground beside her. Says she will let him know, even though, privately, she can’t imagine truly wanting anyone to fuck off and leave her alone.
Healy levers himself down on the ground beside her, grunting exaggeratedly because it always makes her smile.
“Your dad says he signed off on the rebuild,” Healy says. “They’re gonna break ground at the end of the month.”
Something in Holly’s stomach clenches. To distract herself from the feeling, she blurts out the first thought that occurs to her: “Mom’s birthday is at the end of the month.”
Her stomach clenches worse. That was a terrible distraction.
Healy turns to her, surprised. The only thing she’s told him about her mom is the story of her death, and she’d be shocked if Dad had told him anything beyond that either. This is probably the first Healy’s hearing of her life.
“Is that right?” is all he says.
Holly nods. In too deep to get out now.
(Well, Healy would probably let her bail out without question. It’s that knowledge that makes her feel safe enough not to take the exit ramp.)
“June 30th,” Holly says. “Exactly halfway between my birthday and Dad’s.”
April 30th and August 31st. All at the end of the month. “Just a whole family of latecomers,” Dad had joked once, shaking his head. Mom had laughed and shoved his shoulder: “That’s just you, I think.”
“That’s cool,” Healy says. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, he adds, “I bet you miss her.”
Holly swallows. The wind kicks up, and the pages of the open book in her lap flutter; Healy gets his hand over to it just in time to mark her place with his finger before the book flies shut. Holly watches absently as he picks it up and puts her bookmark in it, then sets the book down between them.
“Yeah,” she chokes out. She wants to keep going, keep trying; she so rarely lets herself remember. “She used to, um.” She swipes her wrist across her nose. “She used to come into my room and lay on my bed with me and ask me to tell her a story. Usually I would just read her one of my books, but sometimes I would make one up, and she would—” she waves her hand vaguely— “gasp, and laugh, and pretend to swoon. Sometimes she’d react so dramatically I would forget what I was even going to say next.”
Healy’s smiling, warm and effusive. “Dramatic? In the March family? That doesn’t sound right.”
Holly giggles, a little wetly. “She was an actress.” Her brows furrow. “Not — not like the ones you’ve been dealing with. Like an actress actress. She never really got big parts, so she didn’t get recognized too often or anything, but she always had work. She roped me and Dad into running lines with her all the time. Dad was terrible at it, but I wasn’t too bad.”
“You like to read so much because of her?” Healy asks.
Holly nods. “She had a whole room of just bookshelves. And she loved reading plays.” She swallows, glancing off in the direction of the library. “Most of the books burned in the fire. But I had a shelf in my room, and it was packed so tightly that only the edges got charred.”
She picks up her book — Crooked House — to show him the damage on the top edge of the spine. He hums in interest, reaching out to lightly trace his finger along the blackened line.
“Maybe you can have a whole room of books in the new house, too,” he says.
“I don’t have nearly enough books for that.”
He shrugs. “I’ll buy you some. Call it a belated birthday present.”
A warmth suffuses Holly’s whole torso. “You don’t have to.”
Healy shakes his head. “You could be doing a whole lot worse things than reading, kiddo. I think I oughta reward good behavior with you Marches wherever I can.”
The routine, slowly but surely, is changing.
The first time Holly called the house from school after that awful Friday, Healy answered on the first ring and asked — a little too frantically, in Holly’s opinion — if she was alright. She stumbled through an explanation of the morning phone call ritual, and Healy went silent for a long beat before saying, “You don’t need to worry about that anymore. Go to class, Hol.” She’d forgone the call on Tuesday, and all day she had that jittery feeling in her stomach like she’d forgotten something, but she came home to an empty house and a note in the kitchen, in her dad’s surprisingly-neat scrawl:
Out on a case til late. Dinner in the fridge (Jack taste-tested). Love Dad.
She’d stared at it, baffled. Healy and her dad had cooked together. She was sorry she had missed that.
Maybe, said a tiny, hopeful voice in the back of her mind, you’ll get the chance to see it again.
She promptly shoved that thought down to the pits of darkness where it belonged. She wasn’t sure how long this new thing would have to last for her to allow herself that small measure of hope, but it definitely wasn’t five days. Even her dad by himself had kept it together for five days before. It was rare, and only when he was on a particularly interesting case, but still. Five days was chump change.
