by David Bell
Jason felt strange contemplating such facts with Derrick just as he had with Colton, but he nodded in agreement.
“I spent so much time thinking about that when we were young. Why is Hayden with me? What if she decides to dump me? She did that more than a few times. Threw me over. But when you have a kid, it’s different.” He looked at Jason, a sly smile turning up the corner of his mouth. “You wouldn’t know this, of course, but when you have a kid, you stop thinking about yourself all the time. You start thinking about the future more.”
“Is this why you and Hayden have been so responsible over the years?”
Derrick started nodding. “Sure,” he said. “That’s an easy shot. You might as well take it. Like I told you on the phone, things are different for me now. This Hayden thing, it woke me up. I’m a father, and I need to act like it.”
“Are you just going to take Sierra back to Indiana?”
“I have to. That’s where my job is.”
“Can you do that? I mean . . . she’s supposed to be with Hayden, and Hayden lives here in Ohio.”
“I thought you might say that,” Derrick said. “Sierra’s a pretty smart kid, isn’t she?”
“Of course.”
“Mature?”
“Sure. What are you driving at?”
“I don’t know where she got it from. Not from me, that’s for sure. But don’t you think she knows herself pretty well?”
“She’s seventeen. There’s a limit to what she knows.”
“All I’m saying is, I’m prepared to let Sierra decide where she wants to stay or who she wants to go with.” He pointed behind Jason. “Don’t you think we could just open that door and call up to her and find out what she wants to do? I mean if we really do care about the girl at all?”
* * *
Jason felt outmaneuvered. He couldn’t very well stand in the doorway of his own home and deny his former brother-in-law access to his daughter. Derrick was correct—Jason never much cared for him. But Jason had always admitted—and remembered again—that Derrick had been at least a decent father. He’d been the more reliable of the two of them, Derrick and Hayden, and despite his absence from Sierra’s life for the past couple of years, he appeared to have achieved a measure of stability.
Jason turned around and opened the front door. Derrick remained on the porch behind him, so Jason turned back and said, “Come on in.”
Derrick followed as Jason held the door, and when the two men entered the foyer, a voice called from the top of the stairs.
“Uncle Jason?”
“Yeah?”
“Is someone here? Is that . . . ?”
Sierra took two steps down the stairs, ducking her head so she could see the man behind Jason. When she did, her mouth opened wide, and in that moment, she looked very much like a surprised little girl, which Jason knew she was. A little girl surprised by her father.
“I thought I heard you,” she said.
She came down the stairs quickly, and Jason stepped out of the way as Derrick opened his arms and embraced his daughter. He raised her off the floor about a foot, Sierra lifting her legs and squealing as Derrick held her. Then her feet were back down on the ground. Jason watched Sierra lean in and place her head against her father’s chest, and as she did, she reached up and wiped a tear from her eye. He wasn’t sure, but it looked like Derrick wiped at his eyes as well.
Jason didn’t know what to do. He took a couple of steps toward the kitchen. “Would you like some coffee, Derrick?” he asked.
“Are you okay, honey?” Derrick asked.
“I’m fine.”
“I heard about Mom. I’m sorry.”
Jason walked out to the kitchen. He brewed a new pot of coffee and checked the refrigerator and the pantry for food to serve. He found some cheese and set it on a plate with some crackers and a knife. He was still setting that up and waiting for the coffee to finish when Derrick and Sierra came into the kitchen.
“There’s coffee,” Jason said.
“I’ll have some. Thanks,” Derrick said.
“Me too,” Sierra said.
Sierra stood close to her dad while Jason poured the coffee into mugs. They each took one, and Jason invited them to sit at the table. When everyone was seated, Sierra sliced the cheese and started eating. Jason just waited. He wasn’t going to introduce the topic. Derrick seemed to pick up on this and gave Jason an irritated look. He probably wished Jason would leave the room so he could speak to his daughter in private, but Jason stayed rooted to his seat. If they were going to talk about Sierra’s future, they were going to do it with him involved in the conversation.
Sierra looked at both of the adults at the table. “What?” she said. “Is something happening?” She leaned over toward Derrick. “Do you know something about Mom?”
“No, I don’t.” Derrick reached out and took her hand in his. “Honey, I came here to ask you something.”
“What?”
Derrick looked at Jason again. Jason thought he saw some doubt on Derrick’s face, as though he wasn’t certain his attempt to get Sierra to go with him was going to work. But he forged ahead.
“I talked to Jason on the phone the other night.”
“You did?” Sierra turned her head to Jason and then back to her father. “I didn’t know you called.”
“I asked him not to bother you. I wanted to talk to Jason first. You see, we have to figure out what’s going to happen next with you. And with all of us. I know you like staying here with Jason and Nora, but it’s not a permanent solution. You know that, right?”
“I guess so. I’m waiting for Mom to come back.” She looked at both of them again. “I know that might make me sound like a little baby, but that’s what I’m hoping for.”
“We know,” Derrick said. “And I suspect she’ll be back soon. I do.”
