by Tami Hoag
“Thanks,” John said with just enough sarcasm it was hard to tell if he was indeed thankful for the break or pissed off by the backhanded vote of confidence.
“He’s a downright son of a bitch, your dad,” Carver said. “If you were truly gonna kill somebody, I think you would have put him in the ground by now. Go on and get out of here. And don’t say I never did anything for you.”
John watched him walk back to the house. He went around to the back of the truck and closed the tailgate. The dog was still curled on the blanket.
“We’re going for a ride,” John said.
He drove to the truck stop and parked in line with a couple of big rigs that had pulled in for the night. He let the tailgate down to give the dog options, then walked into the wooded lot to take a leak. The dog followed him, lifting its leg on a tree. The night was alternately star filled and dark, with clouds scudding over the moon. The breeze was cold. He thought back to Afghanistan and some of the rough places where he’d had to sleep there, with the threat of death ever present. A night in a parking lot was no hardship by comparison. And yet he half wished he was back there. At least in a war the enemy wasn’t a man’s own father.
He thought about what his old man had said—about him taking after his mother. He wished he could remember enough about her to know if that was true. She had left when he was eight. He remembered thinking she was beautiful. He remembered how she had tucked him into bed at night. He remembered thinking he wished she wouldn’t have left without him. He remembered the feeling of emptiness and fear that yawned open inside of him because she had left him behind with no one to protect him from his dad. Yet he had never managed to hate her. He had gone to bed every night with the secret hope that she would come back and get him, but she never had.
Back at the truck, he climbed into the cab, jockeying for a halfway comfortable position to try to sleep. He leaned his shoulder against the driver’s door window and glanced out as the dog put its front paws up on the door and started to whine. Their eyes met in the dim light from the parking lot.
John sighed. He told himself no good would come from giving in, but he found himself opening the door just the same. He got out of the truck and stood back while the dog jumped in and settled itself on the passenger’s seat.
“But you’re still not my dog,” John said as he got back in and shut the door. “Just so you know.”
20
Mom, have you seen my feet?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
Dana’s mother flipped a pancake and looked up from the stove. “What do you mean, where?”
“Where are my feet?” Dana asked impatiently.
“On the ends of your legs, last I checked.”
“No!”
“Yes!” She looked down at the floor and pointed with the spatula. “There they are. I see two feet and ten toes.”
Dana squeezed her eyes shut and groaned. “No. Not feet. Like feet. Goes on feet.”
“Starts with an S,” her mother prompted.
“Ssssss-shoes!” Dana said with a sense of mingled triumph and relief. Then came the familiar mix of disappointment and embarrassment. For God’s sake, of course she knew the difference between shoes and feet.
“Don’t be hard on yourself,” her mother said. “I don’t think you’re getting enough rest. You have more trouble finding words when you’re tired.”
“I’m fine,” Dana said, grabbing a plate, her bare feet forgotten. “Dr. Burnette said I need to challenge myself with goals. I can’t do that if I’m asleep all the time.”
“If last night was an example of you pursuing a goal, I’m not for it. You can’t just go off by yourself like that, Dana. I don’t even want to think about what could have happened.”
“Nothing happened,” Dana said, ignoring the fact that she had been scared out of her wits with Detective Hardy, and just trying to follow the directions of the navigation system had stressed her to the frayed end of her last nerve. Her mother didn’t have to know any of that. “I went to talk to the detective and I came back. If Frankie hadn’t come by when she did, no one would’ve been the wiser.”
Her mother gave her a look as they went to the table. “Dana . . .”
“Lynda . . . What?” Dana asked, taking a seat.
Roger peered over the top of his newspaper at her. Dana cut him a look, then turned back to her mother.
“You want to think you can just do everything like you did before, but you can’t, sweetheart,” her mother said. “Not yet. What if you had gotten lost last night?”
“I had my phone with my navigation app.”
“And what if your phone died? What if you lost service?”
“What if a spaceship beamed me up?”
“My scenarios are realistic,” her mother insisted. “We have to have a system. If you’re going somewhere, I need to know. You need to text me or leave a note. Make a note in your phone that you have to tell me when you’re going somewhere. Promise me you’ll do that.”
“I promise.”
Dana took a bite of her pancakes. What if she forgot to look at her note that reminded her to leave a note? She kept the question to herself.
“What did the detective have to say to you last night?” her mother asked, as if that was normal breakfast conversation, as if she was asking about running into an old teacher from high school.
“He said he investigated Daddy’s death,” Dana said.
Her mother looked up. Roger lowered his newspaper.
“I thought you went to ask him something about Casey’s case,” her mother said.
“I did. He brought up Daddy. Why didn’t anybody ever tell me there was an investigation?”
“You were a child,” Roger said.
“Why would we have told you, sweetheart?” her mother asked. “We were all so devastated—you especially. The investigation was just a formality. Nothing was going to come of it. Nothing did come of it. Daddy had an accident.”
