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All these years and Tom had given up hoping his prayers would be answered. If they were he wouldn’t know what to do with himself: he had gotten out of the habit of wanting things, knowing they could be taken away with such ease, and so he talked aloud to himself in rooms and nothing changed save the slowly fading image of his daughter in his head and the tiredness deep in his bones.
It was easy, expecting nothing. His prayer remained unanswered until one day it was.
***
'87
If he closed his eyes it would look like prayer. Only for a minute.
‘Sorry about the delay, folks,’ came Pastor Wright’s cheerful voice just then, bringing the room’s mild chatter to a halt. ‘If you want to break off into your prayer groups, guess we’ll finish up there.’ Then, among the scraping of chairs and talk, in a lowered voice: ‘Tom, if I could have a word —?’
Tom followed him into the hallway, tucking in the folds of his shirt. He was tired, was all. Hadn’t said anything during the bible study that would call for further discussion, just read when he was asked and listened for the rest.
‘You aren’t in any trouble, are you, son?’ asked Pastor Wright the moment they were alone, throwing him completely off balance. ‘I just had two fellas here asking after you, had themselves a picture and all. You know anything about that?’
‘No sir,’ Tom said. ‘What kind of guys?’
He could feel the jaws of that old trap closing around him, some distant reminder of his old life with it sights on him. Looking to collect debts, perhaps. There had been journalists, for a while, when Tom first came back to West Finger. He made sure to remain unlisted, address unknown. Eventually people quit asking. His pain became old news to everyone but himself.
‘Suits, ties. Direct way about them.’
‘You told ‘em I wasn’t here?’
‘I said I’d ask around. You'd tell me if you were having…problems…again, wouldn’t you, Tom? One said you might not want to see him. Said it was personal business.’
A sour twist in his gut as he realised what Wright meant. That downward turn to his mouth — not with distaste, but concern. Not for the first time, Tom cursed himself for giving in to the impulse to confess, for letting a kind ear pull the words from him in a moment of weakness. It had been better back when he first came here, when he was just a stranger. An alcoholic, maybe, but a recovering one. That other thing he didn’t think was the kind he could put behind him, despite his best attempts at living a normal life, at getting right with God.
Then again he wasn’t even right with himself. It wasn’t like he deserved to go back to normal — not after what he’d lost.
‘I don’t want to know what they want,’ said Tom, his voice sticking in his throat. ‘Sorry, but I better go.’
Trying to keep it together when every part of him wanted to get in his car and keep driving til he hit a place where nobody knew his name or the names of his kids. He was sick to death of it. Sick of the death behind him.
‘You stay safe, Tom,’ said Pastor Wright. ‘I’ll be thinking of you.’
Tom left by the front door, collar up against the wind, cap jammed down over his hair. He could feel a queasy anger boiling in his belly: he hadn’t thought about those old failings today, not once. Had felt just like any other person in that room with a right to be there, before the old memories resurfaced and the shame crept in.
If that was healing, he didn’t want it. He didn’t have a right to forget.
There was a tall guy in a navy suit standing in the parking lot, clutching one of those little notebooks Tom had grown to detest. His head turned as Tom brushed past, clocking him straight away. Shit.
‘Mr. Purcell?’ the dude said. Only then did Tom see the gun and badge at his hip, which gave his thoughts a sour tilt in the other direction. He was sober. He hadn’t done anything. Not that that had mattered back then — it was the doing nothing that had allowed his kids to be killed, after all. ‘Mind if we have a word?’
‘Yeah, I mind,’ Tom spat, anger his only escape. ‘This the kind of conversation I can walk away from?’
‘I mean — you could, sir, but I don’t think you want to.’
‘You tellin’ me what I think?’
‘No sir.’
‘Well, if that’s the case, I think I’ve had enough of you people for a lifetime.’
He actually thought he’d escape— until he caught sight of the man leaning against his parked car, and stopped in his tracks.
‘Sir, it’s important,’ the policeman said behind him, but Tom’s mind was stuck in the memory of the last time he had seen Roland West, nearly two years ago. Sixty days sober. And here the man was propped up against his car, square hands flat against the hood and his boots crossed one over the other, chewing on a cigarette.
‘Thought I told you to wait in the car,’ said Roland mildly, looking past Tom to frown at the cop. ‘Why don’t you fuck off for a bit?’ He ground the cigarette under his heel. ‘Hey, Tom. You’re lookin’ well.’
