“Reagan!” Allison bangs on the metal door and the sound thunders through the sterile facility.
“Would you stop!” my father reprimands as he scuttles his way over. Ota comes around and hugs my leg as if she truly were my child, and for a moment I’m startled back to the reality of what we’ve put this child through. “They gave me this doohickey here.” He holds up a small electronic device that winks under the hot glow of the lamplight above.
A fucking doohickey. I snatch the glorified garage opener from him and press the shit out of it. The door groans like an oversized cat as it rolls up, exposing a bath of light at our feet.
Both Allison and I duck underneath it and head on in, the remote still firmly in my hand.
White walls, lights, a full bed in the corner with pink fluffy covers, a small television in the corner plays one of Reagan’s favorite cartoons. I recognize the old TV/VCR combo from when I was a kid.
“Where is she?” I ask as the air around us stills.
My father stalks forward and gives the bed a little wiggle. “Come out, come out wherever you are. Your parents are back.”
A dark head pokes out from the corner, pale, an instant smile lighting up her face the moment she sees us.
Voices explode all at once as Allison and I attack Reagan with a powerful embrace. Tears, shouts of joy, Reagan’s panicked voice screaming Mommy, Daddy again and again. It’s the most beautiful sound, the most beautiful moment. I wrap my arms hard over Allison and our precious baby girl as we weep in our holy huddle.
It had come to an end.
I have my beautiful, beautiful family again.
Reagan is back.
She’s been here all along.
* * *
Allison carries Reagan into the car and belts her between us in the front. My father, the man I will find a way to punish, and Ota sit quiet in the back.
We drive home with Reagan chattering happily about her time in the land of adventure. So that’s how my father billed it. One giant fantasy. How long was he going to keep this up? Good God, what would he have done if we had never figured it out?
“And you brought Ota to see me!” Reagan gives a chipper wave to the little girl sitting demurely in the back before looking up at me. “Did you have fun on your trip?”
“What trip?” I glance to my father in the rearview mirror, but he averts my gaze and frowns down at Ota.
Reagan warms my leg with her tiny hand. “Grandpa said you had a very important secret trip come up. So that’s ’cause why I got to sit in the adventure land. I ate cake and candy every night. I love it there.” Her voice grows small. “But I never want to go back.” She buries her face in Allison’s side and I glare at my father for what he’s done to her, to us. He has no clue what reprehensible damage he’s caused. The man thinks he is God, but he’s the devil in the flesh. That’s what he’s always been.
Allison struggles to calm her, so any questions I might have will simply have to wait. But I’m dying to know. What part did Ota play in this demented adventure?
The moon has already crested the rooftops as we pull into our driveway. Miraculously not a single reporter is in the vicinity. It must be dinner. Or perhaps we’ve fizzled out like we always hoped we would.
Allison shuttles Reagan into the house and I fish Ota out of the back seat and boldly carry her in as if she were my own.
As soon as the lights flick on, Reagan kicks her way to the floor and begins running around in circles with her arms stretched wide like wings. She’s craved the space, the freedom to move around without fear. It’s only then I notice how paper white she is, the dark circles underneath her eyes laying over her skin like bruises.
“She wasn’t afraid,” my father offers up. “I took good care of her.”
Allison grunts an angry feral pig snort and I put Ota down and both she and Reagan embrace as if they hadn’t seen one another in so very long.
Reagan hops up and down. “Can we go outside?”
“No,” both Allison and I bark at once.
I take in a quick breath. “We missed you. Stay in here where we can see you.”
I look to my father. “You’ll be staying here as well.” That is, until I can get Rich to show up and haul him out to a place a little less cushy with a few more bars. I can’t wait until he hauls him out of my life for good.
A knock vibrates over the door and both Reagan and Ota attach themselves to my legs.
“Hold on, girls!” I walk them over, taking exaggerated steps that cause them to rise and fall in turn and the sounds of their laughter is irresistible. Another set of frantic knocks. “Let’s get that.” I fully expect to find a boatload of reporters licking at their chance to get the very first scoop. Missing children found! Concordia’s own Judge Price charged with felony kidnapping and murder.
