by Sasha Dawn
“You know if you need anything, all you have to do is call me. I can get here pretty fast.”
If anyone else had said this to me, I might have bitten his head off. But Ryan somehow doesn’t imply all the negativity in why I might need him; he only emphasizes that it’s okay to need him.
I nod. “Duly noted. Thanks.” I take a few steps toward my house. I should probably get inside before Dad or Gram hears me talking to someone out here.
“Hey.”
“Yeah?” I dawdle near the walk.
“For what it’s worth . . .” In the darkness, I hear more than see his smile, and I hope he can’t see the blush I feel creeping into my cheeks. I still can’t believe I kissed him. What was I thinking?
“I missed you, Samantha.”
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to explain this to him, but I know that when I remember tonight, it won’t just be the kiss that I think about. It’ll be what we did after we left Brooke’s—playing rummy, eating s’mores. He gave me a vacation from the chaos. Even in the wake of everything coming to light—Trina Jordan, my drawings, the box of Mom’s stuff—he allowed me to be Samantha Lang, normal sixteen-year-old girl, instead of Samantha Lang, daughter of woman-who-disappeared.
“Thank you,” I say.
“Good night.”
“Night.” I’m pretty sure he’s watching me walk into the back door. It feels good to have him in my corner.
The moment I enter the house, the stench of something medicinal meets my nostrils. Something alcoholic.
Instantly, the warm and fuzzy feelings I conjured during my visit with Ryan dissipate. A prickly sensation crawls up my spine.
My father hasn’t had a drink in years. His marriage to Heather was contingent on his sobriety. But now that Heather’s out of the house, could he start drinking again? Especially with everything coming to light about Trina—is it enough to push him off the wagon?
I remember how different Dad used to be when he was intoxicated. Vacant, paralyzed, like he had one foot in the grave.
Just thinking about it causes my chest to tighten.
I enter the kitchen to see my grandmother seated at the island. Instantly, the mood of the house shifts another decibel toward doom.
My dad is standing at the sink. His lips are thinned into a line, a sure sign he’s angry about something.
I try to study him for any signs he’s impaired, but I can’t tell from this distance. I suppose there’s a possibility I smell something else. A cleanser, maybe. Or a topical astringent. But it doesn’t smell like rubbing alcohol.
“Samantha.” Gram opens her arms and smiles without showing her teeth. “I thought you might’ve stopped in after school. Aren’t you ever home?” I lean in for a halfhearted hug but quickly shrink away. It’s her. She’s what I’m smelling. She smells like alcohol. I should’ve known she’d be half in the bag an hour after she arrived.
Still, I recall more than one occasion when both Gram and Dad were slurring before it even got dark outside. I wonder if they’d had a drink together. My eyes are on Dad, who hasn’t said a word yet.
I linger on the fringes of the room, ever-conscious that the father I thought I knew may have been nothing more than smoke and mirrors. But all the same, he’s the only father I have. I loved him when he was drunk; I love him still. But can I love a man who may have killed my mother?
“Do I smell alcohol?” I ask.
“I was cleaning out some clutter,” he says. Which doesn’t really answer my question.
“Hungry?” Gram asks. “I could whip up a quick burger.” There’s a slight slur to her words. “I learned a trick during my visit in Nashville. Just add a little jalapeño to the ground round. Gives it quite a kick.”
I practically gag with the thought of animal fat oozing around the carcass on the plate. “I don’t eat meat.”
“What do you mean, you don’t eat meat?”
“Mercy . . .” My father attempts to intercept the conversation. He’s always called her by a version of her first name, and I guess I do too, considering her given name is Gramercy.
I remind my grandmother: “I don’t eat anything that used to have a face.”
“Worms don’t have faces. So you would eat worms but not beef? Those cows are bred to be burgers. You need meat.”
“No, I don’t.”
Gram sighs. “Like her mother.”
The tension in the air is thick. Although I won’t meet her eyes, I feel her stare hovering on me, her disappointment hemming me into a corner.
Again, I detect the stench of an alcoholic beverage. And it’s not just coming from Gram. It’s wafting over from somewhere else in the kitchen, though I don’t see a drink anywhere.
I look around, and I catch sight of a blue bottle cap on the countertop near the sink, some logo emblazoned on it, like a neon arrow: drink me, drink me. I dart over and pick up the cap. “Where did this come from?”
Dad replies, “Vodka. I found a fifth under the sink and spilled it.”
My grandmother swears under her breath. “Wasteful.”
“Why did you have vodka under the sink?”
“I didn’t.”
Is he accusing me of stashing vodka? But before I can deny it, he holds his hand out, palm up. “Phone.”
The hum of the ceiling lights, turned to the dimmest setting, fills the space.
“What?”
“Phone, Samantha.”
I pull it out of my pocket. Place it on the island between us.
He scoops it up, proceeds to tap and swipe at the screen.
“So . . . what? You’re just going to look through my phone?”
I haven’t seen him this tense, this angry, in a long time. Maybe part of me forgot that he could get like this. It was easier to block it out than to wonder . . .
My father’s secret first wife may have died in a ditch.
My mother is missing without a trace.
