Disaster was waiting for me if my father made any mistakes right now.
The twisted knots in my heart tightened with every mile as we got closer. Despite the panic, I was still in turmoil over the argument I’d overheard. Gabriel had held my hand, and the more they argued, the closer he got, until near the end, to where we were clinging to each other. We’d stared silently into each other’s eyes, knowing what the other was thinking.
It can’t end. We had to stick together. The more they fought, the more it was obvious to us. We had to find a way to convince Kota. Mr. Blackbourne had been right. Kota was the core of the team. Without him believing in it, the others would doubt.
We would fail.
We would break.
I folded my arms over my stomach. I’d put on fresh underwear, no bra, a bulky sweatshirt that I suddenly realized might have been Luke’s because it was baby blue and too big for me, and cotton shorts. They were the first things I had seen inside that were my size. I didn’t recognize them, and for all I knew, they weren’t shorts at all, but one of the boys’ boxers and I was too panicked to notice the difference. I’d dressed quickly inside Victor’s closet, not daring to waste time.
My father’s return wasn’t unexpected, but it had happened without warning, and with the rest of us so far away. The fact that he’d called around asking for me made us much more worried. Maybe he was just worried about me. Maybe he was upset that I’d left Marie alone for a week. Had something happened to her? An accident?
“What about my mother?” I asked Kota in general as he drove and then regretted looking to him for an answer. His hands were locked at ten and two, and he edged over the speed limit, despite being such a stickler for road rules. He hadn’t even gotten on my case about my seat belt, which at first I had forgotten about but had slowly, quietly put on. I refocused on Victor beside me. “My stepmother, I mean. Is it because of her? Did he come back about her? Is she out of the hospital?”
“She can’t be,” Victor whispered. He picked up my hand and held it tight enough that my fingers tingled, threatening to become numb. “We would have been notified. Although she’s been demanding a transfer to a different hospital, one that would let her go home.”
Nathan twisted in his seat until he faced me. “We’re working on pretending to do so, and just driving her around the block in an ambulance and bringing her back inside the hospital from a different entrance, giving her a new room and a new doctor.”
“How long...can they keep her there?” I asked.
Nathan turned back around to face the windshield again but continued to speak. “For now, at least. She’s still talking divorce, but also she wants doctors who just give her whatever medications she wants. The stuff that makes her so loopy.”
“We won’t be able to keep her forever,” Kota said. He breathed in deeply through his nose and out through his mouth, turning his head slightly as he checked all of the mirrors. “For now, though, she isn’t a problem. She’s being monitored, and they are doing everything they can to make sure she’s stable, both physically and mentally.”
I settled into the seat, bringing up my legs and lifting the sweatshirt to roll it over the top of my knees and cocoon myself inside. I dipped my head to my knees, darkening the light and warming myself with my own breath to stop the onset of goose bumps along my body. If he rolled up the window, it was too stuffy, and with it open even just a crack, it was cold.
“He’s probably just checking up on me,” I said, more out of hope. “He came back, but...he’ll go again. He didn’t want to be here.”
Victor’s palm found my back, and he rubbed warmly, leaning in. “It’ll be fine. We won’t be too far away, and we’ll be listening to whatever he says.”
“We should have done something before now,” Nathan mumbled under his breath. “This shouldn’t be a problem.”
“We don’t know what’s going on,” Kota said. “And he wasn’t the one tying her up and leaving her to die. Despite whatever we might assume about his past, he’s never laid a finger on her.” He lifted his head and peered back at me for the first time since leaving the house. “Right?”
I nodded, chewing my lip. I couldn’t remember the last time my father had ever done anything to me—punishment or a hug. His interactions with me usually only showed indifference. On occasion, he did stand up to my stepmother when I’d been on the floor for hours and he finally noticed. Otherwise, he stayed out of it.
Probably so she wouldn’t tell the world about me. He only stepped in when things got too extreme, and it would affect my health, so that someone at school would look closer.
“Hopefully, he’s back just to check on the house and panicked when you weren’t there,” Kota continued. “That’s what we have to assume. It’s why we left your old room the way it was. So he’d think you were still around. Remember?”
I did remember. Some clothes, books and other things had been left behind. The bed had been made. My old trunk was still there.
My bedroom had a small door leading to an attic space. Inside, I’d left the old wardrobe, too, despite wanting to bring it out. The attic was still mostly soundproof. It had pictures inside, along with lights and a beanbag chair. We’d left it because we weren’t sure if my dad would be back on occasion, maybe over weekends like he used to before my mother had gone into the hospital.
Originally, even I’d assumed he would come back every couple of weeks, maybe to refill the fridge and pantry with food and to pay the bills.
I’d stopped thinking he would be back when he’d started paying the bills from wherever he was staying now. He’d sent Marie some cash to pay for food, although Marie hadn’t told me about it.
Because he’d taken steps not to come back, I had assumed he wouldn’t, and I’d settled into the idea that I’d never see him again.
I was nervous about that now, about seeing his face. I’d yelled at him while his wife was possibly dying on the way to the hospital. He’d returned, only to tell me he was leaving and to put a trampoline in the backyard, as if that could make up for the fact that he was going away.
He’d refused to tell me about my past. About where I’d come from and who my mother was.
I wished we could avoid seeing him now. What would he really do if I never showed up? Would he give up and just disappear again? It wasn’t like he could call the cops to search for me. He would never do it.
Despite my wish, the car pulled onto Sunnyvale Court.
To avoid any attention in case Mr. Hendricks had someone watching the road, Kota parked at Bob’s Diner. It was New Year’s Day. The neon sign glowed, advertising it was open, yet the parking lot was almost empty. It was probably a good thing it was slow.