She slogged through another circle of the house. Reaching the kitchen, she stopped to check her phone. Still nothing. An hour since Wes hung up on her, and since then, her calls to him went unanswered. Thirty minutes since she wrapped up the Silver Alert with the authorities. But it had felt like hours. Irene was in a spiral, in her head and through this house. She broke her path, walked to the cabinets on the other side of the kitchen. Fetching a tall glass, she filled it with water from the tap and downed it all, ignoring the sulfurous tang of the aquifer water. She refilled the glass, turning away from the dining room and heading down the hallway that led to Dad’s bedroom and his office.
She stopped at the open office door. The room was immaculate and still. Heavy built-in shelving and file drawers consumed one wall. Dad’s oak desk anchored the room, facing the one window. Beyond, the sky was dreary, the ink of night in the desert hiding the storm she could smell.
She moved farther down the hall to her father’s bedroom. Since she’d shifted furniture to make room for the hospice equipment, the room was in a chaotic state. Thick drops of rain thumped against the windows on either side of Dad’s bed. Irene rounded to the side not crowded by medical equipment. The unsteady staccato of the rain grew into a consistent static as the storm arrived.
She sat on the edge of Dad’s bed, watching the rain pelt the other side of the window. The water ran down the pane in thick streams, pooling at the rail before falling out of view. On the nightstand under the window sat a framed photo of the three of them—herself, her dad, and her brother. The boys were in front, Irene behind them with her arms around their shoulders. She couldn’t remember who’d taken the photo, or when. They were outdoors somewhere, the sky behind them. Maybe on the pontoon boat.
The hiss of rain crescendoed into a low roar. The kids would run inside now. The rain wasn’t fun when it didn’t feel safe.
The jangle of her ringing phone surprised her, and water spilled from her glass onto her jeans. She set her water on the nightstand, checking the caller ID on the phone’s display. Her heart quickened. It was her father.
“Dad! Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yes, honey, I’m fine.” Dad cleared his throat into the phone. “I’m with Wes. We’re taking a small road trip.”
Irene stood and walked across the bedroom. “What the hell? Dad, why wouldn’t you tell me about this?”
“It’s okay, Starlight. It’s only a day or two. Which”—he chuckled—“I guess ‘only’ is a relative term now, isn’t it?”
Irene massaged her temples. “Dad, are you okay? Is Wes forcing you to do something?”
“What? Naw, not at all. I asked him to take me.” Dad sounded tired, but not distressed. Still, Wes was manipulative. Dad might not realize Wes was grooming him, preparing to take advantage of him.
“You asked him? To take you where? Where are you going?” The questions came too fast to wait for answers. “Has he taken any of your meds? Have you counted them?”
Dad was silent. Irene could feel him running the numbers on the other end of the line. Whatever they were up to, Dad knew she wouldn’t go along with it. She interrupted his thoughts, “Never mind, just tell Wes to bring you home. You’re sick, and I don’t think you’re thinking right.”
The line was quiet. “Dad, are you there?” Irene’s hand fell to her hip, her eyes welling with tears as she paced back toward the window. “Please, Dad, just come back. We can talk through it.”
The sound of Dad swallowing was thick and sharp over the phone. “It’s gonna be all right, Starlight. I will be okay. I promise.” He sounded convinced, sure of himself. “I just need your trust for a few days. We’ll come back and I’ll explain everything then.”
Irene felt a flush of heat through her face, her tongue loosening in her mouth. “Dad, I can’t trust you. Not after the last few days. And I won’t trust Wes. I think that together you two are dangerous to one another.” She sat on the bed, staring at the photo of her family for a breath.
“Honey,” Dad started, but Irene interrupted.
“Why don’t I come with you? Wherever you’re going, I want to go with you,” she offered. The idea came out pleading and desperate. She tried to recover, making her tone light, “We could make it a family trip.”
She concentrated to hear the muffled conversation on the other end of the phone. Irene recognized the sound of her brother’s murmurs.
Dad came back to the phone, asking, “Listen, honey, my credit card was just declined. Do you know anything about that?”
