Harry sits back, searching my face. “You believe this?”
“Of course.” I had to. I had to believe it to survive in there, to get through each endless, tedious, empty day. I had to believe there was a reason for my suffering, so it wouldn’t all be a waste. “It’s an ugly world. I was safer in there.”
“Is that why you were running?”
I nod. Once I left the house behind, I had nowhere to go. I simply knew I had to put as much distance between it and me as possible, so Father couldn’t find me. So he couldn’t lock me up again.
“Wait.” Harry squints. “The woodcarver who lives out west, close to where I found you. Is that where you were living?”
“Yes, Father sells what he carves in town.”
It looks like this makes Harry angry.
“I can’t believe someone would do that. Abuse their own child that way.” He gets up off the bed and stalks out of the room, and I’m confused by his sudden exit. But he told me not to be on my feet, so I remain where I am.
“Harry?”
“I’m going out.” His feet stomp toward the front door. “To find this father of yours and drag him off to jail.”
“No!” I disobey him and get off the bed, squinting when the open wounds on my feet squash against the bandages. “You can’t!”
Harry comes back into the room, alarmed when he sees I’ve gotten up.
“Lie back down.”
“You can’t take my father to jail.” I don’t realize I’m intears until my voice breaks. “Please. He didn’t do anything wrong?—”
“Yes, he did.” Harry glares down at me, a new and surprising vehemence in his tone. “What he did to youwaswrong. It was evil. No one should ever do to their child what he did to you. Starving you. Hiding you from the sun. Keeping you from living a life you deserved to live.”
His words wash over me, sure and confident. He knows what he’s saying is the truth, and he’s willing me to know it, too. To believe it.
I shake my head purely out of reflex, unable to think that about my own father. That he could have been evil. That he could have done something bad by locking me away.
I always thought the world was bad and he was the only good thing in it.
“Listen to me,” Harry says, his tone softening. “I am going to do this now—but you can come with me, if you want. You can say goodbye.”
Goodbye?
That’s right. If Father goes to jail, he will never come out. It will be the end if I allow Harry to turn him in.
Though this big man is kind, I can tell he is also steadfast. He believes in wrongs and rights, goods and evils, and will act upon those beliefs with force. I don’t know if I can get in his way once he sets his mind to something.
“Then I’ll come along,” I say, sitting up on the bed. “If I can.”
“We’ll take my horse. I can bring you to her, and then you don’t have to walk.”
Once again, he picks me up like I’m half my weight, and I don’t even worry that he’ll drop me as he carries meout the back door of the small house to a barn with a pen. In that pen stands a brown horse with white socks on its feet, munching the grass.
“Time to saddle up, Sadie,” he tells the horse, and plops me down on some stacked hay. Then he sets to retrieving the horse and tacking her up, but the whole time all I can think about is my father going to jail.
And I’m going to have to see him again. I’m the one who wanted to come along, but now I’m second-guessing myself. Do I want to look him in the eyes after what Harry said? That what he did to me was a terrible thing?
I still can’t wrap my mind around that truth. I still don’t believe it.
Once the horse is ready, Harry returns to me and helps me up onto the saddle. He sits behind me, so I get the more comfortable seat, and the heat of his broad chest surrounds me. He reaches around with one long arm to hold the reins, then clicks his tongue and we start moving.
Harry’s quiet as we ride through the trees, taking the main road toward my father’s house.
