Chapter 22: A Father With Too Many Secrets
(Jim O'Reilly)
Louise wasn't home when Jim got back, something he was glad for. The father didn't want to let his little girl see the blood that he was covered in.
He'd told her that this sort of thing would no longer happen, that no longer would Louise come home to see her dad battered and bruised.
But it had always been a lie.
Jim placed his coat on a rack, only yelling back a response to his wife when she yelled hello to him. Instead of going to meet her, Jim went towards a bathroom under their stairs.
It was a small cramped room barely containing a sink, a toilet, and a shower inside.
The father wasn't very hurt, just a couple of bruises, the real reason he needed to be in here was to wash off other people's blood from his fists, from his face and to let him change into a clean set of clothes that Jim had kept here in case of emergencies like this.
Jim could hear the sound of the front door opening, the sound of footsteps hitting the ground lightly telling him who had come in even before he heard their voice.
"Pop, Mom!" Louise yelled out, her voice a tone that set Jim on edge. The kind of false cheer that just didn't fit with his daughter's attitude most of the time. It didn't help the man to get over his current dour mood. "I'm back home!"
That line caused Jim to glance at his watch, noting the time was early in the morning, making the last time he'd seen his daughter the day before. Meaning she was out all night… and came home clearly upset.
Without further notice, he got changed into fresh clothes as quickly as possible. Practically running out of the room with a frown on his face so fierce that lions would whimper in fear at the mere sight of him.
"Louise," he said, while into the living room where both his wife and little girl were sitting on a couch. Jim made sure to keep his voice low and soft despite the rage he'd been feeling. If Louise was upset about something, it wouldn't do "What do you mean that you're back home…?"
Louise just sighed, turning to her other parent and pointing back towards Jim as if this was proving some imaginary point.
"I thought you told him?" she asked her mother, crossing her legs while leaning back into the coach as interacting with Jim was exhausting. "Mom, I so can't deal with this right now."
"Don't you be talking like that to me, Louise Mary O'Reilly" Jim's wife growled, her face frowning at Louise as she leaned in closer to the girl.
It was then that the woman did something that the man hadn't expected from her. "But maybe your father could explain where he was all last night? Would that explain why he doesn't know where ya been?"
The two turned to Jim, frowning so sharp that they could cut diamonds with their lips. The only male figure in the room could feel the tension rise in the air like he was being judged as a hypocrite.
"Hey, I was just checking," Jim spoke, his hands raised in surrender. "She's an adult, not like she needs my permission to go out all night. I was only asking."
"But not answering," Louise responded, her eyes glaring sharply up and down his form. Search for something that would break the man's calm exterior. "Where were you last night, Pop?"
He stumbled in his words, causing him to stammer slightly under the raw unimpressed stares of his family. Jim was hoping that he could deflect away from this line of thought but it seemed that his daughter was far too smart for that sort of trick… anymore.
"I was called in by my new boss, had an errand that he wanted me to run," The O'Reilly patriarch shrugged, keeping his eyes on his daughter as to not give away any sign of weakness. "It was further than I thought it would be so I just crashed in the office."
Wesley had set up Jim with a cozy cover as head of security for a small firm that the true boss had acquired through more legitimate means that usual. Given him both a good excuse to be beaten and to be out of his own home for long periods of time.
It also gave him his own office.
"Was there a break-in?" Louise asked, her eyes focusing on a spot on his knuckles that while clean of blood still had rather cut skin.
"Ah, yeah but it was only some kid," Jim replied smoothly, perhaps too smoothly if Louise's eyes somehow managing to narrow even further was a sign but his little girl didn't bother to call that out. "Got cut when the kid jumped the wall and I tried to chase after him. Boy didn't get to steal anything, even if he did manage to get away. So the boss was more than happy with the result."
It was a smoke lie, one that he didn't even need to come up with, other than the situation itself, of course.
You see mainly Jim's boss was happy with how the last night's job went even if he would've rather it done with less notice. Fisk wasn't ready yet for even the criminal underworld to know that he was planning for a big play in the near future.
"Huh," Jim's wife leaned forward the grey of her brown hair cascading down her bare back as her revealing top was on full display, it was the woman's usual style.
Something that a girl much younger than her would wear going out for the night. "That's good, a kid isn't too dangerous?" she said as if she was asking a question but rather than waiting for a response to that, she continued on with more. "He didn't have a knife, did he?
"Mom, if he had a knife, Pop's old ass would have more than just a few knuckle scratches," Louise sighed, throwing her mother an exasperated look. The father was a bit insulted that his own daughter seemed to think that some kid with a knife could take him out but Jim wasn't in the mood to get into an argument with anyone right now.
"Now that we've got where I was out of the way, let's move onto where you were the whole night?"
Louise turned her head down, her eyes staring at Jim's feet as if it was some kind of bullseye that the girl was about to hit with a cannon. Her cheeks were so red that if the color was any richer then he would've thought that she'd done her make-up badly.
"I was at… Pat's."
Jim didn't speak, he just waited for his daughter to continue, to elaborate that point on with other names. Perhaps even mentioning how she had other friends that also stayed there the night but it never came.
When Jim was finally ready to express his displeasure with the idea that his daughter was staying overnight at a man's apartment, that was when his wife intruded once more.
"There's an innocent guy if there ever was," She giggled, something that caused Jim to glare at her. "Oh come on, Jim," The woman continued, having noticed the glare and found much amusement from it. "The guy is barely a predator, kid couldn't hurt a fly, can't even bring himself to shout a dog off him… worried about scaring the creature."
She was referring to the time that Pat had met Louise and her mother on a walk in Central Park, the young man wanted to see the sights of such a large park.
Something that he didn't have much experience if his amazement was anything to write home about. While there a labrador decided that it liked his shoes, and tried to run off with them.
Pat wasn't very good at trying to get them back from the dog.
"Sam," Jim responded to her, speaking her name for the first time of the day, his tone stern. "I don't care if the kid's a living saint or not, I'm just not comfortable with the idea of Louise spending the night alone with some man. She could at least invite another friend."
The women shared an expression, but unlike usual it wasn't one of annoyance or even anger, which were the typical responses Jim got whenever he made statements like that.
No, it was instead a shared expression of worry, of an awkward anger one wouldn't have when they've only heard something stupid.
"What?" Jim asked slowly, his eyes shifting from one to the other hoping one of them would break first.
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