When the cop, some guy named Diaz, said “your stepdaughter,” I stopped him. We were standing outside my work bay. Next to us, a Dodge Ramcharger hung suspended, waiting for me to figure out what was making the strange noise its owner could not describe in any way that made sense.
Savannah was Lorraine’s daughter. She had nothing to do with me. And that was by her choice.
I had tried to be friendly. But she never liked me, not from the get-go. She was always shooting her mom a look or rolling her eyes when I talked. As if I wasn’t right there.
I knew how to recognize disrespect.
That girl had no idea how good she had it. Had I ever laid a finger on her? No. Not even when she was just asking for a spanking. And no matter what some people might think, she wasn’t too big for that. You were never too big, not when you insisted on talking back. Insisted on acting like a spoiled brat.
And she was spoiled. I’d even let her have her own room, put my motorcycle outside, let her and Lorraine paint it this pinky-purple color called “Violets in the Spring.”
When I was a kid, I slept on a couch. Never had my own bedroom. And that didn’t hurt me one bit. If anything, it made me stronger.
The cop kept badgering me. “Why didn’t you report your girlfriend’s daughter’s disappearance right away?”
“What disappearance? She left for that karate class she takes.” I knew it was kung fu, but it felt good to call it karate.
“But she didn’t come back. Why didn’t you alert her mother at work? Why didn’t you call the police?”
“I figured Savannah was just mad at me, but I knew she’d come back eventually. I mean, where else was she going to go? And by the time Lorraine came home, I was already asleep. She didn’t say nothing. I thought Savannah must have come back.” This morning, Lorraine had been hysterical. But I wasn’t worried. Savannah was probably just being stubborn.
That girl didn’t even know how lucky she was to be getting a free ride. When I was her age, I was working thirty-six hours a week at a TacoTime. I was a shift manager, and proud of it. A sixteen-year-old shift manager.
And I didn’t have any adults to live with. My mom was living with a friend. My stepdad had moved out before she did. Which was one way of saying he was in Multnomah County Jail awaiting trial.
My little sister was in foster care. My mom had kicked me out for telling the school counselor what my stepdad was doing to my sister.
I’m the one who betrayed him.
When he was the only dad I’d ever known.
And it turned out that nobody was happier and nothing got better.
After everything went to hell, I wished I’d kept my mouth shut. But I’d seen how my sister cried. And then how she closed herself off.
Since I didn’t want to go into foster care, I disappeared when the social workers came around. At sixteen, I had to figure out how to make it on my own. If I didn’t work enough hours, I didn’t eat, except for mistakes. And when the owner is watching you like a hawk, you have to be careful about making mistakes on purpose. Something had to give. And what gave was school.
But Savannah got to go every day. She’d already had more schooling than me. And she had lots of opinions, which she was more than happy to share.
“You’ve already admitted that you argued that night. Is there anything else that happened that you want to tell me about, Tim?”
There was no way they were going to pin this on me. “No.”
The cop shook his head, looking grave. “You’ve had a DWI.”
“Only once. It was a mistake, and I took a class.” It had been tough not driving, even if it was only for a few weeks. My car was a real classic. A 1968 Camaro. Right now it was parked on the back lot, waiting for the increasingly rare parts it needed to be shipped.
The car had belonged to my stepdad. When he went to prison, he gave it to me.
The thing was, I actually liked him. How messed up was that? But he was the closest thing I ever had to a father. He even took me fishing. He showed me how to tie knots, how to cast the line, how to gut the fish.
Using the knife he handed me, I followed his instructions on how to split open the white belly. I wanted to throw up, but I didn’t. I just swallowed hard and pushed the sick feeling back down.
I was good at that.
I ignored the way the flat silver eye of the fish stared at me. The way the white flesh resisted. And then parted. The way its tail wiggled back and forth as I sawed. He said it was just from the knife. I kept doing what he said. Holding the head between two fingers, sticking the fingers of my other hand into the slit I’d made. It felt like I was putting my fingers into a mouth. I pulled out the red and pink and white guts and dropped them into the water.
And I didn’t feel a thing.
Now the cop took a step closer. “And what about that other arrest, Tim? The one for domestic violence?”