“Mark my words, Dylan Burns is going to eat his tongue.”
Chapter 17
Still Indy
I was sitting behind my desk at work, thinking about the coming weekend with knots in my stomach.
My cellphone buzzed across the desk with an incoming call.
A local number showed on the screen.
I didn’t get a ton of SPAM calls or any really. Could it be…? My heart stuttered in my chest as I raced to answer it.
“Hello?”
An automated voice responded, “This is a call from Timothy Evans, an inmate at Sacramento County Main Jail. If you’d like to accept the call, press one. If you no longer want to accept calls from this inmate, press three.”
My hands shaking, I pressed one.
“This call is from an inmate at Sacramento County Main Jail and is being recorded.” The line buzzed and crackled then came my dad’s voice.
“Indigo? Are you there, darlin’?”
“Dad?” My voice trembled.
“Hey girlie. How are you? How’s school?”
I gave an incredulous laugh. “School? I wouldn’t know since I haven’t gone in weeks. I was too busy trying to keep a roof over my head and you know, worrying about where my next meal was coming from—despite my car getting repo-ed. What the fuck, Dad?”
It all left me in a huge run-on sentence word vomit. All this pent-up shame and angst and just vitriol.
“Shit, I’m sorry about that. It’s just…money got tight, and I knew the cops were closing in and—”
“And you just forgot to pay rent for two months? I got evicted, Dad. The super locked me out of the apartment. If it wasn’t for—” I cut myself off. For some reason I didn’t want my dad to know about Dylan. I might’ve been all twisted up about both of them, but for some sick reason I still wanted my dad’s approval.
God, I was stupid.
My breath hitched. “I don’t know why I even try. I shouldn’t have even accepted your call. I haven’t heard from you in weeks. You clearly don’t give a shit about me.”
“I do, Indy. I swear I do. I was an ass. I didn’t think about you and how my shit was going to ricochet onto you. I’m so sorry, darlin’. I didn’t want you to get tied up in all this.”
The words were right, but something about his delivery just niggled my brain. Like he had to keep me happy?
Like he was placating me.
“But I did, Dad. Because you left, and I haven’t been able to talk to you since right after your arrest. You call me once, and that’s it? I even went down to the jail, and they said you weren’t allowed any visitors who weren’t legal advisors or whatever.”
“Right. I, uh, got into it with a few guys, and they took away my privileges.”
“Of course you did.” I scoffed. I shouldn’t have been surprised.
“Seriously, Indy? I’m in jail. What the hell were you expecting from me?”
“How about a warning that I was going to get evicted? Because I damn well know that wasn’t a surprise to you. But then I guess I was expecting more than you were willing to do.”
He muttered something under his breath, “…was a mistake.”
“Did you just call me a mistake?”