“What if he didn’t?” Dana asked. “That’s why they had to investigate—to make sure somebody didn’t push him off the bluff. Didn’t I have a right to know that?”
“You were twelve,” Roger said.
“I was fourteen,” Dana corrected him, offended that he didn’t care enough to remember.
He rolled his eyes. “You were a child. There was no reason to involve you.”
“They never questioned me,” she said. “What if I had known something?”
“Like what?” her mother asked.
“I don’t know. What if I had overheard a conversation or witnessed something but didn’t realize it might be important—”
“Because you didn’t,” Roger said flatly. “Because there was nothing to know or witness. Your father slipped and fell. No one pushed him. Why would anyone have done that? He didn’t have any enemies. I would know. I was his best friend.”
“Were you there?” Dana challenged. “Did you see it happen?”
“No.”
“Then really, you don’t know anything.”
“There was nothing to know, sweetheart,” her mother said. “The sheriff’s office had to investigate because no one saw what happened, but no one ever believed it was anything other than an accident.”
“That doesn’t mean it wasn’t,” Dana said stubbornly.
“He went hunting alone,” Roger said. “I always told him that was a bad idea, but he said it cleared his head to walk that property. He was probably trying to get hold of that damned unruly dog of his, got too close to the edge, and lost his footing.”
“Then where was Moose?” Dana asked. “Moose never would have left Daddy. Never.”
“He couldn’t have gotten to your dad. Maybe he got lost trying to find a way down to him. We always figured someone probably picked the dog up off the road and just kept him
.”
“Yeah,” Dana nodded. “Like maybe the person who killed Daddy.”
“Think about that,” Roger said, trying to be the voice of reason. “Do you really think that dog would have let somebody hurt your father?”
Dana sat for a moment, silent, recalling the big, exuberant Labrador and how much the dog had loved her father. Immediately a picture came to mind of her father with the gigantic Moose draped across his lap, both of them with huge smiles on their faces. As good-natured as the dog had been, he had also been protective of the family. It was doubtful he would have let anyone with bad intentions near her father.
“Unless he knew the person,” she said slowly, looking at her stepfather.
Roger sighed and stood up. “I’m leaving now before you accuse me outright of killing your father,” he said. “Eddie was like a brother to me. I loved him like a brother.”
“Roger . . . ,” Dana’s mother started, reaching out a hand as if to stop him.
He waved off whatever excuse she had been about to make. “I don’t want to hear it, Lynda. I have to go anyway. We’re filming that interview at the nursery today and starting to set up for the party.”
He left the room, and Dana’s mother turned toward her, looking frustrated.
“Did he have an alibi?” Dana asked, all the finer emotions of the moment skimming past her.
“Dana, you have to stop this.”
“Why? What if he killed Daddy?”
“Stop it!” her mother snapped. “He did not kill your father! They were best friends. Roger was devastated when it happened. We all were. The sheriff’s office conducted a routine investigation of an accidental death, and they were very discreet about it and very considerate of our family. There was no conspiracy. Get that out of your head!”
Dana frowned down at her plate, cutting her pancakes with her fork into smaller and smaller pieces as she processed what her mother had said. But she still wasn’t able to stop the questions that came to her.
“So where was he when it happened?” she asked.
Her mother put her hands over her face, took in a slow, measured breath, and let it out. “He was making calls on suppliers that afternoon.”
Meaning he had been driving from one wholesale nursery to another. Unless he had taken someone with him who could account for every minute between stops, there had to be big gaps in his alibi. But the sheriff’s detectives would have checked his story out, Dana knew. She thought of the timeline Dan Hardy had posted on his wall from Casey’s disappearance. He would have done the same for her father’s case, she supposed.
“It’s been more than a decade,” her mother said. “In all these years you have never once questioned Roger’s character or motives. You were never close to him the way you were to your dad, but you always got along with him.”
“I don’t know why,” Dana grumbled. “I don’t like him now.”
“That’s new since your head injury. You liked him fine before. Maybe you’re reacting to him this way just because he’s a man. Maybe he reminds you of the man who hurt you—”
“I don’t remember him.”
“You don’t consciously remember him. According to the doctors, that doesn’t mean there isn’t an impression of him in the emotional part of your brain.”
One of the many frustrations of her condition: the memories that couldn’t be accessed but still had the power to influence her emotions. How much of what she was feeling toward Roger was genuine and justified? Or was her dislike and distrust of him the result of the emotional hurt she felt because he had distanced himself from her during her recovery? How much was attached to the residual paranoia instilled by what had happened to her?
“Do you really think I would have married him if I thought he’d done something to your father?” her mother asked. “Do you think I’m stupid or a poor judge of character?”
“No.”
“Or am I in on the conspiracy too?”
“No,” Dana said, feeling contrite. She had never doubted that her parents loved each other. Her mother had fallen completely apart when her father died. Her relationship with Roger had developed slowly over the course of two years following the death of her husband.
“I’m sorry,” Dana said.
