Concealed in the Shadows

by Gabrielle Arrowsmith

  He reaches for my face and cups it in his hand. No. No! It can’t be. I don’t feel present in my body as my head shakes from side to side. The stranger pulls his hand away from my face, but continues to survey me in adoration. Beyond my control, my hand slips away from his grasp in my lap.

  “It’s okay,” he whispers. “It’s me. I’m your father.”

  It’s unmistakable that he is indeed Demetri Harter, my father, as he says he is. His face is an aged version of the one I’ve secretly studied online, wondering what he was like, and what my family was like with him in the picture. His eyes are my eyes, only the deep blue that outlines my irises seeps further toward the golden sun that surrounds his pupils. My heart hasn’t forgotten his voice. I felt it was him the second he uttered my name. I thought I remembered nothing of my father, but my heart beats uncontrollably as he whispers again, “I’m your dad, Sydney.”

  Tears burn at the corners of my eyes too, but I don’t feel the awe and joy that so clearly illuminates his face. The overpowering love he feels is absent from me. I am in shock. All of this time I thought he was dead. I knew he was dead.

  He stands up and tries to pull me into an embrace, his heart so flooded with the magnetism of the moment that he’s compelled to do this, but I dodge his arms. He looks at me with confusion and then appears wounded as I back away.

  He may be my father, but I don’t know him.

  The walls creep toward me and the air thickens, making it difficult to breathe. He has had fifteen long years to dream about being reunited with me. He knows exactly what he wants to say to me, and how gently and invitingly to say it. But his gratification in this impossible moment will be short-lived. I have no choice but to ruin it.

  I make a split second decision to push past Crewe at the doorway and stampede down the dizzying stairs. One of the restaurant tables clips my hip as I clumsily make a dash for fresh air. I look over my shoulder, and see that no one has followed me. Regardless, I run around the side of the building to ensure that I will be left alone.

  My father is alive. He is the captain of an estimated six hundred refugees in Region Two between the towns of Sheridan, Braves, and Idaho. How can he be seen as a capable and beloved hero to so many while his own daughter sees him as a coward and betrayer?

  Were we dispensable to him? Did he justify the pain of the few with the liberty and happiness of the many? If he cared about Evvie and me, wouldn’t he have come for us? I know he was able to trace us, so that means he just stood by as our mom lost her sanity and as our grandma, our greatest hope, was murdered. He merely watched as my body fought to overcome the alcohol-induced coma and live for the sake of his youngest daughter, who sat alone and scared in a sleeping orphanage. How could any father allow the misery his children suffered? How could he witness it and not rescue us from the evils of Miles County?

  I love the father that I know to have tragically died before his time. I’ve always believed that that father could have amounted to a brilliant and caring politician, Chief of County even. He could have moved mountains in an unjust world if only he was given the chance, but life was stolen from him. That’s the father who I love.

  “Hey. It’s just me,” a cautious voice says from the opposite direction I came.

  “He’s supposed to be dead. He’s been dead all of my life,” I cry without acknowledging the intruder.

  “Your whole life has been a lie, Sydney. An ugly lie.”

  “Why didn’t he come?”

  “Your father is a good man, Sydney.” Crewe squats before me but doesn’t force me to look at him. “He is the man who got Cy and me out, remember? He’s been like a father to both of us for the last seven years, and you know how high my standards are when it comes to fathers.”

  “Good for you,” I scorn.

  “Sydney, I have been listening to the captain talk about his little princess for seven years, I just never imagined it would be you,” he pokes at my arm, but I don’t join in his untimely playfulness. “You’ll get to see for yourself soon enough, but take it from me if you can—that man still loves you with everything in his heart, the same way he loved you the last time he saw you. He’s also the most valiant man I know. You put those two facts together, and I guarantee you that nothing would have stopped him from coming for you if it was safe for you.”

  If I am to listen to anyone, it will be to Crewe Davids. The way I feel isn’t going to transform instantaneously with an eloquent speech, but I am persuaded to at least hear my father out. Regardless of his relationship to me, he is the captain and he is here to help us determine how to bring Evvie home.

  “Please,” Crewe presses.

