We're All Broken

by O. L. Gregory

  Yeah, I knew what he was really in for, amateur cyber sleuthing, remember? And he knew that Sadie had lived near the dance studio, back from when he’d driven Sadie home from a sleepover at our house. It wouldn’t take too much imagination to think that Sadie’s parents would adopt me and then look up what high school I’d be sent to, from there.

  What wasn’t clear to me was whether he actually wanted to talk to me, to reach out, or if he just wanted to check up on me like a stalker.

  All I knew was that, while I wanted to know my daddy again, I wasn’t ready to do it right this minute.

  I started rolling my bike backwards, trying to melt into the crowd of kids walking home. I’d wanted to let him know that I’d seen him, to let him know that he had the right high school, but I needed time to process the fact that he was out again. I needed to wrap my mind around it and figure out how much of a relationship I really wanted.

  I could email him through his company, but I didn’t think I wanted him to have at-will access to talking to me, at least not yet.

  Would contact with me trigger anything and set him back? Legally, he wasn’t allowed to have any contact with us. Oh, my god. Emailing him would leave a trail between us, I definitely couldn’t do that.

  I turned around and started pedaling for home. I didn’t want him to not come back, and I didn’t want him to chance driving by the house, either. If Mom or Dad spotted him around me, geez, they’d have a restraining order put on him and that really would start his downward spiral again.

  * * * * * * * * * *

  Monday morning, Roger came down the stairs, and passed by the front door. His head turned to the side as he back-pedaled, seeing a paper with holes taped to the window of his front door, which had registered as abnormal in his peripheral vision when he’d walked by it.

  He opened the door enough to reach around and grasp the page. The sun hit the holes, casting beams onto the carpet, as he pulled it inside. The paper was thicker than he was expecting, feeling the weight of it as he turned it over…

  “Who is that?” Max asked from behind him, making him jump.

  “Jesus, Max. I didn’t know you’d come in yet.”

  “Sorry, it’s my habit to get here before the rest, so I can have the door unlocked for them, downstairs. Who’s in the picture?”

  “My father.”

  Max stepped forward, looking at the face. “The one who beat you?”

  Roger deadpanned a look at him. “I only had the one.”

  “Sorry, man, I am. Where’d it come from.”

  “Someone taped it to the door.”

  “Who else wants you to know they hate him, too?”

  “What makes you think they hate him?”

  Max gestured to the photo. “Looks like dart holes to me. I think someone used him as target practice.”

  Roger made a noise in the back of his throat and took off up the stairs.

  Not knowing what was going on, Max followed after him.

  Into the master bedroom Roger went, and into his wife’s closet. “They’re missing,” Roger said from the depths of the closet.

  “What’s missing?” Max asked as Roger came back into the room.

  “My flash drives.”

  “Wait, five drives, in all different colors?”

  “Yes, do you have them?” Roger asked, confusion on his face. What the hell would Max have wanted with them?

  “Flash drives in like rainbow colors, for kids, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, a few months after you got locked up, one of the foster fathers showed up here, with one of your kids. One of your daughters. She said you told her that you were working on making Christmas presents for all the kids, and her aunt had contacted her foster mom, saying that she had the rest of the stuff you wanted to add to the presents. The foster father said he could finish adding the aunt’s stuff, and that the kids were all getting together for a few hours on Christmas Eve and they’d make sure the drives got distributed to the others. She said that she knew where your projects were, and asked if she could go and get them. I mean, I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about, but I knew how you were about your kids, so I told her to go ahead. She disappeared up the steps and came down, just a few minutes later. She had the five flash drives in her hand. I honestly figured it would be okay to let her have them.”

  Roger let out a breath. “It is okay, but why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

  Max ran a hand through his hair. “I guess it just slipped my mind. I think it was right around the time I was trying to hire someone to help me out. I’d never done that before and I was stressing out.”

  Roger let out a small chuckle. “Yeah, I remember.”

  “I think she took some of her Mom’s nail polish, too. Blue, I think. I figured you wouldn't mind.”

  Roger smiled. “Peacock blue,” he whispered. “Annabeth had a thing for the shade. Penny must have wanted to feel closer to her, wearing Annie’s favorite color.” He paused to shake his head. “I don't mind, at all.”

  “Anyway, why the target practice?” Max asked, gesturing to the picture, still in Roger’s hand.

  A smile lit Roger’s face as he stared down at the holes. “Penny.”

  “What about her?”

  “She’s the only one I told about the flash drives.” He looked back up at Max. “I digitized the family photo albums for my kids. My sister-in-law was sending jpegs, to be added to what I had. Penny had to be the one that showed up here, and she’s exactly the type that would have wanted to finish the project for me and get them to her siblings. And this,” he said, lifting the photo higher, “is the alcoholic who abused me as a kid. He’s why I couldn’t handle some other alkie taking my wife.”

  “Ah, man, and she taped a picture of him to your door. Is she marking you as the same?”

  Roger was already shaking his head. “She’d have thrown darts at a picture of me, if she hated me. No, she’s letting me know that she blames him for everything I’ve done. That if he’d have been a real father to me, I wouldn’t be so broken.”