Using his first name real casual, Tom figured, just to hold the weight of it over his partner; showing he knew how to handle him, as if Tom needed handling.
‘Jesus, Roland,’ groaned the partner, but Roland just raised his eyebrows and didn’t budge an inch.
‘You gonna make me say it twice?’
Tom watched the guy shove his notebook in his pocket in a pissy kind of way as he stalked off. He stood there, unimpressed, trying to calm the sudden pounding of his heart. They had sent Roland out of all of them. That meant it was bad.
‘This, uh,’ said Tom nervously. Bible still in hand, palm sweating against the leather. ‘You’re on the clock, huh? Not a social call.’
‘It ain’t. You know you’re a hard man to track down?’
‘Can’t have tried too much before,’ said Tom, stupidly, and that was the bones of it, wasn’t it?
That tiny bitter feeling that Roland had dragged him back on his feet but had let AA and God do the heavy lifting afterwards, just so he could go back to his career and his woman and whatever else he did on the side when he wasn’t helping pathetic alcoholic fuckups get sober. Wasn’t like Tom hadn’t done his best to push him away once he was well, to quit being a burden and get his shit together, to silence that part of him that wanted the man close for less than natural reasons — still, there was always that other small voice telling him that Roland could have been a real friend given enough time, despite the pitiful reason they knew each other in the first place.
Tom could have used a friend. Maybe that scared him more than it should.
He got into his car. There was a long moment, then the passenger side opened with a clunk and Roland deposited himself heavily into the empty seat, awkward as always with that leg of his. ‘You moved,’ Roland said after a while. ‘Asked the neighbours if you left a number. Couldn’t even tell me where you’d gone.’
‘Guess I never thought you’d ask.’
‘Ain’t why I’m here though.’
Tom’s fingers itched to turn the keys in the ignition but his hands were leaden in his lap. Roland was looking at him, and he could feel the kindness in his gaze. He wanted to run but instead they sat there, going nowhere.
‘You found her,’ Tom blurted. A body, he thought wildly. They had finally found Julie’s body in a dredged pond somewhere, a lime-pit, the concrete foundations of a house; every place he had ever thought she might be as a pile of bones, there she was. His daughter. Small enough to put in a trunk and weigh down with rocks, light enough to carry to an unmarked grave.
‘We did.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Tom choked. He felt blank. He had given all his rage over to drink, and afterwards he had handed it over to God; there was nothing left to give. Even the tears wouldn’t come when he needed them. Shit. What was he meant to say to something like that?
Roland was looking out the window at the grey lines of metal fence, the scrubby trees beyond turning purple against the darkening sky. Giving Tom the time to swallow and ask, ‘Where?’
‘Truck stop outside of Bella Vista. Near Bentonville.’
‘How can you tell? I mean —’ His throat was like sandpaper. ‘You don’t got to go easy on me. Whatever it is, ain’t half as bad as I’ve been imaginin’ all this time. I’d count it a mercy.’ He dragged a hand down his face, looked at Roland for the first time. Always in supplication. ‘If there ain’t enough to bury you better tell me now. That fuckin’ coffin. Probably more expensive to dig up than it was to get in the first place.’
‘Tom.’ Roland put a hand on his arm, painfully gentle. ‘Tom. She’s alive.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Tom said again. This time he cried.
***
'70
She wouldn’t stop crying. Screaming raw and red-boiled up at him as he held her to his chest and tried to soothe her back to sleep, but she was colicky and wouldn’t settle. He had to head to work in less than four hours. It had been months since he’d slept the night through and he felt paper-thin, liable to crumple.
Lucy appeared in the doorway like a sour ghost, mussed and pale with exhaustion. Arms crossed and making no move to take Julie from him. ‘What I wouldn’t give,’ she said slowly, ‘to wake up in a house without you in it.’
He didn’t know which one of them she meant, and he didn’t ask. Julie screamed and screamed and when he looked back at the doorway it was empty. The door to their room snapping shut.
‘Just you and me,’ he told her. ‘Come on, babygirl. There’s enough yellin’ in this house as is.’
Her little hand clenched in a fist. That was okay. She was like him in that regard, always wanting to hit something.
***
'87
Tom kept his eyes trained on the back of Roland’s head as he followed him down the hallway. He needed a haircut. Not that Tom was one to judge, looking like he did. At least he’d thought to shave. Ironed shirt, fresh jeans, feeling sick to his stomach.