Crap. I swing the door open, and to my surprise there’s not a mob itching for their next get.
“It’s you,” I say, lackluster.
Hailey Oden stands with her arms wrapped around her belly, the belly I very well may have given her.
Her mouth falls open as she looks to the girls. “The kid’s back.” She gives Ota a pat on the head.
“Wrong kid.” Allison wraps her arms around Reagan like a seat belt. “Does Faulk know where you are?” I can tell by the tone in her voice, that as much as she doesn’t want her around, she has a modicum of concern for her well-being.
“Faulk can go fuck himself.”
“Whoa,” I bark out the reprimand. “Not in front of my kid.” It’s hard not to come across overly protective seeing that I haven’t had Reagan home for five minutes. “Look, tonight’s a bad night. You have my number. Why don’t you go home? We can work something out.” Work something out. It felt awkward coming from my lips. Here she is—the woman who started it all, with her swollen belly, glaring at me as if I just threatened to land her downtown in Rich’s office right alongside my father.
“You promise?” Her lips twitch downward, and her eyes are white with rage.
“He promises.” Allison pushes us back from the doorway. “If you’re still around, come by next week. I think the sooner we look into paternity tests, the better.”
“What? What the hell are you talking about?” Hailey flips back her long dark tresses, ever the supermodel. But she’s not what I’m looking for or what I need. I need Allison. Allison has always been the answer.
She glares up at my wife with an uncalled for level of disbelief. “You’re not staying with her, are you?”
“Yes.” I don’t hesitate with the answer. “I’m staying with her.” There’s a softness in my voice this time. “I love her. She’s my family. I can never leave.”
Hailey takes in a breath and shakes her head in disbelief.
Allison grunts as she begins to close the door. “Goodnight. It will be a good one in this house between my husband and me.” The door shuts with a marked finality, officially sealing Hailey out of our lives at least for a few short hours.
“Thank you.” I press a soft kiss over her lips, first time I’ve kissed them since the day Reagan went missing. I haven’t been with my wife in so very long. “Unfortunately, we may never get to close the door on that chapter of our lives.”
Allison shakes her head. “If we can survive this”—she scoops Reagan up into her arms and plants a kiss on her forehead—“we can survive anything.”
Ota pokes her head from behind my leg and her features darken. “Is that a bad lady?” Her demeanor is curt and angry, and a part of me wants to give a jovial, dad-like laugh as if I hadn’t bound her up in duct tape just this evening.
“Yes and no.”
Allison swats me. “She’s an immature lady who did some bad things.”
I wince a moment. “You are far too generous.”
The girls get back to running around the room, and I can tell by the dozens of yawns Reagan is giving off that she doesn’t have the stamina to last too much longer.
Dad slaps me over
the shoulder, and it’s all I can do to keep from shoving him out the window. “I’ll be in my room if you need me.”
“I do need you.” I nod for him to follow me as I lead him out of the kitchen and onto the back patio. No sooner do we hit the frigid night air than I land my first punch, square over that beak in the center of his face.
“You broke it!” He doubles over and I knee him hard in the face until he springs back up. My adrenaline has hit its zenith for the night. It had crested when I held Reagan for the first time in weeks, but I was saving my powerhouse enthusiasm just for him.
I land punch after punch in his ears, his chest, his stomach, his big fat fucking mouth, those horrific judgmental eyes until he flattens out on the concrete like a ragdoll, and then I gift him a swift kick in the dick until he rolls over with a horrific groan.
“Get up,” I howl, but he’s too busy rolling around in pain, trying to crawl away like the coward he is. I reach down and pull him to a sitting position. “What the hell were you thinking?” I riot in his face. “All of your life you pretended that you were perfect! Above everybody else!” I give his limp frame a sturdy shake. “You murdered your family in cold blood.” The words grit through my clenched teeth. “You put people away for a living, for doing far less greater infractions! Tell me to my face why you killed them. Was Wilson really that irredeemable?”
