“I think we get it, Billi Jo,” I said, then rested my back against the seat and stared out the window at the passing suburbs. Immaculate landscaped lawns with shiny cars parked beside them eventually faded to scraggly patches of grass with random yard art and rusty vehicle carcasses. Somewhere between art and rust, Billi Jo’s observation about peasants and royalty suddenly caused a revelation.
I sat up straight. “Billi Jo, you might have something.” I fished the crumpled piece of paper with the Banards’ old address out of my pocket and carefully unfolded it. “Since when did anybody in Dahlia have a nice house like the Banards’? We need to check this address out before we go back home.” I ran my finger along the map. “According to this, we can take Boone Hollow Road all the way to Creekside Drive—it’s only about thirty more miles.”
Kat followed the winding road and stopped in front of a tiny, dingy white house with peeling paint, boarded up windows, and a crumbling foundation. It sat off the road near a railroad track on maybe a half-acre of land. My heart soared when I double-checked the address of the Banards’ old house. “Either the Banards suddenly won the lottery or they were paid big bucks to not press charges, keep quiet, and get out of town quick.”
Kat’s cheek lifted slightly as she stared out at their old residence. “Not bad, detective. Not bad at all.”
When we got back to Justice’s place, it was a little later than I’d planned. Driving past Justice’s house to the cabin, I noticed his truck was gone. “Good, he’s not home from work yet.” I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Nah, you’re not that lucky,” Kat said. “Look at the big puddles. It rained quite a bit while we were gone. He probably got off early and is out looking for you.”
“I bet he’s on another date.” Billi Jo scowled at me like that would be my fault.
I hoped they were all wrong, but I had a bad feeling they were more right than I was. Thinking of Justice, I draped a chunk of my hair under my nose and inhaled the sweet smell of honeysuckle. He bought me honeysuckle-scented shampoo, and I wondered if it was intentional. As kids, we used to pick it like crazy and suck out the tiny drops of honey while we lay under our favorite tree.
“Oh well, there’s nothing I can do about it, so how about we just go for a swim and relax?” I suggested. They went to get in their skimpiest tank tops and shorts while I stalled around in the kitchen. I opened the refrigerator and started pulling out the soft drinks and lunchmeat that Justice had picked up for us. “Hey, since you guys are already dressed to go swimming, go ahead. I’ll make some sandwiches and bring them down in a few minutes.”
“Sounds good to me,” Billi Jo answered, but Kat gave me a funny look.
“It’s the least I can do after all your help.” I smiled as I opened the bag of bread.
They grabbed their drinks off the counter and headed outside. I quickly slapped some ham and cheese sandwiches together, snatched Kat’s blonde wig and the black-framed glasses I’d been wearing, grabbed the car keys, and scribbled a note:
I have to handle this one by myself. Tell Justice I’m sorry, but it couldn’t wait. Don’t worry, be back soon!
23
IDENTITY CRISIS
Even though I’d memorized every detail, I pulled out the paper I’d been keeping to myself. My hands shook as I read the address to the Taylor police department. In forty-eight more miles, I’d be in the hometown of my biological father—possible biological father. And hopefully some of the good Samaritans there would be kind enough to direct me to his residence. He was my last resort. I needed a strong witness, and Rachel Banard was it. Who better to convince her to testify than a cop? A cop who happened to be my own flesh and blood.
Darkness and rain had both settled in by the time I reached the Taylor city limits. After stopping at only two gas stations asking for directions to Carl MaKade’s house—claiming I was delivering his cookie order—I scored directions. People in small-town U.S.A. didn’t question teenage girls delivering cookies. They were more than happy to point me in the right direction.
One wrong turn and ten minutes after arriving in Taylor, I made my way down a country road until I spotted a police car. Checking the directions and description on my paper again, I pulled in the driveway behind the cruiser and forced myself to turn off the key. The modest beige one-story vinyl-siding house was trimmed with a black door and shutters. A swing hung from the front porch, and a pot of dead flowers accented the weathered side table beside it. Only twenty steps away from meeting my biological father, and all I really wanted to do was throw up. Badly.
