“Where did you get the money to move her?” I asked rashly.
“Well”—he put his hands in his pockets and gave me an uneasy smile—“I took out a loan. Now”—he pressed his hands out in the air—“I know what you’re going to say—”
“Dad”—I fingered the device in my hands—“why would you need this?”
He didn’t bother to look at it. He just stared at me with a void in his eyes and a faint smile. “Oh, I recorded that for myself a while back. It helps me sleep while she’s traveling—makes me feel like she's still here, so I don't worry so much.”
“Do you mind if I call the transportation place? It might make me feel a little better to hear she’s okay.”
His eyes held a tinge of concern as he took a small step forward. “Is everything all right?”
“Not at all.” Sighing, I rubbed my jittery hands. “Elias knows everything.”
“My God,” he gasped, his mouth falling open. It took him quite a while before he was able to close it again. “Did he hurt you?” Stepping toward me again, he reached out and grasped my shoulders as he scanned every piece of my exposed flesh for a brief moment.
“I’ll heal.”
“I warned you about that man,” he barked, scowling at me. “We have to get on the road right this minute.”
“Before we go, I need to know if anyone other than Elias knows, I need to know that Frankie is safe.”
“I’ll give them a call when we hit the road.” He looked around at the furniture. “Most of these things aren’t ours anyway. Have you packed enough to carry you through for a while?”
It was impossible to ignore the tinge of skepticism that bothered me. It was a pressure at my spine that made movement impossible. Suddenly, I saw the cracks in my father, and why he had such a perfect answer to everything. The last bit of advice his previous nurse gave me played on a constant replay.
“Why…won’t you give me the number?” I asked, my voice trembling. “It would make sense to call now, because if Elias’s father knows, he’ll probably go after Frankie. We could be walking right into a trap. Give it to me, and I’ll call on the road. If I don’t get a response, we’ll stay at a hotel and figure things out.”
“Ah, hell, Hanley.” He ran a hand over his misshapen brush cut, setting a starry-eyed gaze to the window, allowing unfiltered daylight to pour into the room.
“Dad?”
He remained immovable and still, stuck in a sort of dreamlike state as he continued to stare at the invisible.
I tried to fight, but I couldn’t. For the first time in a long time, I cried real tears, not from physical pain or empathy, but from an emotion so deep and gutting, I couldn’t bear it. “There is no transportation company is there? What happened to Frankie?”
“I see." His lips pursed together, his cheeks bowed out in anger. "That man has filled your head with lies again—”
“This is not about Elias. This is about you not giving me any answers. It’s about you…lying to me. Where…is…Frankie?”
“I’ve told you where she is,” he bellowed, sticking a finger in my face. “I don’t appreciate you questioning me like this.”
The truth was spoken even though he didn’t say a word to confirm it. Clutching the player, I lifted my arm and threw it, allowing it to shatter against the wall beside where he stood. “When did you pull the plug on Frankie? When did you decide to pull the plug on my mother and not tell me? Why did you lead me on and make me think she was still here?”
He blinked rapidly, his eyes watering. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”
“Stop lying to me,” I gritted through my teeth, staring up at him through my moisture slicked eyelashes, “or I’ll walk out that door and never come back.”
Tears began to fall down his cheeks. Closing his eyes, he slanted against the wall as though he was thrown against it. “I was so scared this would happen, and it has. I’ve lost you to that man. You don’t even believe your own father.”
“I walked away from Elias,” I replied, exhaustion and frustration taking its toll. “I told you that. He knows the truth. He has nothing to do with this—us. Why can’t you see that? Why would you do this to me? What reason did you have for making me believe she was still here?” I clenched my fists, psyching myself for the inevitable. “I forgave you for so many things. I did the things you asked me to do because I believed in you—I believed you. If you can lie about this, what else have you lied about?” Shaking my head in disgust, I brushed past him and grabbed my bag in the hall.
“Wait a minute!” he called out to me.
His voice became distant and silent. I only heard one question I cared to answer. “Where are you going?”
“Back to Roth. To find the answers you won’t give me.”
“You won’t find him. I killed him after what he did.”
I turned on a dime, glaring back at a father who wasn’t the semblance of the man I remembered in the now or the one I grew up with. “What did you say?”
The expressionless look I saw in his eyes before he turned violent or hurt himself had made a return. “I killed him. There is no Roth to find. Enough of this now.” Collecting himself, his posture turned a little more casual. “We need to get on the road.”
“I’m going to find Roth.” I no longer knew what to believe. The truth had been turned around too many times for me to keep up. “I now know why he set the fire,” I continued feebly. “To show me that you were lying to me. I have a feeling he knows a lot more if you are so against me seeing him that you would lie to me and tell me you killed him. You’re not a killer.”
He turned his back on me, remaining that way as though he expected me to leave. With nothing more to say, I did exactly that.