  “You could have given me a heads up.” I roll my eyes and allot my stubborn resentment onto Crewe. He scans my eyes for a moment. My scowl fades and my pursed lips soften just enough for Crewe to smile at my jab. Without warning, he uncrosses my arms and lifts me onto my feet.

  “Sydney, one more thing,” he says after I’ve moseyed a few steps toward the street. I turn around slowly as I don’t like the worry in his voice. His face screams that there is something else he’s been keeping from me besides the fact that the captain is my living father.

  Crewe takes two hard steps toward me and unexpectedly envelops my lips with a kiss so passionate that it seems he must have ached for years to give it. My heart drops and fire tingles throughout me. I’ve known Crewe for just over two days. Part of that time I didn’t even know who I was, but I knew that I hated the fuming, accusatory man who I later found out to be my primary abductor.

  Somehow, time and the transformation do not matter. My first kiss, something I never thought would happen so soon, if at all the way things were going, was very welcomed coming from Crewe Davids.

  The kiss isn’t a prolonged one. Crewe releases me and turns away too abruptly to know whether I feel the same way about him. Maybe he doesn’t have the courage to see. My cheeks are flashing hot and my heart is racing. Crewe is only a few steps away when I gear up to run tell Evvie. She’ll absolutely die to hear this.

  Oh, Evvie. I’m called back to reality, and I’m immediately soiled with guilt for experiencing any pleasure in wake of her absence.

  “I’m going to go talk to our dad, Ev,” I whisper. “He’s alive and he’s going to help. We’re coming for you, Evvie, together.” Somehow telling Evvie gives me the strength I need to face my father. I will do anything to get her back. I will do whatever it takes.

  I nervously creep up the creaky stairs and peek through the glass pane of the door. My hand rests on the knob, but I don’t turn it. I watch him in secret for a moment, the way he’s been able to watch me as I’ve grown up. He sits down now with his back to me, but I can tell that the strong, confident, and wise man from the picture I studied is stressed and dejected. His posture is slumped and he anxiously taps his fingers against the table.

  I take a deep breath and enter the room.

  He glances over his shoulder and stands hurriedly when he sees that it’s me, not Crewe, who has returned. With his gaze upon me, the room feels no more comfortable than when I burst from it in need of air.

  “Hi,” he says awkwardly, being overly cautious now.

  “Hi,” I return from a distance. He turns another chair to face the one he was sitting in, and gestures for me to come join him.

  “I thought you were dead,” I murmur without moving my feet.

  “No,” he says sympathetically.

  “You left. You left us.” My speech is broken and my hands tremble though I’m not afraid.

  “I did, but only because I had to,” he says. “I would have gotten you out, but I was afraid they would do something horrible to you and your mother if I failed. I wasn’t willing to take that risk. I had to let you go, you see.”

  “No, no I don’t,” I state. If it’s possible, I think his face drops even more. “You were only in for a few years, and at the beginning of it all. Something horrible was done to us.” I’m losing composure. I
can’t help, nor can I contain, the anger I feel. I’m furious that my father abandoned us. “We were made to live in that Godforsaken circle of misery without anyone to look out for us.”

  “I’m sorry, Sydney. Oh God, Sydney, I’m so sorry,” he says. “You don’t have to forgive me, or accept me even, but please don’t hate me before we’ve figured out just how everything got so screwed up. Can we talk about your sister?” he asks.

  I can’t deny him this. I can’t deny Evvie this. I nod and tentatively approach the chair that faces him. We sit, and I try to calm my trembling hands.

  “How long has she been with you and your mother?” he asks.

  I look up at him in bewilderment. How can he not know the answer to that question? Minutes ago, Crewe told me that he’s been hearing about me through my father for the last seven years, about his little princess. Singular. Had he never spoken of a second daughter? He has no idea that Evvie is his.

  “Forever,” I answer him. “She’s yours.” I can see his mystified mind spinning with confusion. Merick and Crewe have been telling him about Evvie and me for the last two days. Now, arriving and learning that I am his daughter, he assumes Evvie to be someone else’s child, perhaps an adoptee or foster. “Mom learned she was pregnant the same day that you died, the day we thought you died,” I correct myself. “Evvie is your daughter.”

