Chapter 14

<<Careful what you wish for,>> Gumps tweets.

Ponytail snatches the phone from my hands. We’re driving away from the city.

“Where are you taking me?” I demand.

He’s stony.

We cross over the Ottawa River into Quebec. Its waters swirl and seethe, carving a valley between the provinces. The longer I sit in silence, the more I realize how stupid this is. But this guy knew my father. And I have the sense he knew everything about my father. Maybe he even called him friend. Rings bedeck fingers covered in scabs as if he’s been in a fight recently. A scar puckers up from out of his sideburn. I wring my hands. I should have been texting police instead of tweeting to myself.

In a couple of minutes we pull on to the shoulder of the highway. Is this where the guy shoots me? Or orders me out so he can steal the van? With my ribs and cast, I’m not exactly a force to be reckoned with.

Ponytail glances around the van and finally pulls the wool scarf from around his neck.

“Lean forward; I will blindfold you.”

I shake my head. This is too much.

“Listen, you wanna meet Daddy or what?”

Meet him? I swallow hard—Daddy. I nod. I’ve come this far. There’s no turning back.

“Why can’t you just tell me?” I ask as he wraps the itchy fabric around my head and then jerks it tight. I can’t see a thing.

“You deserve it,” he says. “Every kid does.” His voice rings cold and sarcastic. It chills my soul.

We’re moving again. I try to keep track of the time between turns and which way I lean on each but soon lose my bearings. I’m lost. I wish he hadn’t grabbed my phone. If I had my phone I could take a picture. The phone stores the location of where the picture was taken, so I’d be able to figure out where he took me. Or at least whoever finds the phone would also be able to find my body.

Then we’re bouncing and jostling. Tires dip into ruts. One spins before catching. We’re off road. Something shrieks across the windshield and finally we jolt to a stop.

He pulls off the scarf and then motions for me to exit the van. I blink in the glow of the interior light. There’s only black outside the windows. The moonless night offers no light and I’m under a canopy of leaves.

A wave of nausea overcomes me. Have I misread the guy? If I was a gangster and wanted to get rid of someone, isn’t this the sort of place I might take her?

“It’s going to be okay,” he says softly. Gently. “Come see your father.”

And then I know. It is the kind of place you dispose of somebody or some body. But it’s not me. Not tonight anyways. It was my dad—three years ago, but maybe not. Maybe there’s a hideout nearby. Maybe it’s a place to disappear.

I open the door, pushing back brush, and step down. The ground’s uneven and spongy, not yet completely frozen and too soft for the van. We’re on some farmer’s road. Scraggly cornstalk stumps rank on the left, dense forest looms on the right. The tips of the crutches pierce the frost and sink deep into the earth. Every dozen steps, the man stops to wait. After about ten minutes we turn and push through bramble and into the woods. I’m numb. Both my body from the cold and my mind from what I’m about to see.

In the woods, the dark is near total and I struggle with roots and grasping deadfall. I can hear Ponytail, both his heavy tread through the leaves and old snow and his huffing breaths. I’m exhausted but I don’t want him to stop. There isn’t going to be some little cabin, chugging smoke, dad waving from the porch. There’s gonna be a—

“Here,” he says, and he waits until I’m balancing on my good foot beside him. “You wanted to find him. Here he is. I don’t want you getting hurt, kid. I was a friend of you’s dad’s. But blood in, blood out, you know?”

No marker rests here. No gravestone. There’s nothing but fall’s leavings.

“No,” I say. This can’t be what happened to him. I stare at the small clearing and then back at Ponytail. “No!” I scream, and then with all the years of pent-up frustration and fear, I swing my crutch. It lands squarely on Ponytail’s shoulder but he only grunts, taking the hit. I scream again.

“Dad.” It’s not possible.

I drop to my knees and claw past the icy top layer and into wet leaves and then soil. I’m digging with my fingernails and screaming, screaming. Cold, wet, greasy earth. Every stone and stick is bone. Every clump of old leaves, a scalp of black hair. Daddy.

The guy hooks his arms under my armpits and tries to haul me off, but I whirl free and scrabble deeper into the earth. My ribs burn. Earth mounds to my right and left. I don’t feel the scrapes and cuts on my hands even as they form. Earth spatters my face, arms, and chest. I taste soil. Dad. I retch and start digging again.

Ten minutes later I’m covered in sweat and dirt, and I collapse, sobbing. My dad’s dead. My daddy. The man who showed me how to use a hammer. The daddy who raced me around the warehouse. Who taught me to be me. My daddy is gone.

What happened? I turn to Ponytail. His hands are clasped and I think a tear glistens on his cheek.

“Who are you?” I demand, but what I really want to know is the answer to the question: Who was my dad?

Ponytail’s silent.

But I know how to find the answer to my question.

“Take me back,” I say.

We begin the slow trek to the van.