Damaged: A gripping short read, the perfect escape for an hour

Riley looked at the label on the bag: LYDIA’S CLOSET. ‘Amazing what people will spend money on,’ Detective Jones said gruffly, walking away.

The fact that his daughter had named her shop after his beloved wife never failed to move him. He put the bag back on the shelf and barked at his son. ‘Let’s get some supper and figure out how your sister is going to support herself and all those stay-at-home moms with nothing to sell. And a ridiculous rent to pay every month.’

‘I could always get a push cart,’ Allison said, fully aware of her father’s struggle to keep his emotions in check. ‘Or drive around SoHo selling things out of my car.’

‘First of all, you don’t have a car,’ Jimmy shot back. ‘And secondly, I’ve already figured out what you’re going to do.’

‘And what might that be, Lieutenant Jones?’ Although Allison and her brother delighted in their verbal battles, the baby of the family always bristled at being told what to do.

‘It’s not a what, it’s a who. Mike Dennison.’

‘Not him again.’ It was a defect of character, she knew, but her lifelong struggle for independence had made her balk at even the smallest suggestion from her big family of men. ‘Nice try, but no way!’

‘Who’s Mike Dennison?’ Riley demanded.

‘Some guy Jimmy’s been trying to fix me up with for the past six months. If my brother is willing to allow me to go out with a guy, he’s probably a Sunday School teacher who reads self-help books and bakes his own bread.’

‘Hardly,’ Jimmy said. He was checking the windows Allison had just locked to make sure they were really locked.

Allison watched, shaking her head. Cops.

‘And he’s hardly a bozo,’ Jimmy said. ‘Chopper pilot, two tours in the Middle East, Captain in the National Guard, and in his spare time he’s a copywriter at an ad agency. He wins those awards for funny TV commercials.’

‘Clios,’ Allison said. ‘See what I mean, Dad? Sound a little too good to be true? I suppose he’s handsome too.’

‘I don’t know what he looks like,’ Jimmy said, satisfied that the windows were locked. ‘I don’t look at guys and think about stuff like that.’

‘I knew it,’ Alison said. ‘Homely.’

‘I’m telling you, if you want to figure out how to make this business work without all your profit going into rent, Mike’s your guy,’ Jimmy said. ‘He’ll know just what you should do about your business.’

Allison turned off the last light, plunging the shop into darkness. ‘You said it yourself. It’s my business. I’ll figure out what to do. Now, get out of here, both of you, before I call the cops!’

Allison stood up from her stool and stretched. She had been working on new designs at the big work table overlooking Jamaica Bay since her dad and Jimmy had left for work at precisely five forty-five this morning.

They had the route to Manhattan South Precinct timed to the second. Fifty-eight minutes, door to door. Leave later, they’d hit traffic and be too late to grab coffee and two doughnuts each from Manny’s food truck before roll call. Leave earlier, Manny wouldn’t be there yet. It was all about the doughnuts.

There was another part of their routine that Allison pretended to hate, but secretly cherished. Even though she was twenty-six years old, trained in self-defence by a family of police officers, every morning before they left for work, one of them would check her room, to make certain she had made it through the night unharmed.

This vigilance, the watchfulness, had begun after her mother was killed twelve years ago, when Allison was thirteen. Since that day, their primary focus had been making sure Allison was happy and safe. But most of all, safe.

That morning, like all mornings since she realised why they were checking on her, she had pretended to be asleep. Prickly as she was about any challenge to her ability to take care of herself, in this one matter she acquiesced. She wouldn’t embarrass them by acknowledging she was aware that these two big tough cops were marshmallows when it came to her.

That’s why she always let them know where she was and what time she’d be home. That’s why she agreed to let them build her a private apartment atop the family home, rather than moving out to live in a loft in SoHo. She had been dreaming of doing that since her mom began taking her prowling through the quirky boutiques that were tucked away in that neighbourhood.

Not that she would ever be able to afford such a luxury, if she couldn’t figure out how to sell her designs without putting all the profits into overheads. She had taken a risk when she quit her job as junior designer at a SoHo chic fashion house. But she had big ideas. Selling out in eight days told her she was on the right track with the designs.

But if her ideas were a ten, her business plan was a two.

Allison did what she always did when she needed to think something through. She grabbed a jacket and headed for the beach.

