by Chad Morgan
Daniel thought back to their rare trips to the graveyard. The first time it was a detour on a visit to see her brother Marcus, who like her father lived in the area. Marcus lived in Seattle at the time, but her father lived in some small rural area, a small logging town if he remembered. The second time was on the anniversary of her mother’s death, which for Anna was an annual pilgrimage she normally did alone, but this time she wanted Daniel with her. It was that trip Anna told him how her mother had died when she was very young, and how Marcus never got to know his mother. The third and final time Daniel had taken her, but she had wanted to talk to her mother privately. Daniel stood a respectful distance away as Anna had visited with her mother. He had no idea what Anna had said to her mother’s grave, but when she came back to him she was in both tears and smiling. Shortly after that, Anna had disappeared. In hindsight, Daniel wondered if she had told her mother she was pregnant. That made sense to him. Had she already decided to leave Daniel then? He didn't think so, that didn't seem to fit. So what happened after that day that chased Anna away from him?
“Mrs. Sloan,” Daniel said. “Sorry, I know it’s been a while. Anna always said lilies were your favorite.”
Daniel lay the lily on the grave. The plaque next to her read “Charles Sloan – Beloved Husband and Father.” The date on the grave marker said Anna’s father died just three years ago. Daniel frowned. He liked the old man and would have liked to have paid his respects. On the other side of Rebecca Sloan was Anna. Daniel drew a deep, shivering breath and he stepped to the side and knelt in front of her grave marker. He kissed his finger tips and touched the untarnished metal of her grave marker which read, “Anna Sloan – Mother, Daughter, and Sister.” He caressed the plaque and closed his eyes, trying to remember how her smooth cheek felt against his hand.
“Hey,” he said. “I missed you.”
Daniel laid the flowers on the grave. His jaw began to quiver, straining to hold back the swelling of emotions. He clenched his fists and forced himself to stand.
“I’ll take good care of our daughter, I swear,” he said in a dry voice. “I just wish I understood why you did what you did.”
Daniel began to leave, but he paused and looked at Anna’s grave one more time. That’s when he noticed the other new grave marker next to Rebecca Sloan’s. He walked up to it to read the metal plaque, only slightly older than Anna’s.
“What the . . .?” He leaned close, thinking he must have misread it. “Marcus?”
The marker read “Marcus Sloan – Son and Brother.” He had died six months ago.
Daniel looked again from the dates of Anna, her father, and her brother. His cop instincts kicked in and he pulled his cell phone from his pocket. Punching the number from his contacts, he paced as the phone rang.
“Security Solutions,” came the voice through the phone. “Greg Hicks.”
“Greg? Daniel.”
“Daniel? I thought you were taking some personal time . . .”
Greg was a good guy, but chatty. Daniel cut him off before he could get too far. “I am. Listen, I need you to run down some records for me. You ready?”
“Hold on,” he said. Daniel could hear his office chair creek, and in his mind’s eye, he could see Greg leaning around their shared cubical wall and stealing a pen from him. Greg was habitually losing pens. Daniel heard the tablet of paper hit his desk. “’Kay, shoot.”
Daniel walked over to the grave markers and read them off. “Charles Sloan, date of birth November 24, 1956. Died May 10th, three years ago. Marcus Sloan, date of birth September 11th, 1981. Died August 7th of last year.”
“Got it,” Greg said matter of factually, then it hit him. “Whoa, wait . . .”
“Yeah, I know,” Daniel said. Greg was already aware of Anna’s death, of course. He was there when he got the call. “Three deaths in three years?”
“Coincidence?”
“You know what I think about coincidences,” he replied. In his experiences, things didn’t happen without a reason.
“Yeah, I hear you,” Greg said. As a former cop himself, he also grew skeptical when coincidences cropped up. “I’ll dig into it and give you a call when I find something. You just think about that little girl of yours, okay? You’re a dad now.”
His pacing stopped. “Yeah, I know.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah, I just . . .” He looked back down to Anna’s grave as if she could offer him advice or encouragement. “What am I supposed to say to her?”