  “Hey, man, we’re all broken in one way or another.”

  Roger snorted, “I was a bit more broken than most.”

  “Now see,” Max said, putting a hand on Roger’s shoulder, “this is why the guys and I keep a drawer downstairs filled with duct tape and glue. That way, we’re all set. Someone starts cracking, we just patch the pieces back together.”

  Roger drew away, looking at Max in confusion.

  Max started laughing. “It’s more like anybody bitching gets a roll of duct tape thrown at them, with an order to ‘get it together’. That person then throws it back with some cursing, and Kelly calls us all assholes. You know, very professional-like.”

  Roger cracked a smile.

  “How do you suppose Penny knew you were out?”

  Roger reverted his gaze back to the photo and shrugged. “Maybe they gave all the parents a head’s up or something. Who knows? All I care about is that she doesn’t hate me.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Listen, I’ve never been one to tell you what to do…”

  Roger lifted an eyebrow, “But?”

  “But you’re not really allowed contact with the kids, and teenagers like to have a mind of their own.”

  Roger smirked. “Yeah, they do. Your point?”

  “Watch yourself. If she starts coming around, which I know you would embrace, it could mean them revoking your parole. And then, you’re gonna spend the next fifteen years behind bars. Real bars, this time.”

  Roger’s lips drew back in a fine line and he gave a nod.

  “If you can hold her off for three years, then she’ll be eighteen, and she can choose to come over here all she wants. I’m just saying, be smart, man.” With that, Max turned and headed down to the basement.

  She saw me, was the only thought Roger could think while still standing in his room.

  She’d see
n him, and while she hadn’t shown herself then, she was now letting him know that it was okay. Man… she was too young to drive, maybe she’d biked over, early this morning if she was going to have enough time, before biking off to school…

  Biking. He’s only looked at the buses, knowing there were too many kids pouring out of the school to see them all. One of the many bicycles along the racks must have belonged to her.

  Interesting, he thought as he went back into his wife’s closet and laid the photo down where the flash drives had been. He had a hard time figuring out if he should go stakeout her school again, or wait to see if she made the next move.

  He headed downstairs to try and start his day again, as he decided that after this gesture, the ball was now back in his court. Though, he’d still wait for Friday. Give her the week to figure out what she’d want to say to him, or if she really wanted a face-to-face connection with him at all.

  Max was right. He didn’t want to jeopardize his parole. But if his little girl wanted a relationship with him, he wouldn’t be able to find it within himself to say no…

  He decided to let Penny decide, since he’d been spotted. If she wanted a relationship, she’d get one. If not, he wasn’t in any position to push it. If he pushed her and she ratted him out, he’d be shipped off to prison. And the idea of that was a big, ‘no, thank you’.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Playing With Fire

  I’m not going to get out of the car, and I’m not going to follow her, Roger promised himself as he pulled his car to a stop, facing the bike racks. I just want to see her, to lay eyes on her, so I know she’s doing well. That’s she’s grown, that she’s not rail-thin, that the people who’ve been taking care of her are, in fact, taking care of her.

  I’m not going to speak to her. I’ll wave if she waves, but then I’m going home and I’m going to let that be that.

  Ugh… what if she wants to talk?

  The dismissal bell rang, and within moments, the flood of teenagers started pouring out again.

  It took a couple minutes, but she emerged, talking with another girl that could only be Sadie. Man, he’d have recognized his Penny anywhere. She was taller, and… yikes, more filled out in places than he ever wanted a daughter of his to be.

  She certainly wasn’t starved, for her to be developing so quickly… It was quickly, wasn’t it? Fifteen. Was it normal for her to have a… a chest, at fifteen?

  Good God, did she have a boyfriend?!

  You know what? On second thought, it maybe wasn’t such a bad thing that he wasn’t raising four daughters on his own.

  Penny waved goodbye to Sadie, and looked toward the bikes. Her eyes scanned the area and she spotted the car. Her gaze flew to his. He gave her a small nod of acknowledgement.

  She took two steps closer and another student, a male student, called out her name. She turned to him, a smile on both their faces.

  They started talking and Roger turned away, not wanting to witness whatever was about to happen. He didn’t want to see her flirting or kissing or anything of the kind. He should leave now, because he just knew that she was going to head straight for him. Max was right, he was going to end up in prison. All he’d wanted was to acknowledge that he knew the picture was from her and that he’d gotten the message. He should go, like, he should really go before she finished with the boy and refocused on him.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  He didn’t even bother looking to see who was tapping on the passenger side window. He just reached down and hit the auto-unlock button.

  The door opened and the scent of strawberries filled the air around her as she slid onto the seat beside him and closed the door.

  He put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb. “I can’t be seen with you,” he gruffly explained. He pulled down the sun visor, hoping it would make it that much less likely anyone would recognize the significance of the two of them together.

  “How’d you get out so soon?”

  “I followed the rules and volunteered to help, a lot.”

  “Are you better now?”

