Ten Days to Escape

 

 

“Whoa, Peach Pie, let’s back it up a meter or two,” my father said over my cell phone.

We were Facetiming. I was standing in the Mortons’ driveway, and he was inside a North Carolina airport, waiting to board a flight to Los Angeles. He looked so handsome. I missed him so much, I had to stop myself from collapsing.

“Let me see if I understand you clearly, Bertie.” My father liked to summarize what people said. As I mentioned, he’s a semi-famous attorney, and summarizing is his way of making you sound, well, unsound. My mom said he had turned it into an art form.

“Not one other person in the Morton house heard, or saw, or felt, any of the things you have heard, and seen, and felt,” Dad said. “No ghosts or spirits or spectral beings?”

Swallowing a breath, I clutched his small image like it was a lifeline.

“Well, no, but I did,” I said. “I really did. Something bad is happening here, Daddy, you got to believe me. Something bad is coming for me and mom and even Leon.”

My father said nothing. He just looked at me.

Another lawyer trick. Stewing in the silence, you start to wonder if you should go ahead and plead insanity. Only I wasn’t surrendering twice in one day. Dad was the only person in the world who totally understood me, and I needed him to understand me now. Finally, he spoke up. “So, what you are really telling me is that you are concerned about your mother’s health and welfare?”

The odd phrasing threw me a bit, but I nodded, “Yes, Daddy, I am.”

He gestured to a gate agent that he needed one more minute, then he looked into his cell and spoke quickly. “In that case, you need to cut out this nonsense, Bertie. I mean it. You need to try harder to get along with the Mortons and stop stirring up trouble for your mother. And, more importantly, for yourself. Be better than this.”

“Daddy, I’m not lying.”

He cut me off. It hit me that I had inherited this impolite trait from him.

“Well, you’re sure not telling the truth. Forgive me for sounding harsh, Fluffy Stuff, but I’ve got to board this flight, so we are going to have to wrap this up. You know full well there is no such thing as ghosts. If you said something like that to me on the witness stand, I’d rip your testimony to pieces.”

“I’m not a defendant, I’m your daughter,” I said. “And I’m scared.”

He cut me off again, this time sympathetically.

“Bertie, I’m sorry you’re hurting. It makes me hurt, too. But we are still sticking to the plan: I’ll be in Altoona in ten days. We will figure this out, okay? Just ten quick days.”

Ten days sounded like a life sentence. Or a death sentence. Water rose in my eyes. “Promise, Daddy? I need you to say you promise.”

“Have I ever let you down?”

“That’s a question, not a promise,” I said.

“I promise, I promise, I promise. How’s that?”

The image on my cell jittered as he speed-walked down the tunnel to his airplane. Blowing me a goodbye kiss, he made me promise I would try my best to be my best.

“I promise, I promise, I promise,” I said.

The call ended. His image went dark. Warm tears fell down my cheeks.

Ten days till I escape, I thought. Ten lousy days.