by Gary Parker
As she examined the pictures, it seemed that a bit of memory emerged every now and again, a sliver of recall here, another one there. She tried to enlarge the memories, expand the random sensations of what she thought she’d experienced, but she found it impossible. For the most part, her past with her dad remained a blank—nothing but fog and dark.
Allie lay on her bed with the pictures around her as the sun drifted through the afternoon sky, the window open to the sound of birds chirping, and wondered if this happened with all people, if the days of their childhood—especially the earliest days—always receded into the shadows and disappeared. Or was it just her? Had she washed out these memories of her dad, scrubbed them clean from her mind so she wouldn’t have to deal with the truth of a father she no longer had, a father who had run away and left her and her mom high, dry, and alone? Is that what a little girl did to protect herself from the hurt of a father disappearing?
Why, Dad? she wondered. Where are you now? Why am I so consumed by this now, of all times?
Unable to answer her questions, Allie let the afternoon drift away. Weary from the mental strain of the past few days, she eventually closed her eyes and dozed. Dreams sifted through her slumber. Her dad in a jungle... a faceless Vietnamese woman... her dad standing at a distance, his body thin and emaciated, almost a ghost, his right hand pointing her way, the forefinger beckoning her toward him... his right arm waving her closer...
Allie saw herself as if looking down from the clouds... she wanted to go to her dad but couldn’t... something held her back... some chain, shackles... she strained against the chains and almost broke free, but... a ringing called her back... a ringing... a ringing.
Allie woke to the sound of the phone on her nightstand. Jerking up, she grabbed the phone.
“Hello?”
“Where are you?”
“Trey... uh...” She rubbed her eyes to wake up as she recognized his voice. Dark had almost fallen outside.
“Your message said you were coming to the house,” he said, his frustration obvious.
“What time is it?”
“Past seven.”
“I’m really sorry... I went to Mom’s when I got back from Knoxville, then here. I stretched out for a few minutes, fell asleep. Where are you?”
“At Toby’s Ribs. I called your cell.”
“I left it in the car.”
Trey fell silent.
“I said I was sorry,” Allie said, “but I was really tired.”
“Not from helping me.”
“Hey,” Allie said, her regret now tinged by a touch of temper. “I apologize, okay. What else do you want?”
Trey took a big breath. “You coming to eat with me or what?”
“Yes, give me twenty minutes.”
“I’ll go ahead and order, if that’s okay.”
“Yeah, good.”
She hung up and quickly refreshed her makeup, brushed her teeth, and combed her hair. Ten minutes later she pulled up in front of the local rib joint and rushed inside. Trey sat in the booth where they almost always sat, the one to the right and in the far back corner. Two glasses of water, silverware, and two salads decorated the table. Trey stood as she reached him.
“Sorry,” she said again as she laid her purse on the table and took a seat.
Trey sat and waved her off. “It’s okay now,” he said. “I got frustrated. It’s lonely in that house without you there.” He reached for her, and she took his hands in hers.
Her cell phone buzzed. She glanced at her purse, wondering if the call was from Chase. It buzzed again. She looked at Trey. “I need to check the phone,” she said.
“Let it wait,” he pleaded. “You just got here.”
The phone buzzed again, and she gently pulled her hands from Trey’s, lifted the phone from the purse, and checked the number—a Knoxville area code.
She looked at Trey again; his mouth was tight with frustration. “I need to take this,” she said.
“It’s that important?”
“Yes.” She clicked the phone and put it to her ear. Shaking his head, Trey walked away toward the men’s room.
“Hello?”
“It’s Chase.”
“Yes.”
“You doing okay?”
“I’m at dinner with Trey. Did you talk to your sister?”
“Yes, finally. I have a number for you.”
“I appreciate your doing this.”
“Anything for the woman I’m supposed to marry.”
Allie glanced toward the men’s room, guilt eating at her, not because she’d taken Chase’s call but because his words made her smile, something Trey hadn’t done in a long time. “You have to stop saying things like that,” she said.
“Is Trey listening?”
“No, not that it’s any of your business. He’s in the men’s room.”
“If you were my fiancée, I’d never let you talk to another man outside my presence.”
“You’re that jealous?”
“No, you’re that beautiful.”
Allie enjoyed the compliment a second but knew she needed to finish the call before Trey returned. “Just give me the number,” she said.
“Okay.”
She grabbed a pen from her purse and wrote the number on a napkin. Trey walked back up and took his seat across from her.
“Thanks for your help,” she told Chase.
“You’re going to call them?”
“First thing in the morning.”
“I hope you reach them.”
“Thanks.”
“When will I see you again?”
“I don’t expect you will.”
Chase chuckled as if he knew some deeply humorous secret, then hung up. Allie ended the call, slid the phone back into her purse, and faced Trey.
“Was that the guy from Knoxville?”
“Yes. He gave me a number to reach his parents.”
“I talked to Gladys; she said you were insistent on continuing this nonsense.”