  He glows with the news. “I have a daughter,” he says, beaming like a first-time parent. “I mean two. I have two daughters.” Suddenly his expression morphs into anger. “They hid her from me. They knew I would be watching, checking in.” He remains very grave. “We’re going to get her back, Sydney.”

  “She’s smart. Careful,” I tell him.

  “Good. If she has half the strength of character and bravery that you have, we’ll be okay.”

  I wonder if he only thinks that now that he has found out that the latest addition to Sheridan is Sydney Harter. His Sydney. I doubt that Merick and Crewe’s account of the events following my abduction painted the picture of a courageous heroine. It’s more likely it left him dreading his meeting of the impatient and stubborn girl from Miles. Who knows, maybe he saw aspects of bravery within my strong will before he learned who I am.

  “Your mother raised you well despite the horrors you spoke of experiencing inside. She must have taught you to ignore societal influences and be observant and cautious of the world. I can’t believe you know so much and have still been safe all of these years.”

  I was afraid of that. How do I tell him that my mother, his sweetheart, is dead? Furthermore, how can I explain without disgracing her and offending him that she was absolutely lost, and that I raised us in surroundings that were far from safe? All of this will break his heart. He will understand for the first time that he truly failed us.

  “Is your mother well?” the captain asks with care. He knows that when the girl from Miles remembered who she was, she demanded that she be taken back for the sake of her sister. He knows I left no mention of going back for my mother.

  “How long?” he asks before I’ve said a word.

  “Five and a half years,” I answer. He drops his head. Earlier this morning, my father believed that his strong, beautiful wife and daughter of the same nature lived healthily in Miles County. Like a deceased loved one from the heavens, he checked in on us from time to time by tapping into the county databases. Only what he traced must have been a veneer covering the despair that defined our real lives. Through this deception he has gained knowledge of Evvie, a daughter he’s never met, but he has also lost the love of his life.

  “I’m sorry,” I console him. It’s so peculiar to be comforting my living father on the passing of my mother, who has been dead for five and a half long years, and droned for eight and a half years prior. I can barely tolerate my memories of her, and here I am comforting a man who has only beautiful memories of this woman and fantastical ideas of how she got along after he was removed from her life.

  “How?” he asks.

  I hesitate. I can’t find the words to tell him. “You should probably have some background.” I look up at his concerned eyes that harrow in on mine. “She didn’t cope well after you died. She was healthiest for a few months just after Evvie was born, but soon the hysteria came back, even stronger than it was during her pregnancy.”

  “Hysteria?” he questions.

  “She conspired that the government killed you.” I suppose she might have had some reason to think that, now finding that he is alive. “She wanted us to try to escape, but I always convinced her against it. It scared me,” I admit to him. “I was so little.”

  I wonder how my life could have been different, really different, if I hadn’t questioned my mother when she was pregnant with Evvie, or even afterward. What if we had run, and made it out? We might all be together now, here in Sheridan. We might be a happy family of four, perfection in the eyes of the counties. We also may have been captured, or killed from the attempt itself, if my mother didn’t have a surefire way out.

  “She couldn’t take care of herself or us. Delusions took over her.” The image must not fit the picture that he has of my mother, because he’s shaking his head and pinching at the inner corners of his eyes. I’m sparing him the details, too. If he only knew how awful it was, he may feel sick with guilt that he didn’t come.

  I remember how badly I hated the chatter. My mother talked nonstop, but not to us, and of nothing that made any sense. I couldn’t turn it off. It was so hard to live with her frenzied static in the background all the time. And of course, there were the shocks that I greatly feared, but I won’t tell him about that. I’ll preserve for him the ability to feel love when he remembers her.

  “We stayed with Grandma as much as we could, but then her date came up. I tried my best to take care of all of us, but one day the authorities found out about our situation. They took her to an institution. She was there for two months before she died.”

  “You still haven’t told me how,” he states when it appears I’ve finished talking about my mother.

  “Suicide,” I say reluctantly.

  “No, that can’t be,” he says. I nod my head but I don’t want to look at him. I don’t want to see his denial, and I don’t want him to see the feelings of betrayal that still surface in me when I think about what she did. She could have gotten better. She could have stayed a little longer, and given them a chance to help her.

