Twisted by Hannah Jayne(61)

Bex’s heart hammered, thoughts streaming at record speeds. This was her father. This was a murderer. This was a man who came to find her against all odds. This was a man who broke into her house and slammed a palm over her mouth and told her not to scream. This was her father.

“Dad?”

She could see him blinking in the darkness, the faint light from the streetlight outside catching the glisten from his eyes as he blinked back tears. “I’ve missed you so much, Bethy.”

He scooped her up in a rib-crushing bear hug, and Bex could feel his shoulders shaking as he cried, as he murmured into her hair, “My sweet Bethy girl, how I’ve missed you.” Bex wanted to hug him back. Tears burned at her eyes, and she wanted to cry and fall against him and tell him how much she’d missed him too, but her body wouldn’t relent and she remained still, her eyes dry.

“What are you doing here, Dad?”

He held her at arm’s length, his whisper hoarse and choked with emotion. “I came for you, Bethy.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“I had no choice. I tried…I tried to get to you earlier, but there was always someone there. It was too risky.”

Bex thought back to the football game, the throaty voice calling her name under the bleachers, the burning touch on her arm.

“We can’t talk here. Those people are asleep in the next room. We can’t risk them finding me—finding us.” He held out a hand. “Come with me, Beth Anne.”

She thought of her father staring down at sleeping Michael and Denise, and she felt anger, violation, suddenly protective.

“You can’t just come in here…”

Her father kept his hand outstretched to her. “Just talk to me, Bethy. That’s all I want. I know you must have questions, hundreds of them, and I’ll answer them all. What happened when you… When they…” He glanced at her, his face contorted in pain, then looked away as if he couldn’t bear to see her. “It was all wrong.”

Bex’s breath hitched, her throat burning. She’d done it. She’d turned him in. “I’m sorry.”

“Come on, Beth Anne.”

She stared at his outstretched hand, watching her own, shaking, unsteady, reaching out for him. Bex wasn’t sure what she expected to happen—lightning sparks or one of those bright-light, hair-blown-back movie montages where she would see everything her father had done over the last ten years, but it was simply her hand slipping into her father’s.

“Put some clothes and shoes on. I’ll wait for you downstairs.”

“I’m not going with you.”

Her father let out a long sigh that seemed to have ten years of angst and hope built up in it, and it broke Bex’s heart. “I know, honey. I wouldn’t expect you to up and run off with me. It’s been a long time. You don’t even know me anymore. I’ll be waiting outside for you.”

Bex watched the careful way her father moved across her floor, the gentleness he used when closing her door behind him.

“I’m just going to go talk to him,” she reasoned, mumbling. “Just talk to him outside and come right back to bed and…”

Bex pulled the laces on her sneakers and avoided her own questions. “I’m just going to talk to him.” She stood and Lauren’s voice pulsed in her ear: He was just a man, you know? Bex swallowed hard, a tremor rolling through her.

The night air was a wild, cold burst when Bex opened the front door, and she zipped her hoodie up to her neck. Her mind spun: He came for me! He wanted to see me! Why, why would he want to see me? He wants something; he did something; he’s an animal who can’t make connections, can’t feel.

She looked around, hissing in the darkness. “Dad?”

The only answer was a dull silence pierced by the vague sounds of trucks on the highway and waves crashing somewhere in the distance.

“Oh my God,” she mumbled, sweat pricking the back of her neck. Her hands tingled, and this time she couldn’t control the tears. “I’m going crazy. He was never here. I was dreaming…” She plopped unceremoniously to the ground, her tailbone thunking the cement hard when she heard the hum of an engine, saw the faint shadow of white parking lights.

There was a truck at her curb, and her father was in the driver’s seat. She looked at him and she was seven years old again. The wrinkles and the gray hair that she had been so focused on were obscured by the darkness, and it was as if no time had passed as he curled a finger out to her, his grin wide and welcoming. Still, Bex was tentative, hesitantly walking toward the car and approaching the driver’s side.

“Well, come on. Get in. Wait. Do you want to drive?”

She shook her head. “I thought we were just going to talk.”

“We are, Bethy. But it’s almost four in the morning. I think we’re going to be a little conspicuous sitting out front of your house, don’t you? And as much as I’d like to keep all this on the up-and-up…” He screwed up his face into some approximation of apology or shame.

“O-okay, but we’re not going too far.”

Her father threw open the passenger side door and Bex looked up at him, a daughter seeing her dad. He was innocent. He was harmless. He loved her.

“Aw, Bethy,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “Don’t tell me you believe all the lies they’ve fed you.”