I kick the door open and race the rest of the way to the house, flinging the front door open and coming face-to-face with Lindsey as she sits perfectly still in a chair in the center of the kitchen, her eyes red with terror and tears. Holly is asleep against her chest.
My head swivels to my father, and I see the gun in his hand a second too late, kicking him in the hip and knocking him back several steps before he grips the revolver in both hands and points it at me.
I shove my hands in the air and position myself between him and the girls.
“What do you want? They have nothing to do with this, so they’re going to go. What do you want? Tell me!” My heart is pounding so hard it drowns out all sound, but thankfully, I’m able to read my father’s lips.
“Money,” he says.
“Only if you let them go,” I demand. My mouth tastes of bile.
“If I let them go, how do I know you’ll follow through?” His voice is an eerie type of calm, and the marks on his arm tell me he’s been shooting up something. Probably a lot of things. I remember those marks, and those hands, hurting me when I was a kid.
“I’ll take you to the money. I don’t want it. I don’t want you. And I never want to see you again,” I growl.
My father holds my gaze, his pupils so big they look like black holes ready to swallow up everything alive. He leans to the side and spits on our floor.
His gaze shifts as he stretches to peer around me, but I move to block his view. I don’t want him setting eyes on Holly. He might recognize the shape of her chin. He doesn’t deserve to know he has a grandchild. She’s safer that way.
“Let’s go,” he says, waggling the gun in my direction.
“I need your keys,” I say to Lindsey over my shoulder, keeping my eyes fixed on the man who helped make me.
“They’re on the table,” she says.
My dad nods toward Lindsey’s purse, the contents spilled on the tabletop. I hold one hand up while I sift around with the other, feeling her lip stick tube, then her wallet. I finally land on her keys, and clutch them.
“Let’s go,” I say, shuffling toward the front door. My father follows a few feet behind me, but pauses, turning around.
“We’re leaving, I said!” I growl at him, but he doesn’t listen, instead moving into the kitchen. He pulls what I assume is Lindsey’s phone out of the sink, then smashes it with the butt of his gun.
“Now, we’re leaving,” he says.
I turn and continue my way out the door. I press the unlock button on the van key fob, and my father moves to the passenger side while I get in to drive. He keeps the gun fixed on me without bothering to buckle up, and I indulge in a one-second fantasy that involves me ramming the side of the van into a tree and killing him. The variables are too massive, though. And I keep replaying Roddy’s words.
There are a lot of places to hide things out here, Brooks.
I pull away from the house and head toward the south highway. I’ve replayed the route in my mind a thousand times, instinct telling me I would need to know this one day. Turns out one day was only a few days later.
Once we hit the highway, my father pulls his seat belt on. I glance at his gun hand, and he hisses at me, the same noise he used to make when I caught him smoking behind our old shed. Memories flood back. We did have a yard. And I had a swing. And Mom, she wasn’t so broken and ugly. That was when it all started.
“Why?” I ask, not even realizing my words are aloud until my father begins to answer.
“Because I’ve got nothing else,” he says.
He’s tucked into the corner, his back resting on both the seat and the door so he can keep his eyes fixed on both me and the road. I wonder how many times he’s held someone at gunpoint like this. This isn’t something you do on a whim. He’s too good at it.
“That’s your fault,” I mumble.
“Shut the fuck up,” he barks.
I shake my head but forge forward. Good ole Dad.
I slow when I recognize the landmarks that precede the unmarked road, and when I spot it up ahead, I turn off the roadway but grind to a stop.
“It’s here? Right next to the highway? I’m not stupid. Take me all the way there,” he says. His breath smells of rotten teeth and candy. He always liked peppermint. I think when he first started smoking a lot, he ate the candies to cover the stench of cigarettes. Then he moved on to smoking other things, shit that smelled like burnt plastic and cleaning fluid. How the fuck is this man alive?
“This is as far as I go,” I say, my body trembling and rebelling against my brain. Why am I being brave? Why now?