“You turned off the ringer.”
Because I kept getting texts that I didn’t know how to answer. “Sorry. I forgot about that, but—”
“I couldn’t find you tonight, and you weren’t doing what you said you’d be doing.”
“That vodka wasn’t mine, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“Don’t use that tone with your father!” Gram says.
I barely give her a glance. “My friends and I don’t drink. You can still trust me, Dad. Same as always.”
“Trust has to be earned,” Gram pipes in. “Are you listening to me?”
I ignore her. The way I see it, this is none of her business.
Dad’s still worrying over my phone. “So who were you with? I know you weren’t with Cass.”
Gram shakes her head and says, “Your father is going through enough right now, young lady.”
He turns on her. “Mercy, I need a minute with my daughter.”
Gram doesn’t push back. She reserves all her aggression for me. “I guess I could use a smoke before bed.” She already has one out of her pack and in her mouth. “We’ll talk more about this later, young lady.”
Young lady. The very term crawls under my skin, like so much about my grandmother.
“G’night.” Gram stops to hug my father, albeit briefly, on her way out the door.
“Good night, Mercy.”
“Vegetarian,” my grandmother mutters over her shoulder. “Just like her mother.” She disappears out the door.
“She’s drunk,” I say.
“Yes, she is, but that doesn’t mean you should disrespect her.”
“Maybe she doesn’t respect me.”
“We’re not discussing your grandmother right now. We’re discussing you.” Dad pockets my phone. “Where were you tonight?”
I can’t speak. I’m too stunned by his actions. He’s keeping my phone.
“Samantha?” He narrows his gaze at me. “You said you were going bowling with Cass and Brooke.”
“I started with them, but . . .” Do I
tell him the truth that I was uncomfortable because Cass and Brooke were playing tonsil hockey with their respective other halves, and I was there all alone stewing about recent developments? “I couldn’t, Dad. I just couldn’t be there.”
“You could’ve called me.”
Tears burn down my cheeks.
“How’d you get home?”
“Neilla—Officer Cooper—she dropped me off at Schmidt’s place.” It isn’t a lie.
“I know.” His lips are a thin line again. “I spoke with Ken Eschermann. But that was at four o’clock.”
“You called Eschermann?”
“He called here. Said he couldn’t reach you on your cell. And now we know why. You’d turned your ringer off.”
“I’m sorry about that. I was going to turn it back on. I just forgot.”
“You forgot.”
“Yeah.”
“I allowed you to go out tonight, despite everything going on,” he says slowly, “because I figured you could use the time with your friends. But when I couldn’t get ahold of you, I texted Cassidy, who told me you left for home at seven thirty.”
I open my mouth to reply, but nothing comes out.
“Seven”—his fist comes down hard on the countertop—“thirty!”
I take a few slow steps toward the staircase.
“I have a call you made to the head detective, Sam! A text from Cass that says you left over three hours ago! And you’re not answering when I call or text! What do you think was going through my mind? How do you think it looks when I have to tell Ken Eschermann that I don’t know where you are?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Where were you?”
“I was . . .” Can’t tell him I was at Schmidt’s place. “With a friend. In the neighborhood.”
“You’d better not be saying what I think you’re saying. You came in through the back door. I didn’t hear a car pull up.”
He knows. And after years of being in control, years of practicing restraint, he finally cracks. His eyes are full of pure rage.
“That boy’s uncle went on television, Sami. He broadcasted terrible, terrible things about our family! And you! You’re over there doing God-knows-what with his nephew!”
“I was playing rummy and eating s’mores.” I keep backing toward the staircase.
“I’m not an idiot, Sam. Don’t treat me like an idiot.”
All I need is for Dad to see a text come through from Ryan. “Can I have my phone?”
I count the seconds it takes for him to draw in an audible breath: six and a half. Almost seven. He’s just as long with the exhale. “You can have it back tomorrow.”
“So, you’re going to read through my text messages?”
“Am I going to find something I don’t want to see?”
“That’s my business. My personal business, Dad. I don’t go through your phone.”
“Are you hiding something from me?”
“Are you hiding something from me?”
“God damn it, Sam!” His fist comes down on the island countertop again.
I flinch.
And then I run for the stairs.
Once my hand lands on the railing, I’m sprinting up the steps, counting in my head. After the ninth stair, I lean left to follow the bend and nearly trip up the remaining seven. I catch myself, preventing a face-plant, with palms against the hardwood floors. A twinge of discomfort registers. One of the floor planks has splintered, the one that continuously creaks when we walk over it, and a sliver of wood lodges in my left index finger.
I catapult into my room and lock the door behind me and sit on my window seat. I stare out into the night, inhaling the cool air. The exterior lights on Schmidt’s back patio are golden orbs against dark sky. The light waxes when the tears in my eyes grow fat. If I were still the six-year-old girl my mother left behind, I might imagine she’s traveling to me by magic bubble.
All she has to do is make a phone call—hey, this is Delilah Lang, I’ve just arrived in Madagascar or Kazakhstan or Antarctica or insert-remote-location-here, please leave my family alone—and we’d get some peace.
And I used to believe that might happen someday.