Irene sighed, “Yeah, Dad. I didn’t know what happened to you. I assumed Wes was …” Irene wanted to say that Wes was kidnapping her father, but she knew Dad didn’t see it that way. Not yet, anyway. She took a breath, choosing her words. “I didn’t know if you two were okay. So I called the police. They asked for your card numbers as part of the Silver Alert.”
Dad stuttered for a moment before saying, “Wait, a Silver Alert? That’s like, one of those old farts who wanders out of the nursing homes?”
There was agitated conversation away from the phone. Irene heard her brother’s muted voice exclaim, “Fuck!”
“Yes,” Irene replied, loud enough to capture her father’s attention from her brother. “I asked them to issue a Silver Alert. The police are looking for you both.”
“Why would you do that, Irene?” He sounded the way he did when Wes fucked up. She closed her eyes, the afterimage of the family photo fading into purples and greens behind her eyelids.
“After the last couple of days, I don’t think you’re in a place to take on choices like this. And I know Wes isn’t either. To be blunt, I think he’s taking advantage of you. For your medication.”
The sizzle of rain filled the silence. “Dad?” Irene prodded.
She heard him sigh with resignation. This was it—he had decided. He was coming home, or going with Wes. Dad’s voice was calm as he said, “We love you, Starlight, and we’ll see you in a few days.”
The call disconnected. Tears ran down her cheeks as Irene lowered the phone to the bed. Bleary-eyed, she reached for the box of tissues on the nightstand. As she pulled one, she knocked the photo off the edge and onto the floor with a tink of cracking glass.
She wiped her eyes and lowered a hand to the floor to collect the photo. The glass had split diagonally from one corner to the other, creating a chasm separating Dad from Irene and her brother.
She dropped the photo again when her phone rang. She pounced, lifting it to her ear.
“Dad, I’m sorry,” she sobbed.
A low, gravelly voice interrupted her, “Miss Allard? This is Officer Blakely from the Las Cruces Sheriff’s Office.”
Irene took a moment to swallow her embarrassment, pinching the bridge of her nose to stop the tears as she spoke. “Yes, sorry, that’s me. What do you need?”
“There’s a Silver Alert out for your father, Caleb Allard?” the officer asked. Without waiting for her to confirm, he continued. “He used his credit card at a diner outside of Las Cruces a few minutes ago. We have officers on the way.”
Chapter 20
Wes
“Pop, just pay with cash!” Wes prodded, his hand on his dad’s back. They were burning precious seconds. “Quick, we need to go!”
Dad opened his wallet, thumbing through the few bills it contained. Wes reached in and threw thirty dollars at the cashier, muttering, “Keep it, okay? Keep it.”
Pop resisted. “Hey!”
Wes moved him to the door. “Keep moving, Pop!”
His dad let out a grunt of protest, but Wes pressed toward the car. He scanned the parking lot. No cops yet. The frontage road carried no telltale red and blue lights.
“Just wait a damned minute, son!” Dad moved Wes’s arm away from his back.
They were feet from the El Camino. Wes had his keys out and continued toward the car, unlocking the passenger door. “We don’t have a minute! Let’s talk in the car, ok
ay?” He waved his father over.
Dad eyeballed him, but didn’t move. “Did you do something?”
Wes shook his head, but kept waving his hand, as if it would reel in his father and put him in the El Camino. “No, but Irene thinks I did.” The wail of a siren rose above the traffic noise.
Pop took a step toward the car, asking, “What do you mean?”
Wes’s heart raced. “In the car, okay? Then I’ll explain.”
Pop shrugged with his hands and moved between Wes and the car. Wes eased his father’s diminutive frame into the passenger seat and helped him with the seat belt. As he rounded the driver’s side, he glanced back at the highway. Strobes of blue pierced through the white globes of headlights.
He cursed Irene under his breath. This simple overnighter was a goddamned race now. He opened his door and fell into the seat. He rammed home the key and turned. The car started with a throaty whomp that lowered into the whirl of the idling engine.
