Читать книгу Mourn The Living - Henry Perez - Страница 20

Chapa had hoped to spend some time with Nikki when they got home. But she fell asleep in the car, and was still groggy when he walked her up to her room. It was the first time in nearly a year that Chapa had put his daughter to bed.

He’d preserved the room exactly as it was when Nikki moved out with her mother, but now realized she had already outgrown many of the decorations and most of her toys.

He pulled back the covers and guided Nikki into her white frame bed. Then Chapa gave her a few minutes to get back to sleep while he walked across the hall to his own room, which was quite a bit messier. He flipped on the lights, kicked off his shoes, and then softly walked back across the hall, the floor creaking under his heavy feet.

Nikki had dozed off by the time he walked back into her room. Glancing up, he looked at the glow-in-the-dark stars and planets that covered the ceiling, and remembered when Nikki was much younger and believed it really was the night sky.

“Those stars come out to glow just for you,” he’d told his daughter when she was barely three years old.

They weren’t radiating much tonight, the light in her room had not been on long enough. Tomorrow he’d leave it turned on the entire day, and they’d be a whole lot brighter when Nikki spent her second night in her room.

Sitting at the edge of Nikki’s bed, Chapa watched her sleep until she finally rolled over and faced the wall. For some reason, he thought she’d look more like her mother by now, but that wasn’t the case. Though he understood that everyone sees themselves or their close family in the faces of their children, Chapa couldn’t stop thinking about how much Nikki resembled his father. He remembered a photo of his dad standing by the side of a table during a birthday party. There was a smile on the man’s face, a playfulness in his eyes that Chapa had seen in Nikki these past several days.

That made him feel even worse for not playing a bigger role in her day-to-day life. But what could he do? There were only a few options, and none of those were particularly good.

He heard the sound of a car start up and pull out, just a few houses away. Odd in this neighborhood at this time of night. He lifted a Dora the Explorer blanket up over Nikki’s shoulders, then walked to the window and looked through the curtains. Nothing. Probably a neighbor putting his car in the garage.

Two decades of regular dealings with lowlifes or worse had made him a bit jumpy, and maybe a little paranoid. His bizarre conversation with Warren Chakowski hadn’t helped, and maybe Jim’s sudden death hadn’t either. He was also feeling more guarded with Nikki in the house. Chapa thought about how long it had been since he’d felt that way as he leaned across and gave her a soft kiss on the side of her forehead. The child responded by shrugging, curling her nose, and disappearing under the blanket.

Chapa took one last look before closing the door to her room, then heading downstairs to make sure all the doors were locked.