“Just be there for her,” Greg told him. “Things will work itself out, just be patient.”
“Thanks, Greg,” he said, though he wasn’t too sure if he felt any better.
Daniel hung up the phone. Deep in his own thoughts, he headed towards his car without noticing the hooded figure watching him from amongst the old tombstones, a smile growing on her wrinkled and weathered face.
2
The social services building looked like about every other government building Daniel had ever been in. Built in the 50’s, Daniel guessed, during a time when the government was in an economic boom and invested heavily into such things like highways and federal buildings, it had all the charm of a military bunker. Still, the bright colors over the cement walls tried to counter the oppressive feel of the building materials. Even with the bright sun pouring through every window, every fluorescent light shown as if to battle the gloom inherit with a government job. This, of course, wasn’t a federal building but one belonging to the state of Washington, with a large wood engraving of the seal of the state behind the receptionist desk in case there was any doubt, but the style was the same.
Daniel sat in one of the chairs in the reception area, his hands folded in his lap, leaning forward, and rocking with excess energy. He had weeks filling out paperwork and blood tests, he had hours driving up from L.A., and now he had minutes before they walked Bethany out and he still hadn’t figured out what he was going to say. The mystery of the entire Sloan family dying in a matter of three years had distracted him for a while, but now that he was here and about to meet his daughter . . . He was going to meet his nine-year-old daughter for the first time. That thought rang in his head like a gong. It was so overwhelming a thought it nearly blinded him. A small part of him whispered in his ear it wasn’t too late to run.
A woman walked down the hall towards the reception area. Daniel sat up, but the woman continued down the opposite hall without breaking stride. Daniel slumped back in his chair, looking around for the hundredth time for anything in the décor to serve as a distraction, which is how he was caught off guard by Ms. Garcia. She cleared her throat, and Daniel jumped.
Ms. Garcia was a heavy-set woman, her hair gray and in bunches of short curls. Her clothes looked professional but worn, straining to hold in her bulk. Daniel guessed that buying better fitting clothes was a strain on the salary of a public servant. Ms. Garcia looked at him with a mask of professionalism that did little to hide her anger at him, but when she placed one hand on the little girl’s shoulder it was as gentle and loving as any mother who had ever caressed a newborn.
“Bethany,” she said to the girl, a tone so sweet and full of sympathy it seemed to Daniel it was a different person than the one who had ever talked to him, “this is your father, Daniel Burns.”
Daniel knelt in front of the little girl, but even though they were the same height while he was resting on one knee, she seemed small. Bethany hugged a doll tight to her chest which made her look even younger than nine, and her head tilted to the floor though her eyes would sometimes dare to dart up to meet his. She had long, straight brown hair that looked more like his, but her face was nothing but Anna. Daniel felt a twinge of pain at that.
“Hi,” he said softly. “I guess I’m your dad. I’m . . . I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say.”
Bethany slowly raised her head. Daniel felt her gaze burn through him. Before this moment, Daniel had run a gambit of scenarios on how Bethany might react, from overjoyed to
scared to indifferent and everything in between, but the burning stare was one he had never conceived of. When she spoke, it was quiet but not timid, like her words had power behind them that she was restraining.
“Momma said not to talk to strangers.”
Daniel opened his mouth, but words failed to come to him.
Daniel sat in an uncomfortable chair on the other side of the desk from Ms. Garcia in her small and cramped office. Her desk took up most of the space, offering just enough room on one side to allow her ample frame to squeeze by. One wall had the locking file cabinets that didn’t look much different than the ones he had at the police precinct back in the day. Daniel held his hands in his lap, sitting on the edge of his seat and smiling nervously up at Ms. Garcia. She studied her file, occasionally looking up to study him before going back to her papers. It had been some time since anyone had spoken.
“Okay,” Daniel said, breaking the silence, “so, what? I sign some papers or something?”
Ms. Garcia put her file down and glared at Daniel. “It’s not that simple, Mr. Burns.”
