Joy swelled through her. She wanted to scream at all the talking heads that had accused her father, that said he was unfeeling and unable to form attachments. He wasn’t a sociopath. He wasn’t a serial killer. He was her dad. Bex wanted to tell him everything, but caution dulled the sharp edges of her glee.
“Can I ask you something?” Bex stared straight ahead, her father’s breathing a steady in-out, in-out, heavy in her ear.
“Anything, Bethy.”
“There were…signs.”
“Signs?”
She could hear her father shift on his end of the phone. She tried to imagine where he was. She could hear the faint whooshing of cars or waves, but Bex couldn’t tell if that was on her end or his. There was nothing else, no telltale squeak of furniture or din of coffeehouse chatter.
“When I first got here to school, there was something in my locker.” She swallowed. “A postcard.” She pressed her eyes closed, and even though she hadn’t looked at the card since, the cheery greeting, the ominous scrawl on the back was forever burned in her mind. “It said, ‘Daddy’s Home.’”
There was a long, pregnant pause, and Bex counted the seconds. “Did you put it there?”
“No, sweetheart, I didn’t.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure, Bethy.”
“And there were Missing posters.”
“Were those in your locker too?”
Bex pressed her palm to her forehead. “No, they were on my friend’s car. Hundreds of them. They were all…” She took a deep breath. “The victims.”
“Victims?”
She gritted her teeth. “The Wife Collector’s victims.”
Her father cleared his throat. “I didn’t do that.”
“Who would? And why would someone?”
“I can’t explain everything right now. There’s not enough time. I can’t stay here.”
A sob lodged in Bex’s chest. “You just… I just found you. You can’t just go.”
“It’s not safe right now. I’ll make contact with you. I promise I will.”
“Dad, I—”
“Look, Bethy, I’ve got to go.” A siren wailed long and low in the distance. “I’ll call you again soon, okay? I’ve got to go.”
He hung up the phone and Bex stood there, her phone pressed to her ear, listening to the dull silence. Finally she hung up, wondering why she felt so empty inside.
Bex walked through the next day in a daze, checking her cell phone call log to make sure that the previous night’s phone call had actually happened, that she hadn’t imagined it.
She remembered talking to Laney and Chelsea but couldn’t say what it was about. She remembered sitting down and having lunch with Trevor, then kissing him good-bye when she slid into Denise’s car.
“Good day today?”
Bex nodded, her hand still on her cell phone.
Denise was silent until they were nearly home. “Is something going on, Bex?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you’ve been holed up in your room. You barely talk when you do come downstairs, and it’s been like pulling teeth to even get you to go out with your friends the last few days.”
Anger swelled in Bex’s chest. Denise wasn’t her mother. Denise had no idea what she was going through, what she had gone through. Her father did.
“We’re going to talk to your teachers at Back to School Night. I hope they’re not going to tell me you’ve been out of it in class too.”
Bex shook her head, then forced the words out of her mouth. “No. I’m doing okay. I’m just distracted. Schoolwork and—”
“You’ve played the schoolwork card a few too many times, hon. And the distraction one. You need to let us know what’s going on with you. Is it something with Laney and Chelsea? With Trevor?”
Bex gritted her teeth, feeling annoyed and violated. What right did Denise have…?
“I’m fine,” Bex said.
Denise pulled into the garage and Bex slung her backpack over her shoulder, deliberately lingering a few extra minutes in the kitchen so Denise would get off her back. She unwrapped a granola bar and sat at the table while she ate, and she and Denise at a frosty standoff.
“Can I go upstairs now?”
“You can go upstairs whenever you want. I’m just worried about you, Bexy.”
“There’s nothing to worry about,” she said, pushing past her foster mom.
Bex padded up the stairs, not bothering to check the readout when her cell phone rang.
“Hello?”
“It’s Detective Schuster. I’m just checking in—”
“No,” she said, “he hasn’t made contact.” Bex hung up without waiting for Schuster to respond. She threw her cell phone onto her bed and dumped her backpack, then opened up her laptop. She had no new messages. She stared at the bright screen and her empty mailbox until she drifted off to sleep.
• • •
“Beth Anne! Beth Anne!”
She knew that voice, remembered that voice. It was far off in her dreams, in her memory, coming from somewhere deep. “Dad?” she heard herself murmur.
“Yeah, Beth Anne, it’s me. It’s your daddy. Now I’m going to put my hand over your mouth here. Don’t you scream, okay? Don’t you scream.”
“Why would you—”
Bex felt fingers on her cheeks pressing carefully but firmly. A thumb on the bone just under her eye socket. The heavy, far-off scent of tobacco and old sweat was overwhelming.
“Now don’t scream.”
Her eyes flew open.
His grip tightened across her mouth. She blinked. His eyes widened, round, black marbles in the darkness.
“Promise me, Bethy.”
Bex could feel the tears running over her temples and pooling in her ears as she nodded her head. She wouldn’t scream.
Her father took his hand from her mouth, his dry lips cracking into a smile.
“It’s been such a long time, Beth Anne. Just look at you.”
Bex didn’t dare move. A man was beside her, hulking, bigger than she remembered, with a face that was familiar but more lined, more seasoned than the one she saw in her memory, in her dreams. She was in her mint-green bedroom in Michael and Denise’s house where she was Bex Andrews, and her father was right there, kneeling by her bedside. Her two worlds crashed together.
“How did you get in here?”
Her father’s eyes went round, hurt and surprise playing in them. “It’s been ten years, Bethy. Look at you. You’re like a young woman now. So pretty.”
Bex’s heart hammered, thoughts streaming at record speeds. This was her father. This was a murderer. This was a man who came to find her against all odds. This was a man who broke into her house and slammed a palm over her mouth and told her not to scream. This was her father.
