by Holly Rayner
He showed up one day when I was halfway out the door of my apartment.
“You,” he said, and I froze.
Nine months was a long time, more than long enough to build someone up in your head, exaggerate their features and just how bad they really were. That was what I had been sure I’d done with Russell Snow, made him out to be scarier than he really was. And yet here, face-to-face with the disturbing man, I saw I hadn’t exaggerated at all. His face really was a hard-lined, too-pale mask with eyes of dust and stretched-out lips.
“You have seen him, haven’t you?” he growled.
I stood there speechless for a minute, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear.
“N-no…”
His icy gaze slid to my bulging belly, and he sneered.
“Better not be lying to me.”
And then he left, leaving me trembling and fleeing back inside my apartment. As if I didn’t have enough things to worry about with my due date in a little under two weeks. Now I had to worry about Russell Snow taking out his frustration on me, due to his inability to find Brock.
Yet even as I sat there on my kitchen floor, terrified, tense hands resting on my restless belly, I smiled. Snow still hadn’t caught Brock. There was still hope, still a chance. If only I could find him…
By that night I still hadn’t ventured out of my apartment. My sleep was agitated, a series of tossing and turning and sequences of dreams. Disconnected images slipped past: Brock’s look cutting through me, his house, those cookies, those paintings. Mid-dream, I sat straight up in my bed, suddenly completely awake.
Those paintings! Of course, why hadn’t I thought of that? They could have held a clue about Brock. Hell, his whole cabin could have been chock-full of clues, and I had never thought to go back to it.
Next thing I knew, I was stumbling into some baggy sweatpants and an equally baggy sweatshirt. Then, after throwing some supplies into my backpack, including a flashlight and some granola bars, I raced out the door of my apartment.
I didn’t check what time it was; I didn’t care. With this latest revelation about Brock’s cabin, I had to go search now. This was the father of my children; it couldn’t wait. I had to find him.
My car rumbled to life unwillingly, but I set out nonetheless, driving into the dark night. A glance at my phone revealed a missed call from Tiffany (who always seemed to have a sixth sense when something big had happened) and the time: 3:47 a.m.
It didn’t matter. I flicked on the radio, and the Rolling Stones and I drove along the darkened streets, toward the cabin destination that would, hopefully, show me the light.
Getting to Nederland took longer than I remembered. Or, maybe it was just how uncomfortable everything was while pregnant. Bathroom breaks were a must almost every hour, while I kept a water bottle and a stash of snacks parked beside me the entire time. And yet still I ached; still I was bloated and hungry and thirsty, but not the normal kind. It was the kind that was perpetual, integral, something that couldn’t be fixed.
I was hardly surprised. I hadn’t had what you’d call an easy pregnancy. The first two or three months had been a whirlwind of throwing up and crying, while the next had been an endless binge-fest, which wasn’t the worst thing, except how my body had swelled so considerably that it no longer felt like mine. And yet, it had been worth it. As I drove, turning down the road of the path to the cabin, I could feel my babies’ excited kicking.
“Yes, we’re going to see Daddy’s old place,” I told them, and they kicked some more.
It was strange. Carrying these oh-so-fragile little beings within me frightened me, especially going on this potentially dangerous Daddy search, and yet it made me feel reassured, less alone.
I could do this. For my children, I had to.
Making it to the cabin was an exercise in patience. It not only took longer than I expected, but it took longer than I could have even feared. The forest was one unending black void of grass and trees and shrubs, all of which were too close to my car. I rapidly exhausted my granola bar supply, while my water met a similar, quickly finished fate.
By the time I did finally pull into the darkened dirt parking lot, I had been seriously considering turning back altogether.
But, just in time, there it was, barely visible in the pale yellow of my headlights: Brock’s cabin.
I turned off my car. I told myself I could do this.
Then I got out my flashlight, slung my knapsack onto my back, and waddled out of my car.