“You two are in agreement that it’s nonsense?”
Trey dropped his eyes, but when he looked back up, they were still full of challenge. “Look,” he said. “I’m a patient man, but this isn’t the time for this. We have too much to do. Later maybe I’ll even help you find your dad. But this has gone far enough, don’t you think?”
The waiter showed up with plates full of ribs and potatoes and placed them on the table. Glad for the interruption, Allie tried to gather her thoughts. She knew the sensible thing to do, but right now that seemed impossible. How could she walk away from this quest, even for a little while? Would she take it back up again after her wedding? Or would she get so involved with life that she’d never return to it? And would it be too late even if she did? Something told her that time was important here, perhaps even crucial. Her intuition told her she couldn’t afford to wait.
The waiter left, and Allie folded her hands in her lap and faced Trey.
“I asked you a question,” he said.
Although she didn’t like his tone, Allie tried to stay calm. “I know all this is inconvenient,” she said, “but it surprises me you don’t want me to follow through with this until it hits a dead end.”
“Why would I want that?”
She leaned closer. “Because you want me to be happy, and I don’t believe I can be until I know what happened to my father. Isn’t that a first principle of psychology—the need to connect with roots, origins, mothers and fathers?”
Trey rolled his eyes but then nodded. “You’re right, of course,” he said.
“I won’t take any more time than absolutely necessary,” she said. “And I’ll be with you every moment I possibly can.”
“What about the house?”
“You can take care of that.”
“But Mother gave it to the two of us; she desperately wants us to move into it when we return from our honeymoon.”
“If it’s not ready, we can finish when we get back.”
&
nbsp; “That will greatly disappoint her.”
“She’ll get over it.”
Trey arched an eyebrow, and Allie knew the look. “Sorry,” she said, “but I can’t govern my life by what pleases your mom. I want to make her happy, don’t get me wrong on that, but I won’t always be able to do so. You need to realize that now if you don’t already.”
“I’m all she’s got,” Trey said. “When we marry, we’ll be all she’s got.”
Allie hesitated but then pressed forward. Might as well say what needed to be said. “I will do everything I can to honor your mother, but when we get married, I have to take first place in your life, not her. Are we clear on that?”
“We’re clear,” he said, his words even.
Although his words sounded right, his posture said otherwise. His hands squeezed his water glass, and his neck muscles were taut.
“You’re angry with me again.”
“Of course I’m not.” He set his jaw as if clicking a steel trap into place.
Allie started to point that out to him but then decided to leave it alone. Perhaps it was best right now not to tell an angry psychologist that it might not be good for him to repress his anger.
7
After a fitful night, Allie woke at eight o’clock on Sunday morning, hurriedly showered, dressed, and picked up her phone. To her great surprise, she reached Walt Mason on the fifth ring. Her hands started trembling as she heard his voice.
“This is Allie Wilson, Jack’s daughter,” she began, wondering how he would respond.
Mason cleared his throat. “Your dad and I go back a long way,” he said. “I hope you’re doing all right.”
“Yes, I’m about to get married.”
“Wonderful.”
Quiet fell for a moment, and Allie decided to push straight to the point. “I hate to bother you on your trip,” she said. “But I need to ask you about my dad—when you saw him last, whether you know how I might reach him.”
“I always wondered if you’d call someday.”
“I suppose I should have done it sooner.”
“Your mom give you my name?”
“Yes, I saw a picture of my folks with you and your wife. I asked Mom about it; that started it all.”
“I’m sure it’s been hard on you, the way he left and all.”
“Not easy, but I never really had him in the first place.”
“Your dad is a good man; you need to know that. He didn’t leave you because he didn’t love you.”
“What do you mean?”
“He... how can I say it?... he feels too deeply.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He’s like an ‘empath,’ if I’m using the word right. Somebody who soaks up emotion from other people, takes it on his own soul. An ‘empath’ feels the weight of his problems plus the struggles of others too.”
Allie combined this information with what the emails had told her and tried to make sense of it all but couldn’t. “I don’t see how that changes anything.”
“Maybe it doesn’t, but I just wanted you to know he loved you.”
“Can you tell me where I might find him?”
Walt cleared his throat again. “I can’t tell you that.”
“Is it that you don’t know or that you know and won’t say?”
“A bit of both, I suppose.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Look,” Walt said. “Your dad moves around a lot, so I never know exactly where he is.”
“But he stays in touch with you?”
“From time to time.”
“Can you tell me where he was the last time he contacted you?”
“No.”
Allie clenched the phone tighter. “Why not?”
“He swore me to secrecy.”
Allie rubbed her eyes. This wasn’t going well. “I don’t get it.”
“I don’t like being in the middle like this.”
“I’m sorry to put you in this position, but I need to find my dad, and I can’t see any reason you shouldn’t tell me what you know.”
“I wish I could.” He sighed. “But I can’t. Your dad and I went through hell together; we’re brothers in that. I can’t tell you what I gave my word I wouldn’t tell anybody.”