“You don’t know that,” Sierra said, her voice soft.
“I’m hopeful,” Derrick said. “But in the meantime, I think you and I should be spending more time together. And I’m here because I want you to come live with me. Just until Mom gets back and everything returns to normal again.”
“It’s up to you,” Jason said. “We’re not trying to get you to do anything you don’t want to do.”
The words sounded hollow and forced to Jason. He knew he didn’t mean them. Of course he wanted Sierra to stay in their house. The closeness and attachment he felt for her made him afraid. He couldn’t imagine it if she went away, and he knew it would be even tougher for Nora.
“I like the idea of staying here because this is where Mom was last seen. If she comes back, she’s going to come back here and not to Indiana.” Sierra lowered her voice. She sounded small and young. “Besides, you haven’t been around. I never know if I’m going to see you. It’s been such a long time and . . . I just don’t know who to trust anymore.”
The knot in Jason’s insides untwisted a little.
“Everything you say is true,” Derrick said. “But if she returns, I’ll bring you right over here to see her. Remember, she and I have a custody arrangement. We can’t break that. I know I haven’t been holding up my end lately, and Mom has been good about it. She hasn’t pressed it. She could, you know. She could make trouble for me, and she hasn’t. And if I kept you in Indiana when you were supposed to see Mom, then I’d be breaking the law. We’ve both let you down a lot. We can’t change the past. I wish I could sometimes.”
“But if she does come back—”
Derrick looked at Jason. “I’m sure Jason and Nora would let you know as soon as something changed.”
Sierra looked over at Jason, her face full of hope.
“Of course we would,” Jason said. “You know that.”
“There’s school,” Sierra said.
“It’s summer. By the time summer’s over, Mom will be back. She wi
ll. I’m . . . confident. And then you can get back to living with her.” Derrick leaned in closer. “But I do hope that once you are back with Mom and back in school, you’ll come see me more. Some time at Christmas. More time in the summer. Indiana’s nice. Maybe you’ll go to college over there.”
“Do you want to take a couple of days to think about this?” Jason asked. “It’s a big decision.”
Derrick couldn’t contain the exasperated sigh that slipped out of his mouth. He looked at Jason before leaning back in the chair. “Of course,” he said. “It’s just . . . I started a new job. And I don’t have a lot of time off.”
“I heard you got a new job,” Sierra said. “That’s amazing.”
“I know. A sales job. It’s kind of like my old one. It took me long enough, but I landed on my feet, kiddo.”
A look of pride crossed Sierra’s face. Jason saw the mist in her eyes, which practically glistened as she looked at her father. The tight parent-child connection between the two of them glowed like a laser light.
“Do you have room for me?” she asked. “Are you living in a house or an apartment?”
“I have two bedrooms. You can fix your room up any way you like.”
Jason knew the battle was lost even before Sierra turned to him, her eyes no longer glowing with parental love but instead dimmed by a sense of pity. She was about to let her aunt and uncle down.
“You don’t mind, do you, Uncle Jason?”
What could he say? Could he deny Sierra the chance to be with her father?
“Whatever you want to do,” he said, nearly choking on the words. “Whatever is going to work best.”
“It might be perfect,” she said. “If Mom comes back—when Mom comes back—I’ll be staying with her, and that’s not far away from you and Aunt Nora.”
“No, it’s not.”
“I used to ask Mom if we could come and see you guys. I really did. I can see all of you more than before.”
“Great,” Jason said. He didn’t try to force a smile. If he did, he thought his face might crack.
“Do you have a lot of stuff to pack?” Derrick asked.
“I didn’t bring much. Most of my stuff is at the house.” She frowned. “That house. What’s going to happen to it? I know Mom paid the next month’s rent early before we came here. After that . . .”
“We don’t need to worry about that,” Derrick said. “But if you need stuff from there, we can drive over. It’s Redman County, right?” Derrick checked his watch. “That adds a couple of hours to our day.”
“Have you been there, Derrick?” Jason asked.
“Where?”
“To Hayden’s house in Redman County.”
“I’ve never been there. Why?”
“Just wondering.”
Sierra stared at him, her forehead wrinkled.
“I haven’t seen it either,” Jason said. “Maybe someday.”
“I’ll get my stuff from upstairs. It’s just one bag.” Sierra popped up, and on her way to the bedroom she bent down and hugged Derrick around the neck. “Thanks, Dad. What a great surprise to see you here today.”
Chapter Thirty-nine
Nora bustled and rushed through the door, dropping her bag as soon as she crossed the threshold. She came into the living room where Jason was sitting, working on his laptop. He looked up. Nora wore a concerned, expectant look on her face. He knew what she was going to ask.
“Is she still here? Did they leave?”
“About thirty minutes ago.”
Nora stood in the center of the room, her hand raised to her mouth. She turned a little bit, almost as though she was going to spin around in a circle. She stopped the movement and said, “Jesus. Shit. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“I did. I called three times. You were in a meeting.”