I walked up to the old cabin, the one with the bashed-in door from when Russell and his men had broken their way in. From when Mommy had betrayed Daddy. I stepped over the door carefully, swallowing my guilt and blinking back tears.
Here went nothing. This was my last and only chance.
Chapter Fifteen
Feeling at the wooden wall, I located a metal switch, flicked it, and smiled as the room flickered into view thanks to an orange light bulb on the ceiling. Who knew what I would’ve done if I’d had to stumble around that old place in the dark.
And yet, as soon as my eyes took in their surroundings, my victorious smile fell to a horrified scowl.
Trashed. The whole cabin had been trashed. Russell’s men had been in there all of a minute, and they’d still managed to topple the couch and fridge, kick over the chest, and shoot holes in the wall. The monsters.
A frightened squirrel raced out of the kitchen, shooting past me and squeaking angrily. The loft upstairs was a sea of soft white sheets and clear shards of glass. Even the pictures downstairs had been destroyed: a bullet in one, a smashing of the other. The third, the one of the chickadee, was the exception. Ironic that it had been the one salvaged. I carefully took the frame off the nail it was hanging on and turned it around.
The canvas was soft to the touch, supple. On the back was a bar code that, in the corner, read “Albertson’s”.
The craft store, of course.
I took the chickadee canvas to my chest and spun around. Finally, finally a lead. It was something I could go off. It was nothing certain, nothing even likely, and yet it was enough. It was hope.
I carried the canvas out of there like my fourth child: cradled in my arms, nestled to my breast, pressed to my heart. This was the greatest thing I could’ve found there—a piece of the man I had only gotten one sweet night with, the man I was now intrinsically linked to whether I liked it or not.
The canvas went in the passenger’s seat. I flopped into the driver’s. Then we were off.
By now the sun had started to rise, casting long beams of light through the trees, illuminating everything. The whole forest, every last tree, was celebrating with me.
This time the drive was one long smile, one long sigh of relief. Even my body seemed lighter. I didn’t wonder when the ride would finally end; I only hoped it wouldn’t. I didn’t want to lose this weightlessness, the first I’d felt it in months.
Maybe I wouldn’t have to be alone. Maybe I could find Brock and tell him. Maybe, just maybe, everything was going to be all right—better than all right. Maybe it would be good, great even.
Once out of the forest, I stocked up on some pistachios, grapes, and water bottles before gliding from the checkout counter to the car. The ride back was filled with more bathroom breaks, but I didn’t mind. I glanced over at my friend the chickadee and smiled.
One thing was for sure: I was going to have a busy next few weeks.
It turned out busy was an understatement. Colorado had no less than 16 Albertsons’ stores. That was 16 drives, with the estimated time to reach each multiplied by two given the bathroom and food breaks and just general avoiding mental breakdown breaks. Sixteen letdowns. And, after each, after asking blasé cashiers about the man whose picture printout didn’t even really look like him, after shoving the chickadee painting in front of them, after hearing the same uncaring “no,” it began to get more than a bit depressing.
“What do you mean you don’t think?” I demanded of a particularly
sullen, pink-haired cashier. “Either you have, or you haven’t.”
“I haven’t.” Her red lips snapped back before she returned to texting.
I slumped away, onto another fruitless search, another dogged driving-off to who knew where in search of the man who might not even welcome being found.
All the while, between my journeys, I had to listen to Tiffany voicing her doubts and my mom voicing her over-the-top fretting.
“What if you start giving birth right in the middle of driving, right in the middle of nowhere?!” my mom, Alice, had cawed on one such memorable lunch outing, her penciled brows rising so high that they almost hit her hairline. “And what if, while that’s happening, a motorcycle gang or something come across you and steal all your money!”
My mom was well-known for her negative flights of fancy, but even that was pushing it.
“I have no money,” I’d said, and then I’d escaped to the bathroom.
And really, I did understand their concern; I just didn’t have time for it. I had a father to find.