TWENTY-EIGHT
AT THE TICKET COUNTER, I thumbed through my wallet in hopes of finding a credit card I had forgotten about and hadn’t maxed out. When I fingered a card foreign to me, with my name on it, I was stunned. I flipped over the back and found a sticky note. “$50,000 dollar limit on this card. I added you as an authorized user. Don’t spend it all in one place. E.”
“Ma’am?” the attendant called to me. “Are you all right?”
I sniffled and wiped my nose with the back of my hand while nodding. “Yes.” I gave her the card. “I found a card to use.” I watched her anxiously, unsure if Elias had given me the card before or after our final fight. If it had been before, it was very likely he could’ve cut it off.
I had worried for nothing. The card went through and the attendant handed me a ticket and gave me directions to my departure gate.
IT WAS LIKE a prickly hair on the back of my neck that wouldn’t stop irritating me. During the time I had made plans to fly into JFK, got a hotel, and pounded the pavement in search of the facility where I last knew Roth was—or could’ve been—I could tell someone was there in the background, watching me. Whoever it was, it wasn’t a face I recognized.
THERE WAS A lone woman at the front desk of the mental health wing of the hospital. She was on a phone call that seemed to go on for about an hour before she asked me what I needed.
“I’m here to see Roth Cari.”
She cocked her head to the side and shook her head at me. “Even if he was still here, it’s not a visitation day.”
“What do you mean was?”
“I can’t give you that information unless you’re family or a health care provider.”
“Whether or not he’s here, can you tell him Leina Williams wants to see him?” I turned to leave but was halted when she called out to me.
“Wait! Did you say Leina?”
“Yes?” I turned around to regard her.
She rummaged through the desk and the counters, increasingly frustrated as she muttered, “I know I put it here somewhere. AH!” She picked up an envelope and thrust it at me. “He left this for you.”
I walked forward, taking the envelope. Scrawled across the front was my name, Leina, in what I knew to be Roth�
��s handwriting. “Can you at least tell me if his father came to check him out? His name is Natanael Cari. Please, it’s really important.”
She clutched her chest, looking around skeptically. Satisfied no one was around, she sat down at her computer and tapped a few keys for a moment. “Yes, it was. I remembered the face but not the name.”
“Tan skinned man with green eyes?”
“No. It was a man about three shades darker than your complexion with brown eyes. I figured the kid—Roth—was biracial. He kind-of looked like he could be.” She labeled him as a kid even though Roth was twenty-nine and she looked to be not much older than he. It wasn’t her only slip-up, but I was too occupied with seeking out my truth to play a game of politically correct with her.
I fiddled with my purse and took out a picture of my father. “Did he look like this man?”
“Could’ve been. I didn’t really pay too much attention to him.”
“Thank you,” I told her quickly and raced out of the facility.
I leaned against the exterior brick of the hospital, preparing myself to read the letter. But when I opened the envelope, a generic packet of sugar slipped out. Something was written on the small space:
Your father is a fucking liar and a killer.
I held the packet of sugar up toward the sky, completely confused. It was one of many things that didn’t fit or make much sense to me. I looked down the street, perusing the stores to find a place where I could use a public phone.
"LEINA?" MY SISTER answered, surprising me. Normally, Whitney was the one to answer her phone and either pacify me or make up excuses for why my sister wasn’t available to speak to me.
“Are you having me followed?”
“I don’t have the resources, or a reason…do I?” She exhaled audibly and in an elongated manner. “I thought you called me to discuss something important.”
“I did,” I told her quickly, hoping to pique her interest. She seemed near to hanging up on me, as usual. “What is the real reason you stopped speaking to Dad after our mother—after Frankie died?”
She sighed. "I'm glad you finally know. The question is how much you know."
"I don’t know when our father pulled the plug, but I know it was a long time ago. We had a fight. I found out the truth.”
“Dad pulled the plug on Frankie the day after our visit."
Suddenly, I felt like I was coated in acid. I gasped. “Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because you would've believed me?" she asked sarcastically. "Her ashes have been on my mantle for years. It took me a long time to find them. Our father wanted to keep it a secret from me, too. I pulled some strings to find out what really happened and did what I could to give her a nice ceremony.”
"Why would he do that?” I asked, my shock and hurt bled through my question. She knew all along and never tried to tell me the truth. “Why would you do that and not tell me?”
“You are our father’s advocate and you always have been,” she explained in a monotone with a sigh, denoting the conversation was boring her. “Any time I say anything to prove he’s a mentally unstable liar, you fly off the handle. The reason why he kept lying to you? To keep the idea of her alive for you. There is a reason you separated our mother into two parts after the accident. Frankie and our mother. You couldn’t let go of her, either. Just think, all the time you thought she was alive in a room you could never go in, why didn’t you ask our father why he couldn’t let her go?“
“I never felt that she was really alive,” I explained, “even if she was…still here."
“That’s not an answer, Leina. Did you ever ask Dad to let her die in peace when you thought she was still with you?”
“No,” I said solemnly. “The idea never crossed my mind.”