‘I’m gonna be on the other side, you need anything,’ Roland said. ‘You need a time out, or whatever, you just get up and leave.’ The urge was there already. Long corridors, voices behind closed doors. He didn’t want to bring up the memory in front of Roland but it reminded him of nights spent in jail. ‘Like I said, the prints match. But she won’t talk to us, and when she does it don’t make any sense. Tox report suggests some longterm exposure to some pretty serious shit. Lithium. Could be there’s more damage than we can see.’
‘You’re sayin’ she’s fucked up.’
Roland turned to face him, hand coming up against his arm. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘But I’ve seen worse.’
‘Thanks.’ Tom choked out a laugh.
‘Didn’t mean it like that.’ Roland’s eyes scanned his face, the dark circles under his eyes, fingernails chewed ragged from equal parts nervousness and raw fear that it would all turn out to be one big case of mistaken identity. ‘But sure. If it makes you feel any better.’
‘Not really.’
‘We just want to see if it makes a difference, seein’ you. Maybe bring back some memories.’
‘What if they ain’t good ones? What if she’s better off, not rememberin’? I don’t think I should be here, man, I think maybe she’d be better off not seein’ my face —’
‘Tom. You’re her father. Hey.’ Roland had him by both shoulders now, gave him a gentle shake. ‘Don’t care who says otherwise. She’s your kid and she’s waitin’ for you.’
He wanted to push Roland’s hands off. Bury his face in his shoulder and cry. But he just took a shaky breath and nodded, and let Roland lead him down the corridor to an unmarked door. Detective Hays turned as he saw them coming, pretty much unchanged apart from a flatter haircut and newer suit, just as steady and focused as he had been at the initial investigation. Tom supposed he had a stake in it too; why he was here along with the rest of them, looking him over in a way that made Tom more embarrassed than when Roland had done it. He might not be a drunk anymore, but the signs said he had been one until fairly recently. At best, the years had not been kind to him.
‘Never took you for a tracker,’ Hays said to Roland, ‘but hell, you found him. Less than two days, too. You want to fly out to Nevada, give the mother a go while you’re at it?’
‘Lucy ain’t here?’
Roland grimaced. ‘Ain’t been able to find her. Could be she don’t want to talk to us, course, but the trail on her’s three months old at least.’
What did it make Tom, that he felt grateful and guilty in equal measure? The idea of Julie sitting less than five paces away made him so brittle he might fall apart, even without Lucy at his side. It was better she wasn’t here. Perhaps that was the selfish part of him that wanted this moment all to himself.
‘Look, Tom,’ Roland was saying. ‘If you can get her talkin’, that’s fine. If you can’t, at least you’ve seen her.’
‘Ask if she ever saw a black man missin’ an eye.’ Hays gestured to his own. ‘If it happens to come up.’
Roland frowned at his partner. ‘What? No. That can wait.’
‘Just sayin’.’
‘Well, just say it to someone else. Jesus. He look like he’s able for it? Trained in the finer points of interrogation?’
‘Don’t mind me, man. I’m just an interested observer.’
Tom was barely listening. The door had a tiny hatch in it, reinforced perspex. His daughter was on the other side. She was eternally ten years old in his head; the picture in his wallet and the black and white newspaper obit fixing her to the same age, the same kid’s face. Anything else was a stranger to him.
I’m sorry, was all he was able to say when they led him into the room, when the words finally came. I’m so fuckin’ sorry.
All this time later, he could have passed her in the street without ever knowing.
***
'82
He crashed his car, drunk, the intersection sliding past him so fast and with such helpless finality he thought: this is it. The slow-motion crumpling of metal, shattering of glass as his bonnet rammed into the rear-end of a beige Plymouth; the light red ahead, red in his mouth. Stumbling into the road on shaky legs. A woman screaming at him from the driver’s seat, people watching with mute shock, glass crunching under his feet as reeled back from the sight of the children crying in the backseat. The apology tripping uselessly from his mouth. Each child he saw could have been his own. Ruined.
***
'87
The girl in the room had long blonde hair that half-fell over her face. Her hands were grown-up hands, absently scribbling in a notebook with thick red pencil. Her face unmarked. The sharp kid-look of her had settled into something more steady, features rounded out and grown into: young and terribly old all at the same time. Her eyes Lucy’s shade of blue.
Something dislodged inside him: that image from the last time he had seen Julie, disappearing on her bike. He had thought he would never see her again, but here she was.
‘What’re you sorry about?’ she asked, slowly, long after his words had dried up.
