The long and winding road... Damon Liddowe normally tried to avoid hangovers. They were simply too inconvenient for him to put up with, so he stayed drunk. Last night though, he had found the box. Exploring the attic had seemed like such a harmless idea. He might go through Jen's old stuff (and maybe throw it out later), but then he found The Box. It reminded him: going to visit Irene had good (drunken) intentions last summer. He was going to bring her back home and show her that he could be her Dad again. She looked just like Jen and he liked having the reflection of her around... He had a few beers, just to shake off the nerves. Okay, so it had been a few too many. And he got mad when she told him he couldn't be there. He didn't care that the court people had said he couldn't go there. She was still his daughter, dammit! Plus, he didn't drink that much anymore. He had more food in the house, not like how he was when she was living with him. Then she said she was glad she didn't have to put up with him anymore. That pushed him over the edge. And he hit her... God, why had he done that? He had been pissed that she was right. She was too damn smart, like her mom. She pin-pointed what bugged him and said what he didn't want to hear. And that made him insanely mad. The Box got him thinking... The artifacts and pictures from his baby girl's toddler years, the pictures of her and her mother all got his mind worked up and he forgot his normal routine. So here he was, still in the attic, with a raging headache, holding the picture.
There they were. Those were his beautiful girls. One was gone and the other had left for what seemed like forever. Damon's regrettably sober mind knew that it was his fault Irene was gone, and his fault that she wasn't coming back. She had every reason to stay away. For two years, he stayed drunk with her in the house. He barely even remembered those years... Had he taken her to school? Had he remembered to buy her food? From what he remembered, he didn't. Damon remembered Mike. Mike had screamed his head off when he came over. He had yelled and yelled about how she was starved half to death and how he didn't care about anything but his alcohol... Damn, he was right. But Irene had a great life now. And now she was going to see that he could shape up. He was going to. This was going to be a long hangover, but he wanted his baby girl back. How old was she now? She had to be 11... No, twelve? Maybe. Eleven sounded right. He had time to be her father again. He would bring her back to Kentucky if it was the last thing he did. He had tried for years now, but had eventually given up. Now he knew, it was going to happen. And it was going to begin with the road to recovery. He couldn't show up drunk again. He was going to be stone cold sober.
Damon looked at the full can beside him and threw it into a corner, letting it sit there to collect dust like the other memories up here. Like most of the boxes, it was never going to be opened. He tucked the picture into his pocket feeling hope that this time, he was going to do it. Irene would be back home in no time.