And so I searched. I tore through every last Albertsons’ in Colorado, plowed through every stupid one of the blue-boxed stores in Wyoming, and even ventured into New Mexico’s small supply of stores.
Finally, one day while driving home from my latest New Mexico Albertsons’ failure, which had involved a record three fast-food burgers, each from a different place, and two crying breakdowns, I saw it.
It was tucked in the middle of a small town’s downtown like just any other store. I shrieked the car to a stop. A horn from the car behind me blared. I stared out the window at the apparition I had to be seeing.
“Albertsons’,” the store sign read. It was a small, rinky-dink, faded blue storefront, and yet there was the distinctive red cursive lettering and the window displays of crafts galore.
Somehow, I must have missed this location online, so it had presented itself to me like this, in this far-off town I didn’t even know the name of, which I was passing through by chance in hopes of a shortcut home.
I heaved myself out of the car; any considerable movement was starting to get tricky, and yet I still wouldn’t let Tiffany accompany me on these trips. If I found Brock, I didn’t want to scare him away with people he didn’t know. I needed a chance to explain myself.
The store window displays were impressive. More than impressive, they were show-stopping, making it look like a high-end art gallery. The first contained boards with several mandalas of flowers pinned on, purple ones and pink ones and blue ones with their petals fanned out in perfect circles of symmetry. The second was somehow even better. It contained a glimmering beacon of a sun, its body and beams made up of thousands of tiny jewels that shone as it swayed on its golden string.
I walked inside the store, turned the corner, and found myself looking at the front counter. Behind it was an old man who looked like a hound dog. His face sagged off the bottom of his chin, and his irises, which were in the top half of his eyes, regarded me with a bland indifference.
“Have you seen this man?” I asked him.
His eyes took a minute to slide over to the printout I showed him. Once there, they stayed in place until, after a long while, he blinked and barked, “Why?”
I studied his empty-looking face. Was this a promising “why”, or just a bad-tempered one?
“Please,” I said. “It’s really important that I find him. Did he buy a canvas here, this one or one like it?”
I lifted the chickadee canvas, turned it to the back, and pointed to the Albertsons’-labelled bar code. Again the droopy eyes took their time shifting to this new place, and once again they lingered there.
“Huh” was his only response.
“Please,” I said, tears coming to my eyes.
I couldn’t take another failure. I couldn’t take it.
“Can’t help ya,” he grumbled, turning away.
The tears spilled down now. “Please. I need to know. Was he here?”
The old man didn’t move; I couldn’t see where his eyes were. His sweater was woolly and had a hole in the bottom, and my search couldn’t end like this, it just couldn’t.
“Please. I’m pregnant with his children,” I croaked.
The old man didn’t move.
“You’re in the right place,” he growled, and I had to slap my hand onto the wooden front counter to avoid keeling over.
I had found him. After all this time, I had really found Brock Anderson, the father of my children.
“Comes in every so often. Says we got canvas boards like no other.”
He still wasn’t facing me; after speaking, his woolly shoulder rose and then fell in a shrug.
Then he turned to me, his droopy eyes alert and studying me.
“You gonna want the videos, huh?” he asked.
“Please!” I said, the word coming out in a burst.
My whole body was shaking. I couldn’t help it. Months and months of worrying and searching and praying, and now my prayers may have been answered.
“One minute,” the old man ordered with an up-down flick of his wrinkly, small-fingered hand.
He shuffled away.
“Lucky we watch this place. Damn hooligans,” he muttered to himself as he shoved a tape in.
Pressing on a taped-up TV controller that looked to be on its last leg, the video flew ahead in fast forward, the image showing the front counter and people zooming in and out, women and men and families and boys, and then him.
The old man stopped the tape just as that familiar maple-eyed face came on.
My heart stopped. My breath caught in my throat.
“That’s yer guy, ain’t it?” the old man said, his jowls wagging as he nodded several times.