“You don’t have to apologize to me, but I think you owe Roger something. He loves you, sweetheart. He’s done his best to fill in for your father. You and your dad were so close; it wasn’t easy for him to try to take on that role. But think of all the events he attended when you were in school. Think of all the times he chauffeured you and Casey around before you were able to drive. Anytime I wasn’t able to be there, Roger was there. Remember the big after-graduation party he organized for you and your friends? You need to go back through all your photographs of family events and holidays and remind yourself of your relationship with Roger before.”
She had already spent many hours on her iPad and computer, looking at photographs of family and friends, high school years and college years, photos of friends from places she had worked. She had filled much of her time in the hospital and at the Weidman Center doing just that, trying to connect the images together with fragments of memory with varying degrees of success. There seemed to always be a certain disconnect simply because she wasn’t the same Dana she had been when those memories had been made.
Relationships were no different. The relationship Before Dana had with Roger Mercer was going to seem like it belonged to someone else, because it had. After Dana was her new reality, and After Dana saw the world through a much darker filter. Before Dana had been curious. After Dana was suspicious. Before Dana had believed in the inherent good in people. After Dana knew firsthand their capacity for evil.
The question was: Which perception was truth? Which reality was she supposed to believe? Maybe young, naïve Before Dana had seen the world as it should be, rather than as it really was. Maybe After Dana was right to question everything and everyone she thought she had known.
“He loves me?” she said. “He can’t even look at me for more than two seconds since this,” she said, pointing to her damaged face. “Haven’t you noticed that?”
Of course she had, and still she made an excuse for him. “He doesn’t want to accept what you went through and what it did to you.”
“Neither do I,” Dana said. “But I have to look at this face in the mirror every day. I could use the support of the people who are supposed to love me. You’ve been there every day for me, Mom, either physically or over the phone or on the computer. Roger couldn’t be bothered to come visit me more than once a month.”
“Roger has a very busy schedule, sweetheart—”
“So what? Daddy had a busy schedule too. Do you think he would have stayed away? You know he wouldn’t have. He would have been there for me just as much as you were. You know that’s true.”
She did know. Dana could see her mother’s struggle with the emotions that truth evoked, the truth that Roger Mercer wasn’t the man Eddie Nolan had been. She lived with that truth every day and slept with it every night.
“He’s not a bad man, Dana,” she said. “He’s a flawed man, but he’s got a good heart. What happened to you impacted all of us. He’s just having a harder time dealing with it.”
“He should imagine how I feel,” Dana said quietly. “He lost a pretty stepdaughter. I lost my identity. I lost what my life was and what it could have been.”
Her mother reached over and touched her arm. “You’ll build a new life, sweetheart. I wish you didn’t have to, but I’m very grateful you’re getting that chance. And you need to know you’re not making that journey alone. We’re all on it with you.”
Dana nodded to appease her mother, but in her mind she thought: Everyone but Roger.
The alarm on her mother’s cell phone went off. She glanced at it and sighed.
“I have to go. I’ve
got a hair appointment. Do you want to come along?”
“I don’t have any hair,” Dana said, running a hand back over her short blond crop.
“You could get your nails done, have a pedicure.”
“No, thanks. I’ll rest,” she said for no other reason than to make her mother happy.
“Good,” her mother said, leaning down to kiss her forehead. “I’ll see you later.”
Dana sat at the table for a few minutes, staring at the breakfast she no longer had any interest in eating. A kaleidoscope view of memory fragments tumbled through her mind. Memories of herself and Casey here in this house, at this table, cooking in this kitchen, watching TV downstairs.
She could see Roger in some of those bits and pieces. Roger the chaperone, the chauffeur, the surrogate father. He had never had that ease around kids that had come so naturally to her father. Her dad had effortlessly balanced the authority aspect of parenthood with a sense of camaraderie that made all of Dana’s friends love and respect him. Roger’s attempts at connecting with the kids had always seemed fake and forced. Dana had appreciated his efforts and cringed at the same time.
Now as she looked back on those memories, she felt uncomfortable thinking about her stepfather. But according to her mother’s theory, those feelings were attached to an event that had nothing to do with him.
Head throbbing from the effort to sort it all out, she went back downstairs to her room and opened the French doors to the patio, letting in the crisp, clean air. The sky was the incredible electric blue that seemed unique to fall. The colors of the grassy field and the woods beyond seemed extra-saturated.
Tuxedo immediately trotted outside to lie in the sun on the flagstone, purring and trilling as he rolled and stretched.
Dana walked out onto the patio, the stone warm beneath her bare feet, while the breeze was just cool enough to make her wrap her oversize cardigan around her slight frame. The day was so beautiful it was hard to imagine there could be evil in the world. As she looked past the low stone wall, down the grassy hill to the woods painted with the brilliant shades of autumn, she tried to recall the feeling from her first night home when she had the feeling there was someone watching from the woods. It seemed ridiculous in the light of a picture-postcard-perfect day.