“I know dealing with Social Services can be an involved process,” Daniel said, trying his best to be diplomatic. Things would go smoother if he could get Ms. Garcia to quit thinking of him as a potential threat. Not that he blamed her, it was part of the job. When he was a cop, everyone was a potential threat whether they were a man, woman, or . . . Daniel shoved the thought away. Dwelling on past mistakes wouldn’t serve him now. He beamed his best smile up at Ms. Garcia. “At least it is in L.A., but Judge Reynolds should have called and worked some things out . . .”
“When you and Anna ended your relationship, was it on good terms?” Ms. Garcia asked, cutting Daniel off. She didn’t raise her head, but her eyes were peering over the top of the file. She was trying to gauge his reaction without being obvious.
Daniel shifted in his seat as he fought to keep his smile. He wasn’t sure where this was going, but he knew Ms. Garcia was trying to rattle him in search of something. He just didn’t know what. “Sorry?”
Ms. Garcia put the file down, all pretense gone. She glared at him as she repeated, “What happened between yourself and Anna, Mr. Burns?”
He let his smile fade. He still wasn’t sure what she was digging for, but right now sincerity and the truth were his biggest assets. He slumped a little in his chair. “She just left. Everything was going fine then one day she was gone. She had quit her job, moved out of her apartment . . . Even her brother didn’t know where she was. He came to me trying to find her. After a while, I stopped hearing from him too. Honestly, I thought we were happy.” Daniel dropped his gaze to the floor. “I was happy.”
“Were the two of you fighting?” she asked him. “Were you abusive to Anna in any way . . .”
“No, or course not,” Daniel snapped, sitting up and dropping his poker face while cutting her off. “Why?”
“Would it surprise you that Anna expressed fear that you were a threat to Bethany’s safety?”
“That’s crazy!” Some part of Daniel knew that losing his cool was not helping his case, but this was getting preposterous. “I never even knew she was pregnant!”
Ms. Garcia glanced at her file. “Domestic violence is two to four times more likely to happen in police families. You are a police officer, are you not?”
“Former police officer,” he replied. He took a small amount of satisfaction in knowing that sent her diving back into her file to try to figure out how she had gotten any minute detail wrong. “I left the force about nine years ago. It was about a year after Anna disappeared from my life, actually. I’m a security consultant now.”
“But you were a police officer when you and Anna were dating?” Ms. Garcia asked.
“Yeah,” Daniel confirmed. “So?”
Ms. Garcia put the file down again. “What was your reason for leaving the force?”
That brought the memory of the incident flooding back. The young boy standing in the shadows, the ringing of the gun shot . . . before Daniel could swallow the memory down he realized one hand was gripping his abdomen. He forced his hand back to the arm of his chair and gripped it tight, the wood creaking under his hands.
“I looked horrible in blue. Get to the point,” Daniel snarled. So much for winning her over.
“Mr. Burns, I can have your records delivered here under court order and read for myself the reasons you left the police force,” Ms. Garcia said sternly.
“You’ve already done that, I’m sure,” Daniel said, matching her glare with his own, “so why don’t you cut the crap and make your point?”
“Mr. Burns, we found Anna’s diary after her suicide . . .”
“She killed herself?” It was like a punch to the stomach, except instead of knocking the wind out of him it knocked out his anger and righteous indignation. “No one ever mentioned to me . . .”
Ms. Garcia shifted her weight. Maybe she was taken aback by Daniel’s sincere shock, or maybe she wasn’t supposed to have told him Anna’s death was by her own hand, but whatever the reason her tone softened. “I’m sorry. I thought you would have been told . . . “
“What happened?” Daniel asked.
“She was on a seventy-two-hour psychiatric hold . . . “
“A fifty-one-fifty?” Daniel asked, not considering that L.A. police codes might be different than in the state of Washington.
“That’s what you’d call it in California, yes,” she replied. “Somehow she managed to get something to slit her wrists with.”
That didn’t make sense. He had escorted people to and from those psych wards and the patients there were more closely monitored that prisoners in the penitentiary. “On a supervised mental ward?”