She opened the fridge and found her plate. She couldn’t help but notice that the fridge was fuller than she’d ever seen it in the past three years.
Maybe..., said that voice again.
“Shut up, Holly,” she said out loud, and went rummaging in the drawer for a fork.
Now, a week later — not a single wake-up call made, not a single ride bummed from Jessica’s sister, not a single breakfast by herself — the voice is getting harder to shove down. It almost sounds smug. Maybe is going to turn into probably if she isn’t careful.
It’s late Sunday morning, Holly lazing around in her bed because she’s got nowhere to be, when there’s a gentle knock on her doorframe. She looks over and sees her dad leaning into the room. He looks oddly serious, which immediately freaks her out, and she sits up.
“We’re gonna,” he says, then stops. Swallows. Points vaguely in the direction of the front door. “House. Together. We’re gonna go.” He cuts himself off again, and taps his forehead against her doorframe. “Get dressed.”
He leaves the room. Holly stares after him, baffled. He can’t possibly mean what she thinks he means.
She gets dressed as fast as she can, just in case, and scrambles out into the living room. He’s by the front door, fidgeting, and he grabs for the doorknob the moment he spots her like he’s trying to keep himself from chickening out. Maybe he really does mean what she thinks he means.
They walk right past the car. Down the sidewalk. All the way up to the chain-link fence. Dad stares up at it; Holly watches him.
“I am,” Dad starts, grandly, “dead sober. Promise. You can smell my breath.”
She has entered bizarro, upside-down world. There’s no way this is happening.
“It’s really okay,” she declines.
He reaches out his pinky anyway. She clasps it with hers with a small smile.
“We should talk,” he says, pinky still linked with hers, “about the house. And — probably a lot of other stuff, too, or so Healy keeps telling me, but right now, we gotta talk about the house.”
“Okay,” she says.
He takes a big breath, and then lets it out. His shoulders drop a little.
“So we’re gonna go up there,” he says. “Together.”
“Sure thing,” she replies.
He doesn’t move.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” she says, and yanks him forward by the pinky. He stumbles after her, but she’s jolted him into movement and it seems like she won’t have to pull him the whole way there. They clamber up the hill, past the fence, and they stop, together, at the front door.
Holly doesn’t really know where to go from here, and it seems like Dad doesn’t either.
At length, he says, “Healy tells me you’ve got the whole layout memorized.”
She nods. “I count my steps.”
He takes another breath, and then he holds out his hand. “Walk me through it?”
She takes his hand, and leads him over the threshold.
“This is the entryway,” she says quietly. She points to the ground next to Dad. “That’s the shoe rack.” Mom never let them keep their shoes on in the house. Holly counts seven steps forward; Dad follows along, just behind and to the right of her. “Now we’re in the living room.” She gestures off to her left. “There’s the stairs, but we can’t go up. Sorry.”
Dad laughs a little. His eyes are wet. “That’s okay.”
“The kitchen’s through here,” she says, bringing them forward. Slowly, she walks them around the island, pointing out the oven — Dad sucks in an anxious breath — and the fridge. From there, it’s the breakfast nook where she used to do her homework as Mom scribbled in the margins of a book. The big dining table where they had Mom’s actor friends over for dinner parties. The hallway. The guest bedroom.
“And your room,” Holly says, stopping on the yellow rug. “There’s your bed.”
Dad lets go of her hand, and puts his arm around her shoulders, tugging her into his side. She lets herself lean on him.
“We’re standing on the rug right now,” he says. His voice is a little thick with unshed tears.
“Yeah.” She nods against his shirt. “It was so soft.”
He laughs. “It was! Your mom hated it at first, but I told you to test it out and you laid down on it and wouldn’t get up for hours. Kept petting it like a dog. I think you were three or four.”
She stares up at him for a moment. It’s the most she’s heard him say about Mom in a very long time. He glances down at her, and his face softens. He lifts his hand and strokes her hair, tucking it behind her ear, and takes another fortifying breath.
“I’m sorry we don’t talk about her more,” he says quietly, and then, “I miss her.”
Holly turns and puts her arms around him, tucking her face into his ribs. “I miss her too.”
He wraps both arms around her and presses a firm kiss to the top of her head. “I know you do, kid. She was the love of my life, but she was your mother.”