  “Listen, I know you knew your mother longer than I did… Look at me,” he says with a parental tone. I look up and meet those deep, blue eyes. “Your mother loved you. She loved you more than life. I know that she would have never, ever given up like that. If she really did kill herself, then she did it to protect you… and your sister,” he adds. “But my guess is it wasn’t suicide.” The veins in his neck bulge and his temples flair in effort to keep his composure in front of me.

  Why does the world keep flipping the way it does? Until a moment ago, I knew what my mother was like. I was certain that she took the easy way out. I despised her for it, and used my resentment of her to drive my desire to always be stronger and braver than she was. And now everything that the captain, who was supposed to be a stranger, is saying points to the contrary. He paints her to have died out of love for us, like Crewe’s dad. My mother was not a heroine.

  “I want you to believe me, Sydney, but you don’t have to. She was probably terrified after my death, and alone.”

  I disagree with his statement but I don’t let on. Our mom wasn’t alone. She had two daughters. She had responsibilities that she neglected.

  “Your mother knew a lot of things she wasn’t supposed to know,” he regrets.

  Then she must have questioned them during her sane stint while Evvie was an infant. She must have tried hard to forget the terrible theories that her husband, my father, had told to her. But once you’re brought from ignorance, you can’t ignore the truth. It surrounded her. The government did have something to do with my father’s disappearance. She
was being watched and so were her children. Most frightening, they would kill us if we stepped in the wrong direction. She was in a constant state of fear. One day she slipped from the sanity she managed to hold onto and lost her ability to return.

  “What happened to you and your sister after your mother’s…” He can’t bring himself to finish the question. He needs time to process her death and accept it.

  “We lived in the orphanage for two years, then with a foster for one. We returned to the orphanage for less than a year before Evvie was fostered again. I got a living variance just afterward, when I turned sixteen.”

  He pounds the table with a closed fist and startles me. “I’m sorry,” he says, though I’m not sure if he’s referring to our shuffling from place to place or for alarming me. “I didn’t know. I traced your chip to the orphanage once, but the next day it went back to the little apartment I assumed you guys were living in. I figured you volunteered at the orphanage or something.”

  “No, they must have rerouted my global-positioning signal back to Trista’s apartment. She was the foster we had for a year.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” he says regrettably. “I’m so sorry, Sydney. Crewe told me about what happened with her, how you came to have an updated chip. If I’d have known… Sydney, if I’d have known about any of those things… I would have done anything to protect you. You were my little girl.”

  “Unfortunately, you still have the chance to prove that,” I tell him. “For your other little girl. We both do. Dad—” I pause for a moment. The word is forced, and yet it sounds sweet leaving my lips. This is my father, my Demetri. “Evvie is my entire world. There isn’t a soul on earth who will ever change that. No one can fill the hole she’ll leave if she’s gone.”

  “I understand,” he says, without sadness that I’ve belittled his importance. “We’re going to get her back. We’re going to be a family,” he says taking my hands in his. I’m forced to smile at this. “I’ll go tell the others to join us.” My dad squeezes my hands, pats them, and stands up on stiff legs. He smiles a lengthy smile at me, and heads toward the door to go summon the others.

  “Dad?” I say before he opens the door. He turns and waits. By Crewe’s example, I push through my nerves and approach him. He only allows me to stand awkwardly before him for a split second before he follows my weak invitation. My father wraps me into his strong arms.

  My shock and anger have vanished and I’m overtaken by the power of love. I’ve loved and missed my father for so long, and by some great miracle, he’s here again. I squeeze him with all my might and open my heart to him.

  “I love you so much,” he says as he strokes my hair. Against my earlier will, my tear ducts give way and release all the tears I’ve suppressed for my dead father. We stand in our embrace for a long moment, not wanting to let go for fear that we might lose each other again. My dad is alive. He’s here. He’s going to help me get my sister back.

  “You’re going to love Evvie too,” I say from within his hold.

  My father looks into my eyes, but doesn’t let go of my arms. “We’re going to get her back,” he promises.