“Dad?”
She could see him blinking in the darkness, the faint light from the streetlight outside catching the glisten from his eyes as he blinked back tears. “I’ve missed you so much, Bethy.”
He scooped her up in a rib-crushing bear hug, and Bex could feel his shoulders shaking as he cried, as he murmured into her hair, “My sweet Bethy girl, how I’ve missed you.” Bex wanted to hug him back. Tears burned at her eyes, and she wanted to cry and fall against him and tell him how much she’d missed him too, but her body wouldn’t relent and she remained still, her eyes dry.
“What are you doing here, Dad?”
He held her at arm’s length, his whisper hoarse and choked with emotion. “I came for you, Bethy.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“I had no choice. I tried…I tried to get to you earlier, but there was always someone there. It was too risky.”
Bex thought back to the football game, the throaty voice calling her name under the bleachers, the burning touch on her arm.
“We can’t talk here. Those people are asleep in the next room. We can’t risk them finding me—finding us.” He held out a hand. “Come with me, Beth Anne.”
She thought of her father staring down at sleeping Michael and Denise, and she felt anger, violation, suddenly protective.
“You can’t just come in here…”
Her father kept his hand outstretched to her. “Just talk to me, Bethy. That’s all I want. I know you must have questions, hundreds of them, and I’ll answer them all. What happened when you… When they…” He glanced at her, his face contorted in pain, then looked away as if he couldn’t bear to see her. “It was all wrong.”
Bex’s breath hitched, her throat burning. She’d done it. She’d turned him in. “I’m sorry.”
“Come on, Beth Anne.”
She stared at his outstretched hand, watching her own, shaking, unsteady, reaching out for him. Bex wasn’t sure what she expected to happen—lightning sparks or one of those bright-light, hair-blown-back movie montages where she would see everything her father had done over the last ten years, but it was simply her hand slipping into her father’s.
“Put some clothes and shoes on. I’ll wait for you downstairs.”
“I’m not going with you.”
Her father let out a long sigh that seemed to have ten years of angst and hope built up in it, and it broke Bex’s heart. “I know, honey. I wouldn’t expect you to up and run off with me. It’s been a long time. You don’t even know me anymore. I’ll be waiting outside for you.”
Bex watched the careful way her father moved across her floor, the gentleness he used when closing her door behind him.
“I’m just going to go talk to him,” she reasoned, mumbling. “Just talk to him outside and come right back to bed and…”
Bex pulled the laces on her sneakers and avoided her own questions. “I’m just going to talk to him.” She stood and Lauren’s voice pulsed in her ear: He was just a man, you know? Bex swallowed hard, a tremor rolling through her.
The night air was a wild, cold burst when Bex opened the front door, and she zipped her hoodie up to her neck. Her mind spun: He came for me! He wanted to see me! Why, why would he want to see me? He wants something; he did something; he’s an animal who can’t make connections, can’t feel.
She looked around, hissing in the darkness. “Dad?”
The only answer was a dull silence pierced by the vague sounds of trucks on the highway and waves crashing somewhere in the distance.
“Oh my God,” she mumbled, sweat pricking the back of her neck. Her hands tingled, and this time she couldn’t control the tears. “I’m going crazy. He was never here. I was dreaming…” She plopped unceremoniously to the ground, her tailbone thunking the cement hard when she heard the hum of an engine, saw the faint shadow of white parking lights.
There was a truck at her curb, and her father was in the driver’s seat. She looked at him and she was seven years old again. The wrinkles and the gray hair that she had been so focused on were obscured by the darkness, and it was as if no time had passed as he curled a finger out to her, his grin wide and welcoming. Still, Bex was tentative, hesitantly walking toward the car and approaching the driver’s side.
“Well, come on. Get in. Wait. Do you want to drive?”
She shook her head. “I thought we were just going to talk.”
“We are, Bethy. But it’s almost four in the morning. I think we’re going to be a little conspicuous sitting out front of your house, don’t you? And as much as I’d like to keep all this on the up-and-up…” He screwed up his face into some approximation of apology or shame.
“O-okay, but we’re not going too far.”
Her father threw open the passenger side door and Bex looked up at him, a daughter seeing her dad. He was innocent. He was harmless. He loved her.
“Aw, Bethy,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “Don’t tell me you believe all the lies they’ve fed you.”
Cold betrayal shot goose bumps down Bex’s arms, and she shook her head again, then stepped into the car, belting herself in.
“He was just a man, you know?”
They drove in silence for a few moments, until the truck’s tires began to spin under the dusting of sand on the blacktop of the beach parking lot. He pressed the car into Park and killed the engine.
“Is this your car?”
He shook his head. “You know…my circumstances, don’t you, Bethy?”
Bex bit her thumbnail and looked away, nodding curtly.
“I was so glad when you reached out to me.”
She turned back with a start. “When I reached out?”
“On the site.” He touched his chest.
Bex’s tongue went heavy in her mouth, her muscles liquid. She knew that he was GAMECREATOR, but somewhere in the back of her mind, she’d hoped it wasn’t true, hoped her father wasn’t lurking on a page that praised a madman. “So that was definitely you.”
“Well, yeah.”
“He’s a narcissist, Bex. He’ll be trolling the sites, enjoying that people worship him.”
“Why?” There was anger in her voice, and Bex could feel her nostrils flare.
“I wanted to find you.”
“That’s not why. You had no idea that’s where you would find me.”
He shrugged, his shoulders bigger and meatier than Bex remembered. “But I found you just the same.”
They stared at each other in dark silence for a beat until her father unclicked his seat belt. “What do you want to know?”