“Wilson.” He leans forward and moans, his back bucks as he begins to whimper. “God, Wilson. My Wilson.”
“You poisoned him.” I fall down next to my father, physically exhausted, emotionally spent.
“He was so good.” He bemoans Wilson with an agonizing cry. “But the sin. The devil ate your brother. I put him to peace.”
I bang the back of my head silently against the wall of the house. For shit’s sake, death does not equal peace. “And what about Rachel?”
“Rachel.” He pants with his eyes skyward, a shard of blood trickling from his lip. “My angel. My sweet baby girl.” A teardrop falls, then another. Finally. He is christening my dead siblings with his remorse, and it feels like the letting of a wound—so necessary, so long in the making.
“What the hell did she do?” I growl against the wind. Tonight is a night for answers, and I’m sopping them up like bread with wine.
“It was that damn boyfriend of hers. Thought they could have a baby out of wedlock. She was so young, for God’s sake. Her future was ruined. She was ruined…” His voice trails off. “She did it to herself.”
“Shit.” I give my eyes a quick squeeze, daring myself to go on. “And Mom? She wanted to leave you and you weren’t having it. Did it look better to have your family die off?”
“It felt better.” His eyes close as he struggles to keep from falling over.
“And then there was me. The bullet. You left it in the chamber, didn’t you?”
He raises an eyelid, looking almost amused that I had pieced it together. “You fucked that up, too, didn’t you?” He moans as his chest bucks once again, but this time with a laugh. “Aston. My beautiful baby boy.” He snorts out a cry. “He would have set the world on fire. What a fine young man.”
“And here you are, burning it to the ground for every other Price. For God’s sake, you’re sick!” My voice hikes into the night. “My baby.” I weep into my hands a moment. “You hurt my baby.”
“Reagan is my baby.” He sniffs hard as if annunciating the fact. “Maybe had you visited more often your mother and I would’ve had something real to live for.”
“My mother.” I marvel at the fact he could mention her with a straight face. I swallow down the pain of losing her. “How could you hurt the mother of your children? How could you wake up and look in the mirror knowing what you had done?”
“You’re one to talk.” A harrowing moan expels from him and somewhere in the night a coyote howls in return. He doubles over and clutches at his stomach, retches as if he may vomit. “You sent that woman away in the cold tonight. You looked at her as if she were a common street whore!” His voice inches up an octave, and it takes a moment for me to realize he’s talking about Hailey. “Believe me when I say this—you will be sitting in this exact spot in thirty years with broken ribs and a collapsed lung because your son just beat the living shit out of you.” He dips his chin and begins to retch.
Hailey and that baby. I shake my head at the thought of my father being right. I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. If that child is mine, I don’t plan on disrespecting Hailey no matter how tempting it might be. I’ll be civil about it. It will be hell, but one of my own making.
“But that’s one thing I can’t fault you for.” He starts in on an uncontrollable shiver. “We succumbed to the lust of the flesh.”
The moment stills. A cricket makes its presence known as I try to wrap my brain around what my father might be implying.
“Who was she?” There. Why not just cut to the chase? He’s half-dead anyway.
“Don’t you know?” He hikes a shoulder at me, struggling to sit on his side. “I gave you a damn hint the other night. I thought for sure anyone with half a brain would have pieced it together.”
What the hell is he talking about? I rack my brain, searching for the so-called hint. “I give. Uncle. Who was she?”
“That little bitch you started to bring around. Soon as you left for school, she was all over me—wanting to pet your pillow like some damn pervert. Before I knew it, she was on me, all over me like lice—and it happened.” Sucker punch. Can’t breathe. “Had a kid. Baby Angel. Nothing I could give her was enough to keep them out of my hair. Always wanting more, always sniffing around for another dollar. She kept whining about that kid costing so damn much so I took care of it for her.”