Breezy Point in Queens, New York, was known as the place where cops lived. The peninsula was between Jamaica Bay and the Atlantic Ocean with a population of about twenty-eight thousand. Over sixty per cent of the residents were Irish-American, a whole lot of them police officers and firefighters. With a private security force and no easy access in or out, it has been said there was no safer place to live in any of New York City’s Five Boroughs.

It was no coincidence that Breezy Point was where Riley Jones moved his family after his wife was killed.

It was April, but with the wind coming off the water from two directions, it felt like November. Allison put her head down and took the path towards the ocean. Four o’clock was the time the residents started getting home from their shifts at the precinct or firehouse, so there was activity on the usually quiet streets. She waved at everyone she knew and she knew almost everyone.

But her mind was on her fledgling company now in trouble and her social life obviously on life-support. Since the day she broke up with Brad, she had been on a ‘man-fast’.

She had been involved with Brad Dolan for eight months but it wasn’t until the seventh month that she had risked taking him home to meet the family. The results were disastrous, as somewhere deep inside she knew they would be. Which was probably why she had waited so long.

It wasn’t that her family ever did or said anything. They were polite, solicitous even. But they were also mirrors that revealed the truth. They had listened and nodded while Brad talked on and on about his accomplishments, his ideas, his life plan. In other words, talked exclusively about himself.

Soon she was seeing Brad through Jimmy’s eyes, and her dad’s. Within a month, the relationship was over.

Allison realised she always chose the wrong guys. Maybe it was just that inborn streak of defiance she acknowledged but couldn’t control. Or maybe she just liked bad boys.

‘I’ve decided to become a nun,’ she told Riley and Jimmy at supper the Sunday night after the break-up. That night’s meal was sacrosanct to the Jones family, unless Riley, who worked in Homicide, had a case he couldn’t abandon. Same menu, different crowd. Sunday was the day everyone was welcome at the Jones family home.

On that rare Sunday it had been just the three of them, so Allison could speak her mind. Not that she ever had a problem doing that, no matter who was there.

‘Men are creeps. Present company excluded,’ she had announced as she dug into her shepherd’s pie. ‘Maybe.’

‘There are exceptions,’ her brother had said, so eager to bring forth his idea that he spoke with his mouth full. ‘I know this guy you would really like …’

‘Jimmy Jones, if you mention Mike Dennison one more time, I will poison your food next Sunday …’

‘Hey, Ally!’ The voice of her uncle startled her back from the past and into the present. He and his family lived two blocks from hers. ‘I hear you did good with your store.’

‘Hey, Uncle Marty,’ she said, giving him a hug. ‘Maybe too well,’ she admitted. A gust of wind sent the sand rattling against the wooden fence that lined the beach. ‘I need a new plan.’

‘You’ll figure it out,’ he said. ‘You’re as smart as you are beautiful. Just like your mama. And don’t you ever forget it.’

A lump formed in Allison’s throat as his love for her seemed to wash over her. She certainly knew what it meant to feel love. She’d been showered with it since the day she was born. The entire family – grandparents, uncles, cousins, second cousins, her father and brother – all of them had treated her like a rare piece of porcelain that might shatter at any moment.

Not only was she the only girl of the lot of them, but she had talent. She could sing and dance, and paint and design things. To them, she was a beautiful alien dropped into their boisterous midst by some miraculous quirk of fate.

Only her mother had known that she was made of sturdier stuff. It was Lydia who had taught her to be self-reliant, independent and to dare. And it was from Lydia that she got her quirky sense of style. Lydia may have been a cop, but she was a fashion plate when she wasn’t on the job.

As a child, Allison had spent hours in her mother’s closet trying on exotic scarves and shoes and belts. And the closet had been left exactly as it was when Lydia was shot. A cousin had taken over the family apartment on West Ninth Street but kept the closet for Allison. Whenever she needed inspiration, all she had to do was open the door.

And then, when she decided to open a shop, the name was a no-brainer. Lydia’s Closet was the only one she ever considered.

‘Careful, Uncle Marty,’ she said, dragging a wool hat out of her jacket pocket. ‘My head will get so big, this won’t fit!’ She pulled the hat over her tangle of hair and headed towards the water where the sand was firm. ‘See you for Sunday supper.’

She walked for almost an hour and when she headed back up the path, she had her plan. Two cars were in the driveway when she got back to the house. The one Jimmy and her dad drove to work, and a jeep of indeterminate age and questionable roadworthiness.

Her family was known for picking up strays. Heaven only knew what down-on-his-luck Irishman awaited her inside. He’d be hungry, from the look of his car. She hoped the chicken she planned to roast for dinner would be large enough.