A brisk breeze gently shielded me from the heat of the sweltering Phoenix sun.

The cab was already gone.

It felt to me that the rest of my life was right ahead, waiting for me. It stood there, watching me, in the quiet form of a wooden door in a sunny suburban Phoenix neighborhood.

It was time to face it down.

Only a few steps of my boots on concrete separated me from the alcove, and I marched forward with my head held high. As I hovered at the door, taking in its small details, I could hear past the sheet of metal and wood. There were faint sounds of the television. What confused me was that, much further into the house, it sounded like there was some sort of a distant commotion.

I took a deep breath.

Then I knocked. Loudly.

The only immediate change was that the far-off noises from inside stopped. The television still rattled off some action sequence, blocking me from hearing any details.

It took me knocking again, harder this time, and waiting patiently for a few moments, before I finally heard the loud, gruff clicks of the door unlatching from the other side.

With a heaving grunt, it pulled open to reveal the haggard, stunned face of Sarah’s father.

He simply stared at me in disbelief.

Alcohol wafted off of him. We had only been gone a couple of hours, and he already stank of the stuff. I could only imagine that he must have been hitting the bottle pretty goddamn hard…

“Hun… Hunter?”

“Jack,” I replied carefully. “I’ve come to–”

With a sudden scowl, he tried to slam the front door in my face. I easily caught it with my palm and held it ajar.

“Jack, this is your last fucking chance,” I insisted darkly. “I wouldn’t waste it if I were you.”

“Chance for… for what?”

“To get your daughter back.”

He groaned, shielding his face from the sun. With a disgusted look, he bowed his head and hobbled away from the door, leaving it open.

I hesitated for a moment.

He’s drunk…

He’s emotional…

Is this a better idea than before, or WORSE?

There was no turning back now, so I shook my head and closed the door on my way in.

Jack left the television running as he walked across the house, back towards the kitchen. He was muttering to himself under his breath, his free hand moving erratically.

Well aware that he was taking me back in the direction of that battered old shotgun, I tread carefully a few strides behind the old man. But as I followed him into the kitchen, I froze.

The room was a fucking mess.

Broken dishes and scattered food were strewn across the floor. Half the cupboards were open, their contents added to the mix. The fridge stood wide open, half empty with a broken glass shelf. A gallon of milk lay mostly empty on the ground, its contents making a soup of the debris.

Hell, it looked like a goddamn tornado had rolled through here.

My gaze lifted to the kitchen table, where I noticed an array of open liquor bottles and a few half-drunk beers. Some of them had been knocked over, spilling into the kitchen floor chaos.

Good goddamn.

“Jack…” I groaned, taking it all in. “What the fuck did you do in here?

“Lost my temper a little,” he slurred.

He had stopped in front of the fridge, kicking away large shards of a plate with his shoes as he dug out another beer. The old bastard popped the top in his palm and handed it over to me.

I looked at the bottle in disbelief.

“Wha?” He muttered drunkenly. “Yer a man, right? A man drinks when’s offered a drink.”

I took the bottle from him.

“Jack, we need to talk…”

He scoffed.

“But we need to talk when you’ve sobered up. Look at yourself, man. You’re a fucking mess.”

“Don’t you… don’t you say that to me–”

He reached out to point at me, but his hand trembled on his cane. I dove forward and grabbed the old man around his chest as his arm gave out. I caught him just as he was falling into the broken glass and ceramic.

“Let… let go of me!”

Trust me, I wanted to.

But I held his weight and tried to tug him to his feet. His cane clattered to the debris and I groaned with irritation.

“Let… let me…”

“Shut the fuck up and stand up,” I growled.

Jack looked me in the eyes with fear.

“You’re going… you’re going to hurt me too, aren’t you?”

I was taken aback.

“No, old man. Let me help you.”

“You’re here… to help?”

Jesus Christ, the bastard really IS drunk out of his goddamn mind…

I couldn’t get him standing. The most I could fucking manage was to crook my elbows under his shoulders and slowly drag his heavy, drunken ass away from the danger.

He groaned powerlessly as I moved him away from the debris. With the heels of his shoes scraping along the wood, I dragged Jack down the hall and back to the living room.

Once there, I pulled his moaning body onto the couch and got him sitting upright.

“Jesus, Jack. What the fuck, man?”

“I just… Sarah…”

I shook my head in disgust.

“Is this how far you’ve fallen, Jack? Look how quickly you’ve made a goddamn embarrassment out of yourself…”

He looked over at me hazily.

There was no getting through to him in his current state of mind, so I grunted and went back to survey the damage properly.