I took a deep breath, yanked off Kat’s blonde wig and glasses, and tossed them in the passenger seat. Since I couldn’t get my body to cooperate enough to step out of the car, I gave myself a pep talk. I had every right to be here. Carl MaKade owed me a big-ass favor, and it was time to cash in. This was not some rainbows-and-unicorns reunion with my long-lost dad. This was not about questions, answers, truth, or lies. This was about having real evidence to clear my name so I could set the people I cared about free.
As soon as I knocked on the storm door, I regretted it. What if I was wrong? What if he arrested me? What if… When he stood facing me through the glass, my heart stopped beating. I tried to memorize the policeman’s face in case things didn’t go well and I never saw him again, or worse, saw him through the bars of a jail cell. His sandy brown hair was short and neat, the angles in his face straight and sharp, but I was drawn to the ice blue eyes with the thick outline of black around the iris—no way that was a coincidence.
His wide eyes narrowed as he stepped out onto the porch and opened his mouth to speak.
I beat him to it. “Hey, Pops.”
“What…did you call me?” he half-whispered.
“Pops, dear ol’ dad, father, sperm donor, whatever you wanna call yourself.” Probably not the best greeting, but the one he deserved. Sure, I needed a favor, but since he owed me seventeen years worth of favors, I figured that gave me the upper hand. Out of guilt, he’d let me go free at the airport, so if I could guilt him one more time, maybe I had a chance.
“Young lady, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he snapped.
“‘Course you do. You just need to think back about seventeen years.”
The obvious confusion that clouded his eyes made my skin feel clammy and hot at the same time. I couldn’t be wrong, I just couldn’t. He had to know, didn’t he? “But, I thought—”
“Well, you thought wrong,” he growled. “I’ve never been able to have children.”
My heart sank—not because I so desperately wanted this jerk to be my dad, but because I really needed someone in his line of work on my side. “But the airport. You let me go…I thought it was because…”
“I let you go because I knew Eve had to be your mother; you look exactly like her. And when I saw your locket, I knew it for sure.”
I grabbed my locket. “But I saw it in your eyes. You knew you were my father.”
“What you must have seen were any old feelings I had for Eve.” He glanced down at his shoes then toward the porch swing as he pushed the words out of his mouth. “We dated a long time ago, and I loved her very much. She didn’t deserve the pain of seeing her daughter go to prison.”
“My mother…your Eve,” my throat ached like I swallowed a razor blade, “…died six years ago.”
His jaw flexed, and he closed his eyes for a couple seconds. He meant it when he said he loved her. “I’m sorry.”
I gasped for a breath and clutched my aching chest. “If you loved her so much, why did you leave her?”
“She left me.”
I shook my head. “I don’t believe you.”
He swiped his hand across his forehead. “Is that why you’re here? You want money, a paternity test, what? I would think that would be the least of your worries right now.”
“I wanted your help,” I said, deflated, tears building behind my eyes. This was not going at all how I’d planned. “I have some ev
idence that—”
His eyebrows knit together. “I have some evidence, too, that proves you fatally shot my godson and left him in a dark field to die alone.”
The beat of the rain hitting the sidewalk pounded louder in my ears, and I was sure I misunderstood. “Your who?” I choked.
“My godson.”
No. No. No. How could this possibly get any worse? My head reeled as I struggled to put the pieces together. Logan had bragged many times about not only having family in the Winston police force but in the surrounding counties, as well. He’d mentioned his godfather was the chief of police in Taylor, and when he got stopped for speeding there once, he had used his godfather’s name to get off with a warning.
“Listen to me carefully, Ms. Daniels, I’m only going to say this once more.” He locked his blue eyes with mine. “I thought you’d be smart enough the first time when I told you to go and never look back. For letting you go at the airport, I could lose my job.”