As they approached the road, the blue lights entered the off-ramp on the other side of the highway, heading to the overpass. Wes breathed slow, moving onto the access road. His eyes shot between the road and his rearview mirror. Another set of blue strobes appeared behind them. Wes resisted the urge to floor the gas pedal.
“What the hell did you mean back there?” Pop asked. “Why would Irene think you’ve done something wrong?”
Highway patrol was approaching fast, emergency lights bouncing off Wes’s grimy windshield. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel, tensed the muscles in his calf. “One second, Pop,” he mumbled. Wes felt his foot press against the gas, his car speeding up the on-ramp to I-25 South. The blue light around them disappeared, the cruisers turning into the restaurant parking lot. He blinked at the spots left in his eyes.
“Son?” his dad prodded, sounding frustrated.
Wes took a breath as he merged onto the highway before responding. “Irene’s issued a Silver Alert,” he explained.
“Yeah? But it’s a mistake.” Pop’s tone was dismissive, like this was a misunderstanding. “She doesn’t know what we were doing. We can explain—”
“No, that’s not gonna work,” Wes interrupted, rubbing the remaining spots from his eyes. “Irene knows I’m with you.”
His father said nothing. How the fuck could he not understand?
“Dad, you know a Silver Alert is like an Amber Alert, right? But for … old people?”
“Sure. There are several a year around here. Lots of old folks who—”
Wes snapped, his patience stretched. “Irene knows you’re with me, I talked to her earlier. She issued the Silver Alert after that.” He turned to his father.
Pop shook his head again. “Right, so, let’s fix the mistake—”
“No, that’s just it, it’s not a mistake,” Wes sighed, emphasizing his words by hammering the steering wheel with his palm. “She’s issued the alert … because you’re with me.”
Pop’s face relaxed into a dour frown. Finally, he got it. His eyes wandered to the windshield. “She said something about you taking advantage of me.”
Wes nodded. “According to her, I’m doing this to you. Not with you.”
“To steal my pills.” Dad sounded tentative.
The relish of his father’s understanding was at odds with the embarrassment it provoked. “Yes, that. And she assumes I’m trying to prevent you from … you know, from ending it all.”
At that, Pop snorted and broke into laughter. The reaction brought Wes close to swerving off the road. “Why in hell are you laughing?” He didn’t mean to sound so angry. He looked over at his father, who covered his smile with a delicate hand.
Dad wiped his hand down his mouth. “What can she be thinking? That you want to steal me away? From death? That your plan is to outrun the Grim Reaper? In an El Camino?”
The humor brought a smile to Wes’s face. Dad was right, this was all absurd. The miraculous situation, this road trip, Irene’s logic. “That’ll be tough,” Wes added in a teasing tone, “unless death moves slower than sixty-five miles per hour. Any faster and this car might shatter, and death won’t have to catch us at all.”
“At least we’d die in style,” Pop replied, patting the dashboard.
They drove in the light silence, carried by the rhythm of the tires on the road. Scrub passed at the outer edge of their headlights. After a time, Wes asked, “How the hell are we going to explain any of this to her?”
Pop grunted. “No idea. I won’t know until I see her again.”
Wes didn’t know either. Hell, he would never see Irene again after all of this. She wasn’t one to forgive. And Wes, well, he couldn’t adult his way out of a bag according to his sister, and she never let him forget it. It was a cycle of distrust and hate between them. Wes would make an honest mistake. Irene would pounce on him and make him feel like shit. His self-esteem nose-dived, and he’d fuck up again. Lather, rinse, repeat, until Wes didn’t even want to try anymore. And here, Wes stepped up where she wouldn’t. Wes was saving Pop, not Irene. Regardless of the outcome, she would never forgive or forget this trespass. It would kill her to admit that Wes had done something right. Something good.
The stakes were higher than Irene knew, but Wes understood. It was a battle now, between his will and his sister’s brains. The road ahead rolled toward them. Wes tightened his grip on the wheel. Nine hours. They could do this.
“I promise I’ll get you there,” Wes said. “Whatever it takes. I won’t let Irene stop us from reaching Utopia.”
