If You Find Me(70)

“He won’t be comin’ back, Nessa. You don’t have to worry.”

I reposition my legs beneath her, restin’ a hand on my shotgun.

Not a peep.

“I took care of it. I had to. Please say somethin’?”

I jump at the touch of my father’s hand on my shoulder.

“We’re here, Carey.”

I blink at him, seeing someone else.

“We’re here,” he repeats.

He pulls onto the scenic overlook and shuts off the truck, then comes around to my side and reaches out a hand to help me down. I make pretend I don’t see it, skin and warmth, not foreign or strange like it should be. But I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve the help.

“Here.”

He reaches into the truck.

“Put on your hat and mittens.”

I take my time, even though, at the sight of my trees, my heart leaps with joy. Will they recognize me, this girl of faux ermine and bedazzled jeans?

He follows behind me. I know the way home like I know the sky at night. It’s as if no time has passed.

When we reach our clearing, I stop, unsure for a moment. The fire pit is a charred black-and-gray circle, almost undistinguishable from the surrounding snow. The camper sags in its same old place, but looking much smaller and shabbier than I remember.

I rush ahead through the brush, leaving him alone for a good ten minutes as I make my way to the hollow tree. Scooping out the accumulation of snow, the metal glints through, and I pluck it out. I reckon the string still smells like Mama. I take a sniff.

“Carey?” He yells through the tiny window. “I’m already inside.”

Up close, I see the front lock of the camper’s been busted and the door handle juts at an odd angle. In the doorway, my eyes water as the fumes sting my nose. I reckon the fire isn’t that old. I stare at the ruins.

And then I remember. Frantic, I pull up the floor panel over the front left wheel, and it’s still there—Mama’s watch—passed down by my gran.

I used to pretend watches were like outside hearts, caring about our lives. I used to hold up the watch and say to Jenessa, “Even though she’s gone, her heart is still with us.”

Jenessa never met our Gran. She died during my third year in the woods. I used to wring my hands, imagining her driving by my parents’ old house, or back at her own, pushing aside the curtains to peep out the picture glass, watching for cookie-girl. Waiting for me.

The second hand tick, tick, ticks. It’s like an omen, the fact that it still works. My father takes it from me. Recognition floods his face.

“I’d as soon bust anything of Mama’s under my heel,” I admit, “but one day, Jenessa might want something from her gran. She learned time on that watch.”

He tucks it into his pocket for safekeeping. I glance at the delicate watch on my wrist, the one Melissa gave me. Funny how we can’t hold on to time, even when it’s strapped to our wrists.

I survey the skeletal remains of the rest of my poetry books, burned to a crisp. I thought I’d be taking them back with me, the stack sliding back and forth across the backseat as we drove. Something for me to read in prison. Instead, the sight of them hurts so hard, I can’t breathe.

My father clears the snow from the rickety stairs, using the rake that’s missing two teeth. I watch him, his red scarf a streak of color against the gray surroundings, this man who doesn’t fit in here at all. Willing my feet to move, I gather wood, branches and kindling, and he uses the matches from his cigarettes to light the fire.

It’s time.

I swallow hard, raising my eyes and then lowering them. It’s not so much what the man did to me. It’s what I did to him.

The savage in humanity.

Funny how a person knows what shame is, even when you don’t have a name for it. No matter. It feels the same.

“Something happened out here, didn’t it?” he asks, lighting a cigarette.

“Yes, sir.” Please, Saint Joseph. “I did something wicked wrong.”

I look straight into his eyes, gathering myself into the baptized Carey, shoulders back, ready to put a finish on things.

“Tell me.”

“I was the real thirteen, and Jenessa was five. . . .”

I pause, wavering.

“Go on.”

“We were eatin’ dinner by the fire. A man came out of nowhere, lookin’ for Mama. He said she owed him money for drugs.”

His jaw sets. The cigarette burns down toward his fingers, but he doesn’t smoke it.

“He was on the meth. Drunk on moonshine, too.”

My father eyes are so sad. Pained.

He already knows.

“He took off my jeans and he hurt me,” I whisper. “I couldn’t push him off.”

I look away, but not before I note the tears slipping down his cheeks.

“I fell asleep in the middle of it.”

“Passed out,” he says gruffly. “It happens to people when they’re seriously hurt or shocked.”

I nod in agreement, filing the phrase away for future use.

“Where was Jenessa?”

His words cling thick as tree sap, hoping against hope.

But I can’t give it to him.

“She was sittin’ right there, like you are now.”

I flinch when he stands up suddenly, turning away from me. He swears under his breath, kicking the ground with his boots, his hands in fists.