“There’s currently an investigation into the matter,” Ms. Garcia said dryly, and that told Daniel she thought it as incredulous as he did.
“Jesus,” he muttered.
Ms. Garcia pulled open her desk drawer. Daniel could hear items shuffling around, then Ms. Garcia handed a thick leather-bound book to him. He recognized the book, but it was much older and much more worn than when Daniel had last seen it. Daniel took the book and undid the buckle that held it shut. Almost every page was filled. He opened to the first few pages, seeing Anna’s neat and tidy penmanship.
“Mr. Burns, my job is to determine what is best for Bethany,” Ms. Garcia said flatly.
Daniel glanced up from the diary, but he held his place in the book. “Look, I’m her father. I’m the only family she has left. I’ve already lost nine years of her life, and I don’t want to lose a moment more.”
“Mr. Burns, it’s that diary there that gives me cause for concern,” she said, nodding at the old and tattered book. “Early in the diary, Anna writes how she had to run from you in order to protect Bethany.”
Daniel wasn’t reading the diary – it was over ten years of history in his hands – but he flipped through the pages and it was enough to see a disturbing pattern. The further into the diary he went, the more scrawled and manic the handwriting got. “Didn’t you say somewhere in here she says she wanted me to take Bethany?”
“She was, of course, mentally unstable,” Ms. Garcia said.
Daniel turned back to the diary and with what he saw, he couldn’t argue that point. The manic scrawling gave way to sketches of creatures in all black, symbols that made no sense, even places where the pages ripped under the pressure of her pen.
“In the end, it really doesn’t matter what Anna’s desires are,” Ms. Garcia continued. “What matters is whether or not you would be a suitable parent for Bethany, and Anna’s diary and actions do not speak well for you.”
Daniel held up the book. “Anna’s statements in this diary will never hold up in court. As her biological father, I have rights. I’ve had my lawyer fill out all the paperwork, not to mention the DA . . .”
“Yes, Mr. Burns, my phone has been ringing off the hook.” Ms. Garcia seemed annoyed now that she remembered the barrage of phone calls. “You
’ve been apparently calling in every favor you can, but that doesn’t mean a damn thing to me. I don’t care how many judges or lawyers you know! This office is dedicated to doing what is right for Bethany.”
“I’m her father!” Daniel shouted. “What’s right for my daughter is for her to be with me!”
“That’s up for the courts to decide, Mr. Burns.” Ms. Garcia snapped. “In the meantime, Bethany will stay a ward of the state . . .”
“Oh, hell no!” Daniel shouted.
“Mr. Burns,” Ms. Garcia growled, choking down her anger as much as she could, “the legal system for children is very cautious and very deliberately slow so as to ensure the safety of the children in our care. It will not turn on a dime on your say-so, nor on the say-so of anyone else for that matter.”
“She’s my daughter!” he shouted. “Keeping her in an orphanage or foster care is unacceptable!”
Ms. Garcia leaned forward, peering down at him like a hawk zooming in on a mouse. “Tell me, Mr. Burns, exactly what does that girl mean to you?” She pointed to the wall where, on the other side, Bethany sat. “You’ve never met that girl before. Other than some chromosomes, what are you to that girl?”
Daniel opened his mouth, but the reply stuck in his throat.
Bethany sat outside of Ms. Garcia’s closed office door on a chair, but while the talking inside the office was muffled she could still make sense of what was being said, which made her wonder why they bothered to sit her outside. Adults could be so weird sometimes. She hugged her doll tight, wishing for the millionth time her mother would come back. She knew she never would. She wasn’t a baby, she understood what death was. Mommy explained it when they buried Grandpa, then later when they buried Uncle Marcus. Death meant you went away and you never came back. She never met her Grandpa when he was alive, but her mother took her to the funeral. She didn’t understand why she was so said, but she understood now. She felt the pain in her chest and wondered if it would ever stop. It started when Uncle Marcus had died and she thought it was the worse pain she’d ever feel, but then her mother died and it was a hundred times worse. Now she was going to live with her father, a person she had never met before. She hugged her doll tighter.
