“Don’t,” I said solemnly. “Someone had to tell her off and we both know it wasn’t going to be me.” I dropped my head into myhands. “I don’t know what happened with them. I just . . . I want my family back.”
“I’m sorry, baby,” he whispered as he pulled me into a hug.
“I was thinking about staying here longer,” I admitted between the sniffles that were soaked up by his shirt. “But this . . . It’s not home anymore.”
“What’s the dream?” he murmured.
I buried my head into the crook of his neck. “Little house. Big van.”
“Where?”
“Halfway between home and heaven.”
Ryan stroked my hair. “Have you figured out where that is yet?”
Yes,I thought. But I shook my head no.
27
AUTUMN
UNDER A TREE, F-U-C-K-I-N-G
My knees bounced as I sat in the blasé gray and white hallway outside my dad’s office. The two chairs outside his door made it feel like I was waiting for a principal to see me.
Maybe that third cup of coffee was a bad idea.
The secretary gave me a pitying smile when I glanced at the clock that hung over her head.
I went back to focusing on my jittering feet and re-reading the text I had gotten that had turned around the entire trip.
Dad
Let’s have lunch. Meet at my office on Thursday?
My dad worked in a third-floor office building in downtown Topeka. It was all beige walls, gray carpet, and potted plants that were barely alive.
I had a working theory that corporate boards had a set number of potted bamboo palms that were required per ten square feet of office space.
I really hated bamboo palms. There were so many more interesting plants.
I glanced at the time on my phone, ignoring a text from Ryan asking how things had gone with my dad.
. . . Because I had been waiting a very long time.
I had garnered plenty of strange looks as I made my way through the lobby and from hallway passersby because of my hair color. I was glad I’d had the forethought to dress up a little. My dad rounded the corner, talking to yet another copy–and-pasted man in a suit, and my heart leaped.
I stood and adjusted the smart trousers I had paired with sandals and an airy tucked-in button up. “Dad!” I said as I smoothed out the blouse I had thrown on this morning, then clasped my hands together so I stopped fidgeting.
My dad stalled in his path, pausing mid-sentence. He looked . . . surprised to see me.
“Thanks for chatting, Greg. I’ll let you get on with your day,” the other man said before offering a polite nod and dipping into an adjacent office.
“Autumn,” Dad said as he stuck his hands in the pockets of his slacks. “What brings you out this way?”
. . . What brought me out this way?
I drove all the way to Topeka to have lunch with him and he wanted to know what brought me out this way?