She nodded her head and slumped onto the couch, still wearing her jacket. “I know. I’m sorry. I know. Shit. Shit.” She didn’t look at Jason. She stared off into the distance, her eyes half-closed. “I can’t believe this.”
“We can’t stop her from going with her father. He has rights.”
“I feel like a sentimental fool. I got attached to this girl we really don’t know during the week and a half she stayed here, and I shouldn’t be letting it get to me that she’s gone.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“I should be glad she’s gone. We can get back to our normal life, right? We don’t have to worry about her taking the car or running off with that friend of hers who’s a convict. We can just . . . be ourselves.”
“I feel the same way you do about her. I know I was reluctant to get mixed up in anything with Hayden, but I liked having Sierra around. She’s a good kid. A great kid. She’s our niece.”
“We can just be ourselves now and keep working on us. We need that. It’s good.” Nora moved around on the couch and slipped her jacket off, dumping it on the floor. She never did anything like that. She was never messy. “I thought this is the way to have a kid, you know? Just have her plopped in your lap when she’s kind of grown-up, and you can talk to her and influence her life but you don’t have to worry about all that little-kid stuff like diapers and chicken pox and getting hit by cars. God, I think I sound like a fool. Even to my own ears, I sound like a fool.”
“She’s not gone forever,” Jason said. “She’s still our niece. She’ll still be . . .”
“What?”
“I was going to say around.”
“But you can’t,” Nora said. “You can’t because you don’t know where she’ll be. Just like Hayden. We don’t know.”
“I couldn’t stop him. He’s her father. And she wanted to go. You should have seen how happy she was to see—”
“I know. I get it. I just don’t want to hear about it.”
Jason closed his laptop and set it aside. The house and the neighborhood seemed suddenly and completely silent, as though they were experiencing not just the absence of noise but its removal, its subtraction, like the darkness in a room when a light goes out unexpectedly.
“Is it okay for her to be with Derrick?” Nora asked.
“He’s her—”
“I know that part. He’s her father. I get it. But he’s friends with that Jesse Dean guy. Did you ask him about all that?”
“He said he doesn’t know what Jesse Dean is doing these days. And he said on the phone the other night that the police in Indianapolis came and questioned him about Hayden. I guess it all was kosher.”
Nora shuffled around. She picked up her coat and stood. On her way to the stairs she stopped and looked back at Jason.
“Do you ever wish we had children? Really wish it?”
“Sometimes. When Sierra was here, it was easy to see what our life might have been like.”
“Here I am worrying about whether I should take a job opportunity in New York, and if we should maybe move back there, and I wonder if I’m just focused on all the wrong things.”
“What do you mean?” Jason asked.
She sighed. “I’m starting to like it here. With Sierra and Hayden back . . . it felt like home. It felt like we were connected. Our lives here felt the fullest they ever felt.”
Jason agreed, but he didn’t know if it would ever be that way again.
Chapter Forty
Jason sat in a reception area at the police station. It was pleasant enough. Early in the morning, the room smelled clean and freshly scrubbed. Coffee brewed somewhere, its aroma drifting out to where Jason waited with an elderly woman who kept reaching up and patting her bouffant hairdo into place. Jason didn’t bother picking up a magazine or checking anything on his phone. He was full of a nervous energy, one that kept him from concentrating.
Jason wasn’t sure how long he waited. Olsen came out eventually, wearing a tie and a crisply pressed wh
ite shirt. He nodded formally to Jason, as though the two of them had just agreed to something meaningful and profound, and then he led Jason back to a small cubicle cluttered with loose papers and pictures of Olsen with his children. Jason took it all in while Olsen shuffled some of the work to the side, clearing a space on the desktop.
“How have you been doing?” Olsen asked.
“Fine,” Jason said. “Okay, I guess.”
“Did you have something on your mind?” Olsen asked.
“A couple of things. I went out to see Mr. Shaw, Logan’s father.”
“To express your sympathies,” Olsen said.
“To do that, yes. But also to ask some questions.”
The detective’s eyebrows rose. “Questions?”
“Do you remember I told you that Logan had been sending cards and notes to his father over the years? Father’s Day cards, birthday cards?”
“I recall that.”
“And you took them from the house?” Jason asked.
“Of course. In fact, I’m heading back out to the Shaw house again this morning. I’m hoping that Mr. Shaw will be more communicative in the early part of the day.”
“Have you looked at the cards? Ask the housekeeper, Pauline, about them when you’re out there.”
“And? I’m assuming there’s an ‘and.’”
“And it’s not Logan’s handwriting. It’s not the ‘L’ he used to make in school.”
“Obviously. He was dead all these years.”
“Right. But what’s interesting is who the handwriting belongs to.”
Jason stopped himself. If he went forward, he was selling his sister out, implicating her in something illegal. Obstruction. Conspiracy. Possibly murder. But if he didn’t tell the police everything he knew, they might never find her. If Hayden was involved with a crime, one related to Logan’s death, then the police should have that information. The better to locate her.
“Are you going to tell me?” Olsen asked. “Or do I have to guess?”