“I don’t think it’ll come to that,” Pop replied. “I hope not, anyway.”
Wes shrugged. “I don’t know. I wasn’t expecting the Silver Alert. Or losing access to your cards. Irene’s made this road trip into something a lot more complicated. I don’t have a lot in my checking account. I sort of thought you would pay for gas and food.”
“I still have my ATM card,” he offered. “Cash still works, doesn’t it?”
Wes chuckled at Pop’s lack of common sense. “If she stopped your credit cards, your ATM cards are no good either.”
Wes wouldn’t outbrain his sister. His street smarts didn’t compare well with his sister’s book smarts on paper. Irene could plan. Expect their moves. But Wes could act and react way better than his sister. The trick with Irene was to play the right game. She wanted to win, and she would if he played her game. But Wes didn’t need to beat Irene; he needed time. He had to give her something else to think about. Occupy her long enough for them to reach Utopia. An idea formed. A simple one, but it might buy them the few hours they needed.
The turn signal clacked as Wes moved the El Camino into the exit lane. Dad stirred in his seat and asked, “What’s up? We need gas already?”
Wes shook his head. “Not yet.” He crossed the overpass and drove into the busy truck stop on the other side of the highway. He parked the car and scanned the parking lot.
He locked on to his father’s curious eyes. “Pop, do you trust me?”
His father curled up his brow, nodding. “Why?”
Wes sighed. “I need to know how much cash you have on you.”
Dad scooted down in the seat, twisting his torso to fish his wallet from the pocket of his khakis. “Sure, one second.”
“And I need your credit and ATM cards,” Wes added. “All of them.”
Chapter 21
Irene
“This doesn’t make any damned sense!” Irene cursed to no one. She stood at her father’s desk, in the middle of scouring the once pristine office. Piles of papers covered the floor. Dad’s shelves were empty now, Irene having scavenged them for a clue to her father’s behavior. “Dad won’t take a shit without a plan.”
Irene pulled open the wide center drawer of the desk. She dumped the contents onto the desktop, shoving the pens and office supplies onto the floor. She wanted a note, a receipt, anything. She found nothing helpful.
She turned her attention to the thr
ee drawers on the right side of the desk. The bottom drawer was business files. It contained no surprises. Dad had walked her through its contents after giving her power of attorney. Each thick file contained smaller manila folders. Dad had labeled each folder: “Accounts,” “Fixed Assets,” “Current Year Taxes.” Boring, necessary stuff. He’d even gone as far as creating a vertical file named “Final Release.” It contained various legal and medical forms, and the do-not-resuscitate orders needed for the procedure. The thickest vertical file carried the label “Wes Rehab Expenses.” It held three other folders, each named by the month and year. One for every time her brother had gone into treatment.
“So where’s your file on this shit show, Dad?” Irene slammed the drawer with a loud clap. She jerked open the middle drawer, rummaged through the pile of legal pads there. Finding them blank, she tossed them to the floor, revealing a single black writer’s notebook. The kind jobless hipster writers scribbled in at coffee shops back in Boston.
Irene had found several of these scattered through the house. Each had a specific purpose noted on the flyleaf. One notebook from the office shelves contained something like an engineering day log, but for an accountant. It listed daily activities, notes on his work throughout the day. He kept impeccable records.
Another she had found in the kitchen, buried among the cooking magazines in the small rack on the floor. Dad had used it as a food diary, tracking his reactions to different foods after he started chemo. Irene had thumbed through it. Tidy columns showed meals, times, food eaten, and quantities. Dad’s accounting was pristine. He would have made an excellent data wrangler. After a few months, the entries in the log became sporadic, skipping meals, then days, then weeks at a time. The last entry was a note that said, “I’m dying of cancer. I’ll eat what I want.”
Irene sat in Dad’s chair. She slapped the notebook open to the middle. This one appeared to be a diary. She flipped back to the blank flyleaf, finding Dad’s chunky letters on the page. Irene’s heart broke. This was a cancer journal. He documented his illness.
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