But now I’m not so sure.
I pull Gatsby from my bag and open it to page 117. I press the book to my chest, as if I can absorb my mother’s essence through her handwritten annotations.
The image comes to me: I’m running down the street, golden and burgundy leaves arching overhead, and Mom’s on the other side. Just have to reach her, just have to get to her, and everything will be fine.
Everything will be fine.
Except that suddenly, the image shifts to my running through a dark, enclosed space. It’s getting narrower, and the ceiling closes in on me, and it’s getting harder to breathe, and I can’t get out, and . . .
I close my eyes and try to conjure the scent of my mother—had she worn perfume?—but it’s been so long. I can’t remember any scents beyond the wafting of burning leaves and cookie batter.
Suddenly, I’m very tired. I breathe deeply. In . . . and out. In . . . and out.
I drift in the numb melancholy hanging in this room, in this house.
The dark is as dark as it’s ever been.
Everything is still.
Dad’s talking to his phone, recording his plan for tomorrow.
He’s speaking softly, but I concentrate on what he’s saying in order to gauge where he is in the house.
Walking up the stairs, I surmise.
Nearing the landing.
Closing the distance between us.
He passes my door.
Passes the door to Cassidy’s old room.
His words are indiscernible, just a hiss of whispering. And then I hear the name: “Heather.”
I freeze. Listen more closely.
“Nothing happens.”
My blood runs cold.
“Nothing,” he says again.
Heather.
Did I hear him right?
Trina Jordan-Lang—gone.
Delilah Maxwell-Lang—gone.
Heather Solomon-Lang . . .
If anything happens to her . . .
I see her in my mind: a woman pushing against walls that hold her captive, fighting for her freedom.
It’s me. I’m the one pushing, gasping for breath.
I’m not breathing.
Not breathing!
I try to fill my lungs with air, but I can’t. It’s as if I’m suffocating, as if I’ve used up all the air on earth and there’s nothing left to sustain me. I push against the walls, panicked breaths escaping me in quick darts. The frame of the room shatters, the wood cracking and breaking, leaving splinters inches from my face, from my heart, ready to stab, ready to pierce and puncture.
A motor revs. The place is about to be bulldozed over, and they don’t know I’m inside.
“No!” I sit upright and knock my head against the window. Rubbing the spot of impact, I concentrate on the feeling of air entering my lungs and attempt to gauge my surroundings as I awaken.
Ah, yes, this is where I slept last night. On the window seat. And clutched in my hands? F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece.
My eyes are puffy from crying, and now they’re crusted with sleep, too.
Vrmmm, vrmmm.
I turn toward the sound.
Ryan is outside, perched in a dying hickory. There’s a thick white rope tied around one of its branches, and the other end of the rope dangles all the way to the ground. He’s lodged between branches about two-thirds of the way up, almost at the same level as my window. A chainsaw hangs at his hip until he engages it and presses it to the branch with the rope tied around it.
The lawn will look bare without that tree, but I’m sure I’ll eventually stop noticing the gap where it used to be. Just like I rarely think about the absence of the sunflowers that Schmidt used to grow near his barn.
Vrmmm, vrmmm.
The sound of the chainsaw throbs in my left
index finger.
That’s right. The splinter.
I pick at it with my teeth. Maybe I can pull it out.
Outside, the branch separates from the tree and it swings, suspended with the tethers tied in a pulley-system to another branch and to a bolt attached to the hayloft door.
I watch, chewing at the splinter in my finger, as Ryan climbs down the tree, lowers the branch to the ground, tethers another branch, and repeats the process.
He moves so expertly that I wonder if, in addition to being homeschooled, he’s some sort of lumberjack in Kentucky.
A knock on my door startles me. I practically jump out of my skin.
“Sami?” My father speaks through the door. “Sami, I’m sorry about last night.” He sounds exhausted this morning, but calm. Collected.
“Sam? Can I come in?”
When I feel for the shard of wood in my finger, I can tell it’s bulging now, fighting against the forces that keep it confined in my skin.
“Are you in there?”
“Yes.”
“I shouldn’t have lost my temper. But you understand the amount of stress I’m under, don’t you?”
I find a pair of tweezers in a drawer in my desk. I press the embedded edge of the splinter with my thumb until I feel it poking out the other side.
“And through it all,” he continues, “I have to keep you safe. I have to think in terms of your best interest.”
Finally, I squeeze out enough of the splinter that I can grab it with my fingernails. As tender as it is, as much as it hurts to yank on it, I know it’ll feel better once it’s out of my skin.
“Come on, Sami. Open the door. Please.”
I pull the splinter free, suck at my fingertip. The faint metallic taste of blood meets my tongue.
“Okay. We’ll talk after my workout?”
I don’t reply.
Dad’s footsteps are steady as he descends the stairs.
I shove my hair back from my face and bind it with a hair tie into a messy ponytail. Shed my capri pants with the ridiculous pom-pom fringe—so not comfortable to sleep in—and slide on some leggings.
While I’m sure I look like hell warmed over, I know I don’t have much time. For all I know, Gram could already be downstairs, standing guard at the door, ready to shove pork sausage in my face.