Allie’s heart sank, but then she tried another tactic. “Can you tell me what happened to him in Vietnam?” she asked.
Walt grunted. “No way.”
“Same reason?”
“Even more so; a man doesn’t revisit the worst moments of his life if he can possibly avoid it.”
Allie bit her lip. Walt Mason was a stone wall. “I read your emails from Vietnam!” she blurted.
“What?”
“I made Chase find them, open them,” she explained, not wanting to get Chase in trouble. “They talked about a girl, a woman. Who were they? I already know about them, so you aren’t giving up anything by filling in a few blanks.”
“You’ve got a lot of brass, young woman.”
Allie knew she’d made him mad, but she didn’t care. “I’m desperate here!” she exclaimed.
“Desperate doesn’t give you permission to violate my privacy!”
Allie dialed back her frustration. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just feel like time is running out! My dad needs me, wants to talk to me!”
“He needs to tell you that face-to-face.”
“But what if he can’t? What if something’s happened to him?”
“You’re not getting a word out of me,” Walt insisted. “Not after what you’ve done. And if you bother me again, I might just have you arrested when I get home.”
Allie’s heart sank as she realized she’d messed up. A man like Walt Mason couldn’t be forced to do much of anything, and her efforts to shock him were the opposite of what she should have done. “I apologize again for reading your emails,” she said.
“I blame that on Chase.”
“I made him do it. I told you that.”
“You must be a pretty woman; he’s putty when that’s the case.”
Allie sensed a slight softening in Walt’s voice. “Will you at least tell my dad I’m trying to reach him?”
Walt cleared his throat. “If he contacts me, I’ll tell him you called.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Maybe I’ll meet you and your wife someday.”
“That would be fine.”
Allie said good-bye, hung up, and leaned back on her bed. Although she knew it didn’t make sense, she suddenly wanted to talk to Chase. She quickly dialed his number and got no answer but hung up without leaving a message. Strange, she thought, that she wanted to talk to Chase instead of Trey. But Trey cared nothing for any of this. Why should she want to talk with him about it?
Patch jumped up in her lap, and Allie scratched her behind the ears.
“What are we going to do today?” she asked the cat. Patch seemed quite content to stay right where she was.
“What do you think Chase Mason is doing?” Allie asked.
Patch licked a paw.
Allie remembered it was Sunday and wondered if he was in church—maybe so, and without the bow tie. She remembered her last words to him last night, and the notion of never seeing him again felt completely wrong, more wrong than not going to assist Trey as he remodeled the home where they planned to spend the rest of their lives.
“I need to go help Trey,” she told Patch. “He’ll kill me if I don’t; worse, his mom will kill me.”
Patch purred, obviously not too bothered by the notion of Allie’s ultimate demise.
For the next five days, Allie did exactly what everyone expected of her, and things fell back into a comfortable routine. She divided her hours between laboring on the house, taking care of wedding details, and spending time with her mom and Trey. To her relief, Trey seemed to have settled down again, and though she felt a little angry with him every now and again for the way he liked to control everything, she passed
it off as normal for any woman in her thirties giving up her freedom for marriage. She thought of Chase from time to time—his easy laugh, his melodious voice, the woodsy smell of his cologne—but quickly pushed away the memories as inappropriate. A stranger looking at her through a telescope would have declared that all was normal.
Inside, though, Allie felt anything but peaceful. As she painted a wall at the house, she tried to figure a way to find her dad. As she stacked the finely wrapped wedding gifts pouring in from all over, she considered avenues to search for him. At night after she and Trey separated for the evening, she lay in bed and weighed her options.
As the days went by, she checked out—in her private moments—a number of avenues that occurred to her. She logged onto the computer and searched the Find a Friend and Locate a Relative websites, hoping against hope that entering her dad’s name and date of birth might generate a lead or two. When that didn’t pan out, she called directory information for every town within a hundred mile circle of Harper Springs and asked for a number for Jackson William Wilson. Again she had no luck. She even called the national Veteran’s Administration—if her dad went to a VA hospital for medical help, maybe they would know where to locate him.
“We can’t divulge any private medical information,” said the government administrator she eventually reached. “But I’m his daughter.”
“The Medical Privacy Act,” the administrator said. “Unless your father gives us written permission or you go to your state government and prove you’re his immediate kin, my hands are tied.”
“How long will that take?”
“It’s the government, Ms. Wilson. Time is relative.”
“More than a week?”
The administrator laughed.
“So I have to find my dad in order for him to give you permission to give me an address for me to find him, is that it?”
“Ironic, isn’t it?”
Allie hung up and kept thinking, but by Friday evening, as she sat in her mom’s kitchen right after dark with a chocolate chip cookie and a glass of milk before her, she knew she’d reached the end of her rope. No matter how much she hated it, she had to drop the hunt for her dad. She glanced at Gladys across the table and noticed a slump in her shoulders and dark shadows around her eyes.