Tom wished he could cover his face. There was a broad-shouldered woman in a nurse’s uniform sitting in the corner of the room; her eyes remained fixed on her magazine while Tom sat there, unmoored. Thank God for small mercies. He sucked in a deep breath.
‘Everything.’
‘That’s a lot to be sorry about.’
‘Julie,’ Tom said, then paused. He had no idea what to say. She kept on drawing, brow furrowed.
‘…They keep calling me that. Julie. Jul-ie. Like summertime.’
‘I don’t know what that means.’
‘You know, the sun gets all hot and the sky goes blue. Is it summer now?’
‘No. I’m sorry.’
‘That’s okay. We’ll just have to wait.’
Tom gripped his knees till his knuckles went white. Tried telling himself this girl was neither a memory nor a ghost, that it was better she didn’t remember. Who wouldn’t forget if they could? No remainder of the tension that poisoned the air of that house until nothing good could grow in it, choking them its sourness. It was kinder to forget.
But what memory had taken its place?
‘I, uh,’ he said. ‘I brought some things. If that’s okay.’
‘For me?’
Her old stuffed tiger, fur worn down in stiff patches. A handful of photos. Her third grade diary, half-filled with drawings and cuttings from Will’s old Archie comics. He put them all on the table and watched as she carefully put down her pencil and ran her fingers over the tiger’s ears, her frown deepening.
‘I held on to them,’ he explained, pointlessly. ‘Case you ever needed ‘em again. Rest got thrown out when the house was sold, but I wasn’t there when that happened. Livin’ out of some motel at the time. Sorry. Don’t know why I’m tellin’ you all that.’
Tom rubbed at his jaw.
‘Don’t know why you’d remember any of this shit, either. If you asked me to say what bein’ ten years old was like, I don’t know if I’d be able to say. Lots of people forget. Think I spent most my time outdoors, runnin’ away from the bigger kids. This old fella lived in a trailer down the road that’d give out a quarter for every pound of copper a kid could find, taught me how to strip down an engine and put it back together again. Aside from that, did most things on my own. That’s not how it was like for you, you remember that?’
She had one of the photographs in her hand. He knew the one: the two of them on the first day of school, squinting belligerently into the camera. Julie with mismatched plaits and denim overalls, Will in his blue parka.
‘….I got a brother,’ Julie said, matter-of-fact.
He nodded, the reality of it sticking in his throat. ‘Wouldn’t do anything without him since you were one year old. Slept in the same room for eight years, til he decided he was grown enough to need his own. But there’d always be knockin’ on the wall. You two sayin’ goodnight to each other.’
‘We left him sleepin’,’ she whispered, leaning across the table with sudden intensity. ‘Where is he? Where is Will?’
Tom swallowed.
‘He — he never woke up.’ Was this what it had been like for Detective Hays, back when it had happened: wanting to disappear and never speak again? ’I’m sorry, but… he ain’t here anymore. He’s gone.’
Julie shook her head.
‘No. He’s been lookin’ for me. I know he’s been lookin’ for me.’ Her thin fingers found his wrist in a sudden grip across the table, surprisingly strong.‘You’ve got to let him know where I am. I’ve been lookin’ for him too. You’ve got to find him.’
‘I —’ Tom choked.
Distress was in her face now, her voice getting louder as stood up and her chair hit the floor with a bang. ‘You’ve got to find my brother. Where’s Will? Where is he?’
Tom heard himself apologising all over again as the orderlies came and pulled her away from him, her fingernails digging into his skin as she clawed at him for answers he didn’t have.
‘Where is he?’ she yelled desperately, hair in her mouth. ‘Where’s my brother? We left him sleepin’ —’
Then Sergeant West was at his side, a hand on his back as if to shield Tom from the sight as he propelled him into the empty hallway.
‘That was her,’ Tom said, dazed. He could feel his shoulders shaking under Roland’s palm.
‘You okay?’
‘Yeah.’ He steadied himself on Roland for a second, feeling the axis of his world shift irreparably. ‘But Roland, that was her. Julie.’
‘Yeah, man. That was Julie.’
***
'67
‘See what you’ve done?’ Lucy snapped, her teeth bared. He tried to placate her but she shrugged him off and stalked out into the parking lot, arms flung wide. ‘One more bastard set to join the world. You just couldn’t wait before stickin’ your dick in, could you? What’re we going to do, huh? You know they’re goin’ to kill me, once it starts to show.’