“But—”
The vein in his forehead bulged. “That was my godson you killed. What do you expect me to do? The only reason I’m not arresting you right now is out of respect for your mother.”
“But they got it all wrong, you don’t underst—”
“I understand the facts. You killed someone I cared about in cold blood and then left the scene of the crime.”
I shook my head. “If you think I’m such a cold-blooded killer, why didn’t you arrest me at the airport? Why don’t you arrest me now? It doesn’t make any sense. You either know it was self-defense or you know you’re my father.”
“You need to get out of here before I change my mind and haul you in right now.” His tone was harsh and deliberate.
Speechless, I backed away and turned to run to the car. When I pulled away, I could barely see through the rain-streaked windows. It was raining harder now, and I was sure it was because the sky was crying for me. I had made a huge mistake. How had I gotten everything so wrong? I reviewed the evidence. The locket was from him, the date on the picture worked, the newspaper article fit, and he admitted to loving my mother. How could it all just be some coincidence? I had sifted through every item in my mother’s suitcase. In all the years I had lived at home, I never came across anything else. Then again…I wasn’t looking.
The steady screech of the windshield wipers on high kept time with my heartbeat. I had to go to the trailer and find something to prove he was wrong about my mother. She was not the one that left him. She wouldn’t do that to him, to me. She wasn’t some whore sleeping with multiple men. She loved Carl MaKade. She wore his locket up until she died. This was no longer about finding evidence to prove my own innocence—it was about proving my mother’s.
My heart seemed to beat out of my chest as I did a quick surveillance check for people and unfamiliar cars, then I pulled into the side entry of Castle Court Trailer Park. Grabbing the flashlight out of the glove box, I hurried through the cool rain to my former residence. As always, the door was unlocked—nothing here worth stealing.
After I checked to make sure no one was home, I went to Jack’s room and fumbled through his closet. I searched shoeboxes. Nothing. Shuffling through drawers, I came up empty. There had to be something somewhere to give me unquestionable proof of my father’s identity.
Thinking of the storage closet at the end of the hall, I started for it when I remembered something my mother said to me more than once in her final months: “Family is everything. Whenever you have doubts or questions, just remember: family is everything.” She’d been stroking the cover of a thick family album beside her when she said it. Of course, she wanted me to know someday. I was only eleven then, but it was clear to me now that she was giving me a hint—she wanted me to know someday.
The family albums. They were in a chest in Jack’s room. A film of sweat formed on my forehead, and I brushed it away with the back of my shaky hand. Shoving a stack of clothes onto Jack’s floor, I pulled at the lid. Locked. Pulling a bobby pin out of my hair, I easily popped the lock. I searched through tax papers and files until I found the photo album at the bottom of the trunk. Page after page, I searched, looking behind every photo. She would have put it there like she put my father’s picture behind mine. It would make sense. After checking behind every picture, I flipped the album sideways and shook it, waiting for something to fall out. Nothing.
There had to be something. Mom said family is everything. Family is…family pictures. There were other family pictures. Snapping up the flashlight, I stumbled into the hallway to the collage of family pictures hanging on the wall. Tucking the flashlight under my arm, I clumsily grabbed at the first picture of me. In my frantic rush, I knocked one off and it hit another, sending them both shattering to the floor.
My body froze, and my heart picked up speed. Someone had to have heard the crash. I needed to hurry and get the hell out, not flash a neon sign that I was in town. Kneeling down to pick up the frame that held my first grade picture, a searing pain sliced into my palm. I ignored the sting and tried to be more careful as I separated the jagged glass from the frame backing. There it was: an 8x10 manila envelope sandwiched between the backing and my picture.