Holly hums, listening to his heartbeat. The tears are free-flowing now. She really can’t smell a lick of alcohol on him. It’s hard to comprehend.
“You like Mr. Healy,” she says. She feels him stiffen, and rolls her eyes. “It’s fine, Dad. I like him too.”
He huffs, and mutters, “Better not like him how I like him.”
She smacks him in the side, and he oofs dramatically. She can’t help but giggle through the tears.
“I think he’s good for you,” she declares. “Jury’s out whether you’re good for him.”
“Oh, well, as long as you think so,” he says.
She pulls back a little from the hug so she can point up at him. “You better be good for him.”
He gazes down at her, thoughtful. “I will do my best,” he says softly. “But, Hol, I’m more worried about being good for you. Okay?”
Her eyes sting again. “Okay.”
He strokes her hair again, meeting her eyes. “I haven’t been a good dad. I know that. You’re a smart kid, and you’re just like your mother, which I love, but sometimes you’re way too much like me, which scares the shit out of me. Because a lot of bad shit happens to me, and it’d kill me if it happened to you. But something really bad happened to you—” he takes another, shuddering breath— “and I wasn’t there for you. And that’s never going to happen again. And I know my promises don’t mean much these days, but I promise.”
She swallows. “It happened to you, too.”
He shakes his head. “Not an excuse. You’re a kid, and I’m your dad. We were both having an awful time, and we could’ve gone through it together, but we didn’t, and that’s my fault. And I’m sorry.”
If she tries to speak, she’s going to burst into full-blown sobs, and that’s not conducive to a conversation. So she just nods, and she holds her pinky out between them. Solemnly, Dad links his pinky with hers.
“The new house’ll be a little smaller,” Dad says, a little apologetic. “Not exactly swimming in cash these days. But we’ve got some savings.”
“Does Mr. Healy get a room?” Holly asks innocently.
Dad rolls his eyes. “Yes, Healy gets a room. And I think you can call him Jack if you’re gonna be living with him.”
She arches an eyebrow. “Are you gonna call him Jack, if you’re gonna be f—”
“Okay!” Dad says loudly, putting a hand over her mouth to cut her words off. “That’s enough of that. Is it time to head back already?”
Holly grins, and licks his hand. He doesn’t move it, just levels her with a flat, unimpressed look. She giggles.
“Way too much like me,” he mutters, and drops his hand. He pulls her into one more solid hug, and then slings an arm around her and leads her down the hill.
Healy is waiting on the sidewalk.
Dad strides forward until he collides with Healy, throwing his arms around Healy’s shoulders and taking a huge, shuddering breath. Healy returns the hug, patting Dad’s back a couple times, and throws a glance at Holly over Dad’s shoulder. Holly rolls her eyes, like, get a load of this guy. It’s slightly undermined by the tears rolling down her own face. Healy smiles anyways.
That night, she wakes up at two in the morning, gasping from the worst nightmare she’s had in years. Memory-smoke burns in her nostrils, tears and snot streaming down her face as she struggles to control her breathing, lungs heaving in desperate sobs. She brings her knees up and buries her face in them, heaving.
She can’t shove it down. Almost before she realizes she’s moving, she scrambles out of bed and staggers down the hall. Dad is only two rooms away. She clambers up into bed with him, tucking herself into his side, under the covers.
She’s done this a few times since the fire. He’s never woken up before, always in the deep, untouchable sleep of the drunk.
This time, miracle of miracles, he stirs. Almost immediately.
“Hol?” he asks, blearily, and then seems to realize she’s crying, because he immediately snaps to attention, arms coming up around her and squeezing her tight. “Holly, breathe, honey.”
“I’m trying!” she snaps through gasping sobs.
“I know, sweetheart, just keep trying, you’re okay,” he soothes, hand stroking up and down her back. She reaches up and clutches the wedding ring at his sternum, warmed from his skin, and he puts his hand over hers on his chest. “You’re okay, I’m here. Big deep breaths, come on, kiddo.”
Shakily, unsteadily, she sucks in one big breath, and then another, and another. She’s been calming herself down from nightmares for years, but it’s — it’s really nice to have help, for once. She hides her face in his side for the second time that day.
“I have them too, you know,” he says quietly. “Sometimes I can’t calm down until I go stand in your doorway and watch you sleep like a creep.”
His voice is warm in the dark. Holly is asleep before she can think of a reply.