Tom jogged after her. He didn’t have the money she needed, and he knew she’d never ask him for it outright. There was something growing inside her and the world was closing in around them.
‘We could —’ he said, trying to make himself say it without losing his nerve. ‘We could always get married.’
‘That ain’t funny,’ she said, but neither of them were laughing.
***
'87
She was alive, that was the main thing, though Tom didn’t feel he could say the same for himself. He felt strung out. Unreal. He made his way to an empty phone booth and thumbed his way through the directory until he found somewhere to stay that was cheap and within walking distance.
For the first time in years he wanted to ring Lucy. She might pick up for him, if only to continue their last conversation from over a year ago when he had tried, stupidly, to make amends. That had been step nine. She had called him — well, she had called him a bunch of things, most of them true, but didn’t she deserve to know Julie was alive? She could call him a liar, again. He didn’t care.
He imagined telling her, plain and savage: Julie’s alive and she’s all right, as right as she can be. She’s just about grown. She’s got your hair and your eyes. That’d take the words right out of her mouth, if she didn’t just laugh.
The phone booth was right outside a bar. Wasn’t like he was craving a drink, really, but the longer he stood there the more reasonable it felt. He had something to drink to. Nearly seven years of unending misery coming to a conclusion warranted some kind of marker, didn’t it?
He could see the bartender through the grimy window, pouring whiskey for a man that knocked it back with practiced ease and placed the empty glass among the others already scattering the bar. The man shifted on his stool, and Tom saw that it was Sergeant West. He had his sleeves rolled up, head propped on his hand, slumped over the counter. Unguarded. It felt strange to watch him like this.
The memory of the last time he had seen Roland in a bar slid across his mind like a car on ice, with slow inevitability, cringing the whole time. A fist to his ribs. A set of cowboy boots stepping into view from his new spot on the ground, a familiar low voice. The sound of skin on skin, grunting, a bloody tooth clattering past his feet. He hadn’t asked for Roland’s help but he had got it: that hand again, reaching out to haul him off the floor like it had in the Sawhorse.
A realisation hit him as solid as a punch to the face: all this time, he’d only ever seen Roland filling some kind of role. Detective, saviour, bearer of the worst and the best news he’d ever heard. Here, he was just some guy. He looked tired in the way Tom felt tired all the time. The discovery made Tom’s gut clench. The best thing to do would be to slip away before the other man noticed him, before Roland had to play the part of the well-intentioned lawman asking him how he felt, looking at him like Tom had never yelled at him to get the fuck out of his house with the news of Will’s death still ringing in his ears. That would be new.
Someone rapped on the glass. Tom startled out of his thoughts, whipping around to see —
‘You done here?’ asked Roland, right outside the booth, not smiling but close to it. ‘I was goin’ to make a call, but the guy here’s really takin’ his sweet time.’
‘Must be a real asshole, huh.’
Roland huffed out a laugh, hands shoved into the pockets of his sheepskin jacket. ‘Should’ve figured you’d be stayin’ in town, otherwise I’d’ve offered you a drink. That was a joke, by the way. A poor one.’
Tom had a death grip on the phonebook. He didn’t want to bring up Julie, the way she had sounded as Roland pulled him from the room, but he couldn’t think what else to say. He joined Roland in the street.
‘Ain’t you got places to be?’
‘Someone’s got to monitor the case. Be close-by if anything comes up, see?’ Roland shrugged. ‘Wayne couldn’t stick around. Family. Think he was grateful, though, gettin’ the chance to see her with his own eyes. Not like we’re spreadin’ the word around, but hell, Purple Haze got a right to know. Was his case as much as mine. Not enough to stay and have a drink, mind.’
There was a thread of bitterness in that last line. Tom knew the signs, reckoned Roland was at least partways drunk though it was barely afternoon. His hair was falling loose into his face, shoulders held high as a bitter wind cut down the street and rattled the awning of the bar above them. Somehow dejected. Julie was alive and free and whole, but for some reason Roland looked like the news had yet to reach him.
It was the only thing that made Tom ask, ‘You got somewhere to stay?’ He tried to sound casual, failed for the most part. ‘I got a room someplace, ain’t far from here. Only had the one left but I figured it was worth payin’ extra, bein’ that bit closer to Julie. Got one bed more than I need, though.’
Roland just looked at him.
‘You really offerin’, or you just being polite?’
‘Wouldn’t’ve said anything otherwise. You’d be savin’ me half the going rate.’