“Yes,” I whispered.
He slammed his finger down on the controller again, and the screen went black.
“Hey—” I began, but the old man was already ambling away to an ancient-looking desktop computer I hadn’t even noticed.
“Good,” he said.
After a few clicks on the computer, he added, “We got his license number from the front camera: K2P C06. That help?”
With shaking fingers, I typed the numbers into the notepad app on my phone.
I reached out for his hand, to squeeze it, to hug him, to somehow express that he’d just saved my life, that I could never repay him for what he’d just done, but the old man was still facing the computer, his jeans sagging under a cracked black belt.
“Thank you. Thank you so much,” I said. “Words can’t express what you’ve just done for me.”
“Yeah, yeah. Get outta here.”
“Thank you again. I mean it,” I said, and then I turned to leave.
A few steps away, however, he spoke again. “I hope you find ’im. Ain’t good for kids to grow up with no daddy. My daddy ran out when we was just toddlers. Momma ain’t never recovered.”
I stood there for a minute as the bitter old man transformed before my eyes into a sad-eyed little boy staring out the window for a father who would never return.
I nodded, though he couldn’t see it.
“I will find him,” I said, a lump in my throat. “You’re right, and thank you. I will find him.”
“Good day to yeh,” he said, turning to me with eyes that seemed droopier than ever.
I thanked him again and left.
Mixed with the new hope that was buoyantly returning me to my car was now something else too. Something scary, like little kids ruined before they were even five. No, I promised myself. No matter what, you will raise these kids right. I would find Brock, and everything was going to be all right.
As soon as I got in my car, I called Kyle.
“Can you run a plate for me?”
He exhaled. “Alex, do you even know what time it is?”
“I’m sorry, Kyle, but I’ve found him. I really think I’ve found him.”
He sighed again and then: “Okay. What is it?”
“It’s K2P C06.�
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“You’re lucky I worked late tonight. It’s 7 o’clock, you know.”
“Thank you, Kyle.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said.
A few seconds later, he said, “Now, if I tell you this, you have to promise me you won’t rush out there right away, okay?”
“Yes, Kyle. I promise. Now please just tell me. I need to know.”
“Okay, so looks like your guy’s plate is for a green ‘92 pickup truck. His plate is registered on a street near the Santa Fe National Forest, on Carson Valley Way, though if he’s as clever as you make him out to be, he probably won’t be there.”
“Ah, yes, you’re probably right,” I said, feigning calmness as a symphony of excitement started sounding off in my head.
“So you won’t go there, right, Alex?”
“Got to go, Kyle, thanks for this!” I said, and quickly hung up.
Pulling down the sun visor, I stared in the mirror at myself. Had lying to Kyle been wrong? My reflection shook its head. No. I hadn’t had any choice. I was working with only days to go; I had to find Brock immediately, or I could end up never finding him.
I took out my phone and opened the maps app. What a lucky coincidence. The plate was registered to a street near the Santa Fe National Forest, and where was I but right in the middle of Santa Fe itself?
My phone rang. It was Tiffany.
“Alex, please tell me you’re not doing what I think you’re doing.”
“I’m sorry, Tiff,” I said.
“Alex, no matter what you think, you don’t really know this guy, okay? You met him one time. Once. He might not react how you want him to. He could even attack you, hurt you and the babies. Or worse, he could kill you. Alex, do not do this alone. Just wait. Kyle and I will come get you. We can go hunt him down together.”
“Tiffany, I’m over six hours away. I need to do this myself. I’m sorry.”
“Alex, please don’t be rash like this. Just think—”
“I’m sorry, Tiff,” I said. Then I hung up.
I stared at the phone, noticing for the first time that it was at 10% battery. It rang again. Tiffany. I didn’t pick up. Turning it off, I slid it into my pocket. I had made up my mind. I was going to do this. I had to. I was going to find him, come what may.