Last Girl Ghosted(51)

“But you’re not getting any closer to Mia.”

He offers a thoughtful dip of his head. “We’ll see. The night is young.”

We exit the forest and step out into the clearing, the moon on the rise. It’s fat and white, looking down impassively.

“Who were you visiting?” he asks.

There’s no easy lie, nothing quick to say to deflect the question. So, I opt for silence. But we have to walk past the graves to get to our cars, his parked behind me, lights burning, engine running.

“What do you know about me, Detective?” I ask, stopping at Robin’s grave.

She loved the cemetery, which is essentially a wildlife sanctuary. Centuries, in some cases, of mainly undisturbed trees. A place of quietude and peace, birds find safety among the dead—warblers, thrushes, and, of course, robins.

“I’m sorry,” he says. He rubs at the crown of his head.

I take this as an admission that he knows everything I have tried to hide. I hate him for it a little. And yet, there’s also a wash of relief, a tension that dissolves from my shoulders and my neck. It takes so much energy to lie, to hide, to be someone else all the time. The weight of it never occurred to me, how it would grow and become heavier over the years, a great hump on my back, bending me down low.

“Want to get out of here?” he says.

He looks uncomfortable, keeps glancing back at the trees. City boy. Like so many of us, he’s forgotten that we are one with nature, with death. That one day we’ll be trees and grass, wildflowers, lichen on headstones, stars in the sky.

“I know a place,” I say.

“I’ll follow you.”

“Yeah,” I answer. “I’m getting that.”

In the dark of my car, I start the engine. Just as I’m about to pull away, my phone pings.

A text from an unknown number.

Welcome home, little bird.
Little bird. The only person on earth who ever called me that was my father. But the text must be from you, Adam. Did I tell you that he used to call me that? How do you know I’m back here? Was it you in the woods watching?

I feel like the world is spinning, past blurring into present, a great spinning wheel. You. This place. The girl I was. The woman I’ve become. And my father.

Just as it is with you, when I reach for him he slips away, like all the mysteries of childhood. He comes back to me only in snapshots, yellowed and faded with age, grainy. Always a stranger, like the boy in the photograph I found.

I am always chasing him.



twenty-four


Then


“Little bird. Get up.”

My father’s voice, his touch on my shoulder, drew me up through layers of deepest sleep. When I woke, he stood over me, dressed, a heavy pack on his back.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, feeling the jangle of alarm.

Jay stood over by the door, also dressed, also burdened by a heavy pack. He looked dead on his feet, hair sleep tousled, eyes blank.

“If they come,” my father said, eyes shining, “they’ll come in the night.”

“If who comes?” I asked, looking past him. The bright full moon washed in through my window, casting him in an eerie white glow. “Where’s Mom?”

Behind him, Jay shook his head quickly. I read his thoughts: Shut up. Do what he says.

“Get up,” my father said more sternly. “I need you to be strong.”

I climbed out of bed, pulled on my jeans over my nightgown, grabbed my sweatshirt—a hand-me-down of Jay’s that I wore pretty much daily. I slipped into my sneakers.

“Where are we going?” I asked. I knew I could push him further than Jay could. Too many questions could earn Jay a crack across the face. The youngest, the girl, my father’s clear favorite, I had more leeway. But he didn’t answer me.

Out in the hall was another big pack, smaller than those that Jay and my father had on their backs but still huge. “When they come, you grab this pack. See? It’s red. Mine’s blue; your brother’s is black.”

I shifted it on.

“What about Mom?”

“Your mother has another job to do when they come. She knows what it is.”

What was in these packs? Where had they come from? Where would I find mine when “they” came in the night? There were always big plot holes in my father’s stories. Better just to go along. Especially when he had that tension coming off him like electricity, when his tone was pulled taut and excited.

He helped me heft on the pack, and I nearly buckled under the weight.

Where was Mom? Luke, she’d say, it’s too heavy for her. But their bedroom door was closed. I felt tears start to well from a place of helpless anger and deep fatigue.

“Let’s go,” said my father. “We won’t have this kind of time. Keep up.”

Outside, he took off in a jog, Jay following suit. I could barely walk, the pack was so heavy. I moved as fast as I could along the trail trying to keep up with Jay, who I could tell was purposely slowing his pace for my benefit. It was more than a mile from the house to the bunker. And by the time I got there, I was breathless, every muscle in my back and legs screaming. The moonlight was so bright, washing everything in blue-white.

Resting a hand against the concrete wall, I leaned over and threw up.

My father lifted the pack off me. “You’re going to have to do better than that. You need to get stronger. Faster.”