With trembling hands, I removed four unopened letters addressed to Eve Mullins with the return address of Carl MaKade. Sliding my finger under the sealed flap of the earliest dated envelope, I pulled out the aged paper and read:
Eve,
I miss you so much and can’t wait to see you again. College is going well. I wish it wasn’t so far away so I could drive home and see you on weekends. I can’t stop thinking about our last visit to Jade River. I’ve already started planning our next trip there on my summer break. It will always be our special place.
I have called you many times and left messages with your parents. Please call or write me soon. I love you and can’t stop thinking about you.
Forever yours, Carl
The next one was dated two weeks later:
Eve,
I still haven’t heard from you. I don’t understand. Your parents say you don’t want to talk to me, but I don’t believe that. None of your friends seem to know anything. I’m sorry I had to leave you, but there was no other way. Please contact me soon. I love you and miss you.
Forever yours, Carl
As much as I hated to admit it, Jack was right. Carl left my mother when he found out she was pregnant with me. He could’ve tried harder to make it work long distance, but he didn’t—he told her he was sorry for leaving her, but that there was no other way. He claimed to love and miss her, but they were just empty words. Otherwise, he would have never given up.
The third letter sounded even more desperate. There had been no contact and he still professed his love. But she wouldn’t know that—she never opened them.
I had barely started reading the fourth letter when my flashlight went dim. Shaking it, I realized the flashlight wasn’t the problem. The paper appeared darker because my blood had seeped through it. I was so busy getting the letters that I forgot I’d sliced my hand.
I hurried to the bathroom for a towel. Setting the flashlight on the counter, I rested my bloody hand over the sink, then fumbled below the vanity for a hand towel. When I came back up, I was struck by what I saw. Spots of blood dotted the white ceramic sink.
Leaning over it, I tried to steady myself and catch my breath. My vision blurred as I stared at the blood pooling from the smaller lines in my palms into the larger ones—like streams feeding a river. My memory flashed back to the interior light of a car casting a glow onto the blood on my hands. Logan’s blood.
My body jolted forward, and unrecognizable animal noises escaped from deep within me. Uncontrollable, hysterical sobbing racked my body. The floodgates had finally opened. For months, it felt like the pressure in my chest had been building, an unbearable weight threatening to destroy me at any moment. And now, finally, the weight had caved in on my chest, causing my ribs to splinter into tiny fragments that punctured my heart like dagg
ers.
Every part of me wanted to lie down on the cool linoleum floor, give up, and bleed to death from either a cut hand or crushed heart. I wanted to end the fight, the running, the lies, the pain. Without a doubt, I deserved every searing prick of pain. I killed my own boyfriend, and I deserved eternal pain. If I didn’t die a slow, torturous death tonight, I at least deserved to rot in jail.
As much as I was ready to let the pain swallow me up and carry me under, the nagging in the back of my mind wouldn’t go away. Bracing my arms against the sink, I forced myself to hold my head up and look in the mirror. The tired blue eyes that stared back at me reminded me why I was here. I needed to know the truth.
Forcing myself to pull it together before Jack or my sister showed up, I fumbled for the faucet knob. Methodically, I washed the blood away like I wanted to wash away the memory of that night. I grabbed a hand towel, wrapped it tight around my palm, and went back to clean up my mess, tears streaming onto the broken glass as I worked. After I finished, I gathered the letters and envelopes, made sure everything was in order, and ran back to the car.
Even through my flooding tears and the steady rain, I managed to find my way back to my father’s house. I scooped the mess of papers off the seat and made my way through the sheeting rain. Banging on the door with an armful of papers and a towel-bandaged hand, I didn’t give him time to open the door all the way before I started. “Is this proof enough?” I shook the papers at him. “You’re a liar. She didn’t leave you, you left her. I read your letters: you went off to college to make a better life for yourself, and to hell with everyone else! You claimed to love my mother, but what kind of man leaves his pregnant girlfriend behind?”
He shook his head. “That’s not true. I tried over and over to get in touch with her—”
“Maybe she didn’t want to talk to you because you left her, did you ever think of that? You threw her away like you threw me away.”
Running On Empty Page 21