  “As good as I’m going to get.”

  “Is seeing me going to make you go nuts again?”

  He finally looked at her briefly, before returning his gaze to the road. “Neither you, nor any of your siblings, ever made me ‘go nuts’.”

  Penny stopped talking and Roger kept driving, another ten minutes, and he pulled to a stop, by a park ranger entrance to one of the county parks.

  “Alcoholics make you snap,” she said.

  Roger let out a sigh. “They are a trigger.” He turned to her, “They told you that?”

  “No,” she said, turning to him. “They told me you got sick again, and had to go back to in-patient treatment.”

  “Then how…”

  “Because I’m your daughter, that’s how. I may have Mom’s looks and Grandma’s hair, but I’m developing your computer skills. I know how to hunt someone down on the Internet.”

  He took in a breath and let it out slowly. “Do you remember the serial killer that stopped his streak, just a couple weeks before I ‘went nuts’?”

  Penny nodded. “Yeah, the cops suspected it was you the whole time.”

  “How the hell—?”

  “I found and read the transcript of the trial on the Internet.”

  He just looked at her for a moment and shook his head. “Then you’ve read that I’d seen enough of the reports on the news to put together that he was killing people who were doing bad things.”

  “Yes, and you admired him.”

  “Yes. In the moment I lost it, I was going to take up that guy’s mantle of vigilante justice and pick up where he’d left off.”

  “A copycat.”

  He scrunched his nose. “I was going to put my own original twist on it and go after drunk drivers.”

  “Except the other guy had already been targeting drunk drivers.”

  “Which I didn’t know, because they never reported that specific detail.”

  Penny shook her head. “You know what I think?”

  “No, what?”

  “I think you suck at killing and should stick to computers.”

  He got to chuckling at that one. “Yeah, my first foray at killing and I get caught.”

  Her brow line creased. “You mean your second foray into killing.”

  Roger paused long enough to give Penny a wry look. “I didn’t intend to kill my father. I’ll admit that when he came after me, I didn’t even try to stop the momentum of my arm as I threw it. As I chucked it to the trash, I’ll even admit that I hoped the bottle would hit him. It’d have served him right, and maybe make him think twice about hitting me. I thought that if I was really lucky, it might even knock him out for the night and I could exist in peace for a few hours. I never intended to kill him. Though, that said, I sure as hell refused to feel guilty about it.”

  Penny had remained silent as he gave far more explanation about her grandfather’s mysterious, freak death than she’d ever heard before. She nodded her acceptance of his tale and then looked at him with a smile.

  “What?” he asked, trepidation written all over his face.

  “How hard did it have to be, to pick a spot right in front of a police stakeout?” she asked with a chuckle.

  He laughed in spite of himself. “I know. It had to be the worst luck possible.”

  She sobered. “You wrecked everything that night.”

  His smile dropped off his face and he let out a sigh. “I wrecked everything long before that. I should have taken my depression more seriously. I was going through the motions of therapy, thinking that would be enough. I hadn’t devoted myself to it, like I have for the past five years.”

  “And the anxiety, and the PTSD.”

  He nodded. “Anyway, I’m in a really good place now, stable. So good and stable that they let me go.”

  “You still in therapy?”

  “Yes, once a week, to make sure I’m adjusting to life on t
he outside well. And then a weekly meeting with my parole officer, to keep tabs on me.”

  She nodded. “And you aren’t allowed to talk to your own kids.”

  “They were taken away from me by the state. Legally, none of you are my kids anymore. And I’m a convicted attempted murderer.”

  “I love you.”

  He was brought up short by that. “Ah, honey, I love you, too.”

  “I’ve missed you.”

  “Right back at you, kiddo.”

  “Why did you come looking for me, if it could get you into trouble?”

  “Because I had to know how you guys were doing. I’ve only heard horror stories from kids who grew up in foster care. All I’ve been told is that you and the twins were adopted. And that Charlotte and Sophie are still in the system, and have been separated. And adoptions? Not all of them go that well. I’m just trying to make sure you guys are all okay. And, frankly, I know it’s hard to find anyone willing to adopt older kids, so I figured Sadie’s parents went ahead and adopted you, making you the easiest one for me to start with.”

  Penny was already nodding. “I got really lucky. Sandy and Jake are really good to me. Treat me just like they do Sadie and Brianne. Lots of encouragement, and praise sprinkled in amongst all the nagging.”

  “They nag?”

  Penny rolled her eyes. “All parents nag, it’s their job.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

  “Anyway, I’m treated well, and I’m smart enough to know it.”

  “How long ago did they decide to adopt you?”

  “The minute they got the paperwork, explaining that my status was shifting from temporarily being in the system to permanently, they started talking about adoption. It took me a little to make the transition, because I couldn’t put together why. But once it was explained that the system could move me to another placement at any point, I knew I didn’t want that to be a possibility. So, I agreed to the adoption.”

  “Is Sadie going to say anything to them about you being late in getting home?”

  “Oh, no. She’s off for singing lessons, then rehearsal for the community theatre.”