My blood runs cold. Monica didn’t have my baby. She had my father’s. My head spins with the idea. “You killed her. You killed your child.” Hell, he had already killed two others—Aston, too. I officially absolve myself of my brother’s demise. Every move in our lives was orchestrated by this monster by my side.
“Damn house wasn’t enough. It’s still in my name. You’ll get it one day.” He tips his head toward me.
“The Ghost Ship?” I wrack my brain, I’d swear Monica said an ex-husband gave it to her but then she’s been deceiving me for years. “I don’t want it. I don’t want anything to do with you.” Either of them. “Is that why she had all of our memories stowed in her attic?”
“When your mother died, I didn’t want them. I let her take them. She loved to sit and look at you. I’ve never seen a woman worship anyone so thoroughly.” He gives a quivering sigh. “In the beginning, she took Reagan for a couple of nights, but the risk was too high. She gave her back.”
My eyes widen in the dark, wide as saucers. No wonder she didn’t want me lurking around that big house. She was too afraid there was evidence left behind, like a ball, like dark hair on the pillow. Monica Phillips is going to pay right alongside my father for what she’s done—for the hell she’s put me through.
“What about Ota? Who the hell is she and how do we get her home?” My heart thumps unnaturally because so much about Ota doesn’t make sense.
“Ota?” He looks mildly confused. “I recognized her from the missing posters. Reagan’s friend. Darn if I know what happened to that little girl. But I’m glad she’s back.”
“You didn’t take her?”
“No. Heaven’s no. When I found Reagan, she was walking alone, talking to herself. It surprised me as much as it did you to see the other little girl turn up missing.”
My stomach sours. Something is still out of place. Reagan was with Ota the night she disappeared. My father is a loon and nothing he says can be trusted. His insanity runs deep and wide as the web of roots holding this mountain community together. His mind is the twisted forest, the black lake of nothingness.
“But your mother”—he shakes his head wistfully—“I couldn’t allow her to go missing. No siree Bob.”
“My mother was leaving you because
she didn’t like the pig you had become.” A sorrowful huff of laughter dies in my chest. “Little did she know what an asshole you had been all along.”
“She knew.”
Something about the way he says it saws along my nerves.
“She knew everything.” He looks over, a sly smile curling on his lips. A line of blood filling in the crack. “Want to know what she said the night Aston died?” A darkness enters him as he starts to chuckle, blood trickling from his nose and ear, his teeth yellowed with the sanguine liquid. “She said she knew you couldn’t get it right.”
“That’s it.” My foot itches to kick the living shit out of him, but instead I head into the house and lock the door behind me.
The forecast calls for snow before morning. He can’t crawl three inches to save himself. For a moment, I consider going back out—round two. But I’m not up for it. In truth, at this point none of it really matters. We have Reagan back. I’ll gladly turn Ota over to the authorities come morning. Life will stabilize. It will have to.
I place my hand over the door. Rest in peace, Dad. It will be your very last cold night, and you will wish for snow where you are going.
My toes screw into the floor, preventing me from my very next step. I unlock the door before heading upstairs.
I never did want to be like my father.
15
Allison
Reagan slept solid in the bed between James and me, a lamb between two shepherds. Ota settled somewhere near the bottom of our feet like flotsam. It was the first night’s sleep I’ve had in weeks, months, the best of my life, a heavenly rest that one can only attain in eternity.
James and I wake early and head downstairs to make the girls pancakes, a tower of cakes dripping with butter and syrup. Today will be the first day of the rest of our new lives. This was the after to a horrible before—the fissure that divides the two will always be Reagan’s disappearance.
Rich will be here in a few hours, as will McCafferty. We will have some explaining to do, but we’ve already settled on the fact we’ll maintain they walk straight to the door in the early hours of the morning. No one will fault us for wanting some time with our daughter. Our nightmare is over, and all of the disbelieving trolls can finally go to hell. Social services will most likely pick up Ota and cart her off to God knows where. And I’m not sure I care to know. She’s been the mystery, the constant element of surprise, and I long for a nice boring life without another single surprise for as long as I live.
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