“They’re down—”
“I know where they are,” Nick murmured, and headed for the creaky old door to the cellar.
The light at the top of the staircase didn’t turn anything on, but then, it hadn’t since Nick had gotten old enough to figure out how to cut the wires inside the switch. He descended in darkness, hoping his memory of the stairwell would keep him from breaking his damn neck. His footfalls were silent on the concrete steps. When he reached the bottom, a pool of weak light emitted from the corner, where old room dividers and screens and large concrete pillars partitioned off a piece of the cellar.
His two sisters were together on an old sofa in the corner. A battered coffee table with a duct-taped leg, braced with a broken hockey stick, sat before them. A lamp on a milk crate gave off the only light. They were flipping through a photo book, both alternately sniffling and laughing.
Nick shoved his hands into his pockets as he approached them, trying for a smile. He stood on the other side of the coffee table. “I thought I’d find you two down here.”
Kat smiled weakly and cleared her throat. “Do you remember when he’d come home drunk and you’d gather all of us together and bring us down here?”
Nick fought to swallow past the tightening in his throat. “I remember.”
“You’d tell us stories and we’d play board games or listen to the Sox play until we heard him go to sleep.” Kat wiped at her eyes.
Nick stepped around the table, and they both moved over so he could sit between them. He spread his arms on the back of the couch, and both women leaned into him.
Kat’s voice quivered when she spoke again. “I was never afraid when we were down here. Not when you were with us.”
“Neither was I,” Erin whispered. She hugged Nick close. “We knew you would protect us. You always did.”
Nick closed his eyes, his arms tightening around them.
The three of them had met for dinner the day after he’d returned to Boston, catching up after he had been gone for so long. But this was something they never talked about.
Kat began to cry softly. She shoved the picture book away and pressed her face against Nick’s chest. “These pictures . . . we never realized how young you were. My God, Nick, you were just a baby. You were younger than Patrick is now.” Her oldest son. He’d just turned ten last week. “Who stood in front of you?”
“It’s okay,” Nick whispered.
They sat in silence, listening to the house creak, to their mother moving around upstairs, to the occasional voice of one of their two youngest sisters asking where the hell they were. The young ones didn’t remember the basement, didn’t remember Nick and Kat carrying them down here in bundles of blankets and setting them in stacks of pillows or beanbag chairs and singing them to sleep so they’d be safe. They didn’t remember to look for their older siblings down here when the thought of facing their father was too much for them.
“Nicholas!” their mother called from the top of the steps. “Your father’s awake. He’s asking to see you.”
Nick took a deep breath. The three of them shared a glance. Both his sisters looked like they wanted to hang on to him for dear life, just like they’d done when they were little.
“Let’s go to tell him to kiss our asses,” Erin said as she stood.
Nick stared at the rectangle of light near the bottom of the steps. He had so many memories of sitting on this couch, his arms around Kat and Erin, their baby sisters asleep on their laps, listening to the sound of their mother crying upstairs. And waiting. He remembered the terror of watching the silhouette of his father appear in that frame of light, hoping the man would try to storm down the steps Nick had booby-trapped with his sports equipment, praying he’d just trip and break his neck on the concrete floor when he landed.
He’d never grabbed one of those sticks or bats on his way up the steps after being summoned, though. He’d always left them where they were, knowing the veritable minefield would keep his sisters safe.
That didn’t mean he’d never dreamed about taking that hockey stick and watching it crack his father’s skull. He’d grabbed a baseball bat one time, the day before leaving for Basic. It had been the last time his father raised a hand to any of them.
A shadow appeared on the floor, different than the one that haunted him. “Nick?”
“Coming,” Nick called. Kat and Erin trailed behind him as he made his way up the two flights to his father’s bedroom.
He stood in the doorway, Kat and Erin still behind him. His two youngest sisters, Alana and Nessa, sat in chairs beside the bed, where Brian O’Flaherty lay propped amongst several pillows, jaundiced and weak. All three of them looked at the doorway when they realized Nick was standing there.