Page 4 of Nocturnes & Nightmares

Rifling through my jewelry box, I find a simple gold wedding band with a single diamond. Two years ago, I stopped wearing it, and I’m not sure Denny even noticed. My eyes blur with tears as I allow my thoughts to drift to the day Denny proposed to me—probably the worst proposal in the world.

He’d taken me out to an early dinner at some fancy restaurant downtown. We hung out at a bar, watching one of our favorite local bands, then he took me for an evening walk through the park, where I’d first watched him perform tricks on his board. Halfway into the walk, we both started feeling really sick, so we rushed back to his mom’s and took turns puking and shitting in the bathroom all night. While pale-faced and camped out beside the toilet, he pulled the ring and proposed.

Wasn’t enough that my mom went to her grave hating the guy, but it’s as if fate was conspiring against our marriage on top of it all, by giving me the worst case of food poisoning I’ve ever had.

I slip the ring onto my finger and peek in on Oliver one more time, finding him covered up in his blankets.

Denny’s sat up on the couch when I head back down, flipping through channels on the TV, with one hand stuffed inside a bag of Doritos. No doubt, he’ll end up passed out on the couch, since the two of us haven’t slept in the same bed in months.

“I shouldn’t be any longer than an hour. Hour and a half, max. Are you okay to listen for him, or are you too drunk?”

“I’m not drunk. Whatever buzz I might’ve had, you killed. So, thanks for that.”

Asshole.

Sober, Denny could be a decent dad. After all, he’s the one who taught Oli to ride a bike and balance on skates before he was old enough to spell his own name. Back when Oliver was a baby, only Denny could calm him when he cried, by plucking his guitar while Oliver dozed off beside him on the couch. Those are the memories that hurt the worst.

The ones involving my son.

Because the thing is, no matter how shitty their parents become, kids still love them.

The changes I plan to make are going to be hard on Oliver, and I don’t want to put him through that kind of stress, but I know firsthand how much harder it is to watch at least one parent fall out of love.

It takes closer to two hours to hock my ring for a measly two hundred bucks and drive to the different stores, from where I nab cake supplies and giftwrap and balloons on the way home. When I arrive back, the lights are off inside the two-story house, and Denny’s beat-up Honda isn’t sitting in the driveway. He’s left the curtains open, and I peek into the window to see he’s not passed out on the couch as usual, either.

What the hell? Son of a bitch better not have left Oliver alone.

Silence lingers on the air as I enter the dark house, and I dump my bags down on the kitchen counter and race up the stairs.

Oliver’s bed is empty.

“If that piece of shit took him to buy more alcohol,” I mutter, as I tap the Finder app on my phone. Takes a minute before it zeroes in on his location, and I scowl at the map, giving it a second, because no way in hell would Denny piss me off by taking my son to the shitty side of Chicago. No way in hell.

Not after the hundreds of times I’ve told him never to take Oliver to hang out with his piece of shit pothead friends on that side of town.

His location doesn’t move, though.

In the meantime, and with a small bit of denial, I perform a cursory sweep of the house, then another outside the back door, where the in-law suite behind the house stands equally dark and quiet.

With fury blazing through me, I dial his number on my way back into the kitchen, licking my lips in preparation to cuss him out the moment that bastard answers.

The second the ringing ends and his line connects, I feel a rush of adrenaline pump through me. “You piece of shit! What the hell are you doing? Where the hell are you—”

I trail off when I notice he hasn’t said anything. Not even hello. I pause to listen for a moment, concentrating on the strange static sound bleeding through the line. Like air being deflated out of a balloon, it squeals, and a wet, barking cough follows.

“Denny?”

A whoosh of air rattles against the earpiece, but in the thick of it, I make out two whispered words: “I’m sorry.”

A cold stab of panic pierces my chest. “Denny? What’s going on?”

The phone clicks, the abrupt disconnection mirroring the last shred of my calm. With trembling hands, I call again. It rings and rings. In disbelief, I call again.

Still no answer.

I haul ass through the house and out the front door, my hands shaking so bad I can’t get the goddamn key lined up in the ignition of my car.

“Fucking come on!”