“She was still alive for you no matter how many times or ways you call our mother’s death a loss, an accident, what have you. Never once did you state she died when I was still around you, or when we talked on the phone. I bet you never did to anyone else, either.
“She died the moment she was hit by a car. Being brain dead isn’t living. She was corpse being kept alive by machines for a day. Keeping her alive, keeps the reason for your revenge alive. She was a reminder you couldn't see—didn't want to see."
"He…loved Frankie so much,” I said more to myself than her. “I can’t understand why he would treat her death that way, or why he would let her go so soon. He would've done anything in his power to find the money to keep her attached to machines. I would have done the same thing if I knew the truth.” I kept searching for answers to my questions. I wracked my brain for the answers. The only ones I could come up with were the ones I’d rather not believe; the man I thought my father was, was all a lie.
"You really don't know all of it, because you’re still living in a fantasy world. How can you not remember how our parents really were together?” She paused and I could’ve sworn I heard the sound of water rushing in the background. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter now. I wanted to do things the right way to make the right people pay for the wrong things they've done. No one at work would take the case seriously. All I had was speculation. Because I wanted to keep my job, I let it go.
“You can change that for me. I'll put you in touch with some agents in the Los Angeles area. They will take good care of you and make sure you stay safe while you do what you need to do to take down the people responsible for our mother's death.”
The Feds were never an option for me in the beginning and they never would be. If and when my head became clear again and I decided to finish my mission, I would stick to the original plan. At this point, my plan was all I had left to keep me sane.
But I had to know why my sister easily shirked her desire to take the Caris down with me. “Why aren’t you offering to help when you’ve wanted to see Natanael get his just desserts just as badly as I have?”
“I’m sorry, Leina. I have my hands full here. The agency in L.A. will help you on your end.”
“If I do it your way, what happens if I’m discovered before I can get the information? You know how the Caris deal with things they want to disappear.” And now I knew firsthand. “Wouldn’t you want to make sure I’m safe, see this through, or at least…see me before something happens to me?”
Muffled voices were heard during my sister’s silence. “I have to go. I’ll text you the information for the department in L.A. Take care of yourself and good luck on taking them down the right way.” She hung up on me.
The right way? There wasn’t a right way, just an efficient way. If the Feds were able to get Natanael in their clutches, he would get some sort of deal for immunity because they would want the bigger players in the game, players who were higher up the chain of crime than Natanael. He would never face justice for what he did to my mother if I took the moral high ground.
I RETURNED TO Ipomoea on the next flight out through LAX. Despite everything, I was willing to forgive and forget with my father if he could be truthful with me. There was nothing my parents could’ve done that I wouldn’t have forgiven them for; all I needed and asked for was his honesty.
He owed me the truth and Roth's clue might’ve forced it out of him. It had to.
MY FATHER’S CAR was in the driveway—but the other one wasn’t. I could hear the roaring motor of what could've been none other than what was once Frankie's prided Nova coming from the garage. I ran into the house and tried to access the garage through the kitchen.
Dense thick air that smelled a little like gasoline and motor oil burned my throat. I covered my nose because it began to create a catch in my throat and made it hard to breathe.
The instant the door—leading to the garage from the kitchen—was opened, plumes of thick, grayish smoke rushed in, filling the house with barely breathable air. Coughing and blinking the sting out of my eyes, I ran my hand up the wall until I found the door opener. The mechanism churned and the motor purred as it opened the door and poured daylight into the otherwise dark sp
ace.
I stepped down the short concrete steps to move into the garage. I felt around until the smoke began to clear and rounded the vehicle to stand on the passenger side. With the smoke fading away, I saw a figure in the front seat. I bent down to the window, cupping my hands around my face to block out the shadows and took a closer look.
My father sat in the driver’s seat, the soft music from the 8-track stereo played inside the vehicle. He was dressed in his pajamas. Through his closed eyes, there was a grimace fixed on his face.
I tried the door, but it was locked. I made my way around and opened the driver’s side door. His body moved stiffly, leaning to the right.
I touched his cold, hard shoulder, not sure what I’d expected when I knew the truth. He’d been there for a while. Alone in the dark.
It was the second time it had happened and the first time I’d been too late.
It was too late to save him.
THE POLICE WERE long gone after having asked the preliminary questions to file the report. The when, what, who, and where. They gave me half-hearted “I’m sorry for your loss” before they left.
It had been hours since they took my father’s body to the morgue. I couldn’t bother with arrangements, or to tell my sister the news. Honestly, I didn’t think she would’ve cared.
As I sat on the front steps, I couldn’t move, nor could I think of going back inside the house. Nothing about what I’d seen or heard in the past few days seemed real. His death felt like an ethereal dream I’d soon wake up from. It didn’t feel real to me. I halfway expected to wake up and to find him standing over me, ready and willing to tell me the truth about everything. I would’ve forgiven him, and together, we’d struggle to move on with our lives.
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