by Holly Rayner
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.”
“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.
Chapter Sixteen
The forest and the street Kyle had given me were only 20 minutes away, but I made it there in 10. Maybe I sped; I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that my foot nudged the gas pedal until the world outside my windows was a blur and the only thing to do was weave by the cars that were crawling along the road ahead of me.
The landscape was dirt and scrub as far as the eye could see, arid plains that looked to be incapable of sustaining a forest for miles, but still I pressed on. Something was drawing me to Carson Valley Way, some deep knowing.
Once I got there, the street itself was what I’d imagined the rich, nice neighborhoods of Spain or Mexico must be like: tan and white adobe two-story boxes with front lawns of tiny pebbles and one single bushy tree apiece. Each box had the same perfectly square windows with the same darker brown border, the same one-car garage. The whole neighborhood had clearly been the brainchild of one individual architect. It was not Brock’s scene at all, but then again, how much did I know about the man, really?
Yet as I drove up and down the street, I saw no sign of a green pickup truck, or any pickup truck for that matter. No, I drove up and down and back up the thin street several times but saw nothing. Finally, in exasperation, I pulled over on in the circle at the end of the street, glanced out the window, and saw just what I was looking for.
“Turquoise Trail” the yellow-lettered sign read. And though the dirt road snaking into more arid plains indicated not the slightest sign of turquoise, it did, on the far-off horizon, offer a hint of trees. That had to be it, Santa Fe National Forest.
Brock wouldn’t be content to live near the forest; he would settle only for living smack dab in the middle of it. At last, I’d finally found a lead.
I grabbed an apple from my center console, took a generous bite, and turned down the “Turquoise Trail” dirt road. I was getting close; I could feel it.
The dirt road was bumpy and meandering, tending left and then right before definitively going left again. More scrub and dirt rolled past my windows, though I barely noticed. My gaze was locked on the horizon, on the green mass I was getting nearer to every second. Then I was in the thick of it, driving on dirt that suddenly housed whole hills of low, bushy trees and little plops of ambitious grasses. Those then gave way to a whole forest of trees. They were tall and small, wide and thin, and every shade of green was present: lime and olive and seaweed and emerald. The trees were everywhere, of every kind—elms, pines, crabapples, oaks, maples, cottonwoods. I was so overcome by this sudden infusion of nature that I almost missed the two massive pines dipping together over a dark, unmarked dirt road.
I stopped the car and peered down the road. At the end was some sort of wooden building and, nearly blending in completely with the trees, a green pickup truck.
I pulled down the dirt road and parked beside the ’92 pickup truck.
With trembling hands, I tucked the chickadee canvas under my arm and got out of the car.
I stopped at the rough wooden door, the slats all mismatched—some too big, others too small, yet all somehow coming together to serve their door-forming purpose.
I lifted my fist to knock and paused.
This was really happening. I was really doing this. I was really going to see Brock again after all this time.
I knocked. In response, the whole door shook, but that was all. After that, nothing. There was no shuffling inside the cabin, no movement anywhere.
Brock’s car was right there in the lot out front. Didn’t that mean he had to be home? It wasn’t like green ’92 pickups were all that common of a vehicle.
This time I knocked with more force, but again there was no response. The third time, I knocked so hard the whole door trembled and then opened. Tentatively, my hand on an outer slat, I pushed the door open farther and stepped into the single room.
There was a sleeping bag balled in one corner and an old-style stove in the other, but there was otherwise little sign of life in the dank place.
A rifle cocked behind me, and I whipped around to see. In the doorway was Brock, his rifle pointed straight at me.
“Don’t move,” he growled.
Chapter Seventeen
His gaze flicked to my belly, and the gun drooped.
“No,” he whispered.
“Yes,” I whispered back.
Tears coming to my eyes, I stepped toward him and said again, “Yes.”
We stood there for a minute while Brock’s face registered every possible emotion, from surprise to rage to despair to fear to, finally, happiness.
Regarding me with a cautious smile, he gestured to the sleeping
bag behind me.
“I’m sorry there’s nowhere to sit, but do you want to…”
I clasped his hand and smiled myself.
“It’s fine.”
He led me over there, folded the sleeping bag on itself so it was thicker, and then helped me sit down.
“I’ll turn on the oven,” he said once I’d been safely seated on the thing, which was actually comfy. “It’s not much, but it’s warm. I don’t normally… Well, you can probably see for yourself.”
And I could. My first scan of the shack, while it had taken all of three seconds, had pretty much covered the place and what it contained. There was the green tartan sleeping bag I was now sitting on, an old-style oven Brock was turning on, and not much else. A huge body of a backpack slumped against the wall suggested where his latest art was being kept, but that was it.
“I can’t believe it,” Brock said once the oven was on, coming over to sit beside me, his gaze glued to my belly.
“So, what you’re saying is…that it’s mine.”
I shook my head and put his hand on my belly.
“No, Brock. They are yours.”
Now tears were coming to his eyes, and his hand flinched back.
“Wow,” he murmured. “One of them kicked.”
“One of the daughters or the son,” I said, and his dopey grin widened.
“A dad. I’m going to be a dad. Two girls and a boy.”
This his gaze lifted to mine, and his face darkened.
“Before you say anything more,” I said, “please let me explain. Let me tell you how sorry I am for everything that happened. I never meant to betray you. This all started out as a job to get evidence on you; I’m a private investigator who was in desperate need of money. I got in too deep, and after I told Snow, I planned on warning you. But he went after you too fast, drove there right after we met and took me along to boot. I didn’t have a chance to tell you.”
Brock nodded, the lines on his forehead softening.
“And...that night…”
I grasped his hand.
“For me it was real, every bit of it. I wasn’t putting on an act to get information out of you. I genuinely think you’re the most incredible, kind, good man….” My voice faltered, and I shook my head. “I understand if you don’t want to see me anymore, or if you only want a partial part in your children’s lives; we hardly know each other after all.”