Luckily, his little temper tantrum had been kept strictly to the kitchen. Still, it would take half the night to clean this shit up…

No, I thought to myself. The last time I tried to clean up in this room, he pulled a fucking gun on me. Let him wake up and see this mess. He can clean it himself.

Furiously, I walked back to the den.

Jack was already dozing away. He looked like a helpless disaster, and I realized that I couldn’t just leave the old fucker like this. He’s going to hurt himself, or worse…

There was nothing else to do but wait out his bullshit drunken stupor, and there was no telling how long that was going to take…

I pulled out my phone and texted Sarah.

Hey babe. Went to try to talk sense into your Dad. Kitchen’s a warzone. He’s drunk and asleep now. Going to sober him up and have a real talk, man-to-man. Sleep well.

I glanced around the den furniture.

There was no way I was sitting next to him in that state, not without a barf bag hanging around his mouth. That ruled out the couch…

I went back for the beer he’d offered me.

Draping a blanket over the miserable son of a bitch, I took my seat in his chair, grabbed the remote, and started flicking through channels. To my surprise, I found another western playing.

“Oh good,” I glanced over scathingly at Jack’s snoring body as I kicked off my boots.

“Lucky for you, I like this one…”

* * *

My eyes snapped open with a start. I couldn’t tell how long I’d been asleep. As soon as I recognized where I was, I instinctively jerked my head back towards the couch.

Jack was nowhere to be seen.

“Well.” I muttered. “That’s not good…”

I pried myself up from the stiff recliner with a yawn and, remembering the state of the kitchen, I threw my boots back on and wandered that way. Nothing had changed in the room, except for its solemn, silent guest.

Jack was sitting at the kitchen table, staring off into space with a glass of water.

“How’re you feeling, old coot?”

He didn’t look at me. “Head’s pounding.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me,” I replied, reaching for the nicest looking bottle of whiskey. Broken pieces and food crunched under my boots as I crossed to one of the cupboards that still had shit in it, pulling out a clean tumbler.

“Pour me one too,” he gruffly insisted.

I glanced over my shoulder.

“Hair of the dog, eh?”

His sunken, haunted eyes were still off in another world. “Somethin’ like that.”

Seeing as I was a grown man standing in his house, drinking his liquor, I saw little reason to not oblige. I dropped a pair of ice cubes in each tumbler and walked the glasses back over to the table, handing him one.

I took a seat in front of him.

“Jack… you and I need to talk.”

He scoffed.

“I mean it,” I contended. “If you honestly want your daughter back – and believe you me, there’s still a chance – then we need to hash this shit out.”

His eyes flicked to mine for the first time.

“Make amends,” he muttered, his gravelly voice only driven worse by his headache. “That’s what she was asking earlier… she wanted us to both make amends…”

“That’s right,” I nodded.

Jack looked despondent.

“…Okay,” he finally grunted in surrender, taking a swig from his whiskey neat. “Let’s say I’m willing… how did you put it? ‘Hash shit out?’” His eyes narrowed. “For an hour.”

An hour, huh?

“Fine,” I replied coolly, taking a sip. “But the way I’m lookin’ at things, seeing as it’s your house and all… only fair that you go first.”

Jack’s lips curled into a dark smile.

“Ladies first.”

Well, that settles it, then.

I nodded quietly, staring at the short glass of amber liquor in my hand. As the cage rattled deep down inside me, I kept myself from flinging the glass against the wall. Instead, I sat it down and pushed away from the table.

“Enjoy your night, Jack.”

My thick boots had just crossed the kitchen doorway when I heard his gruff, guttural voice ring out from behind.

“It started with your father.”

I hesitated. What?

“...There’s too much of him in you.”

Beneath the liquor, his dry syllables reeked of poison. But never in my life had I ever had reason to think that Jack might have crossed paths with my father, who I knew so little about…

I knew that I could just keep on walking.

These boots of mine would take me right out that front door for the last time, where I’d walk to the nearest gas station and call a cab to take me back to the love of my life...

But those poisonous words lured me back.

With the greatest reluctance, I turned around in the doorway, hovering just out of the kitchen and briefly holding my ground. I couldn’t seem too eager. I couldn’t let him realize the power he had over me now, that he had me by the balls…

“In what ways?”

Jack quietly lifted his eyes to me. There was an ominous, fierce glint to them, as if behind his gaze lay a waking predator…

“If you want more, take a seat.”

Goddammit.

This felt dangerous… but I had to know.

With my mind made up, I walked across and pulled the chair back out. The legs scraped on the wooden floor as I sat back down, glaring into that small, smug smile that crossed his haggard face.

My eyes burned with bitter hatred.

“Tell me everything…”