‘Well, Mr. Purcell,’ Roland said, a real grin spreading on his face. ‘I think you got yourself a deal. That sounds pretty fuckin’ perfect, actually.’
‘It probably ain’t all that nice,’ Tom added on, lamely. ‘So you know.’
‘And I snore, so you know. Long as we’re both goin’ into this arrangement with our eyes open.’
They shook on it. Seemed like they were closer than they were, somehow, when one of them was drunk.
***
'85
‘I’ve been tryin’ this new thing,’ mumbled Tom through his bloodied teeth, ‘where I just stand there and get hit. No repayin’ evil for evil. It’s goin’ well.’
‘Thought you might’ve tried turnin’ the other cheek, in that case,’ Roland said. ‘That’s a real shiner.’
Tom grunted, still tired from spending the night in a jail cell, kept awake by the dull throbbing ache where Detective West had thumbed the blood from the cut on his face. One minute Tom had been getting real acquainted with the barroom floor, having the shit beaten out of him by a bunch of men he didn’t recognise, and then the next West had stepped out of nowhere and flipped the situation on its head. Stepping in like he had known Tom for longer than a few terrible weeks during the worst time of Tom’s life. Like he had the right.
‘Sorry, losin’ track of you last night. They’d already moved you downtown by the time I got my badge out,’ Roland told him. They found a bench down the street, somewhere with enough space between them to balance the flask of coffee and wrapped sandwiches Roland had pulled from his coat. ‘There’s witnesses to say you didn’t throw the first punch. Could press charges, you want. Make them sons-of-bitches reconsider next time they try to beat on someone.’
‘Ain’t worth the hassle. And I gave them all my money; not like I can afford it.’
‘You what?’
Tom shrugged. ‘Probably owed them something. I owed a lot of people, back in the day. Most of ‘em were just to chickenshit to collect, not once the kids…’
He let the words dissolve alongside the steam curling from the cup in his hands. Ducked his head.
‘You don’t owe me anything,’ Roland said, turning to catch his eye. ‘You know that, right?’
The lines at his eyes and mouth etched out by the morning sunshine, making him too clear and clean-cut to look at. Tom with his own bruised face and rumpled shirt. Flakes of his own blood on his collar.
‘What about the coffee?’ Tom winced. Wished he hadn’t said it like he was trying to come up with an excuse to see him again, but that was part of it, wasn’t it? The part of his nature that went against every part of him that said he never wanted to see Roland’s face again as long as he lived.
Cocksucker, said Lucy’s voice in his head. Unhelpful as always.
‘Ah, well, you can pay that back anytime,’ Roland was saying. ‘I take it sweet, mind. Cream, two sugars. Some people find that offensive to their better sensibilities.’
‘I look like a man that can cast down judgement?’
‘Maybe not. May not seem it, but I like knowin’ I got people’s good opinion. Even if I never subscribed to the whole “judgement” train of thought, cosmically speakin’. Always figured God outta look at the two-by-four in his own eye before pointin’ out the speck of dust in his neighbour’s, if he’s goin to go round slingin’ blame around. Author of creation? His name’s on the goddamn book.’
Tom clenched and unclenched his hands. He was too hungover for this.
‘Suppose I don’t like thinkin’ it all goes unanswered for,’ he said, slowly. ‘That…He’d just let it slide, what happened to Will. To Julie.’ He tried for a laugh, but there was nothing funny in it. ‘I can give God His anger. Got plenty to go round myself.’
Roland’s knuckles were scraped raw and red, skin swollen around his ring. Nothing biblical about him, but Tom felt delivered all the same. He checked his watch but it was broken from the fight. Stuck on the moment he had lifted his hands to shield his face and spotted Roland drinking in the corner with another man, the two of them laughing, the familiarity and ease of it a distraction from the forearm swinging forward to crunch against Tom’s wrist and smash his lip into his teeth.
He hadn’t wanted to be rescued. He wondered what it meant, that he only ever met Roland West when he had his own blood in his mouth.
Better not to imagine it any other way.
***
'87
The motel wasn’t as bad as Tom had feared. Neither was lying in bed that evening, the scratchy comforter pulled up to his chin and his face half-buried in the lumpy pillow while Roland got himself ready for bed. With his eyes closed Roland sounded closer than he was. Clothes rustled, bedsprings creaked. A long silence where Tom tried and failed not to imagine Roland’s eyes on his back.
‘Did you ever think it’d happen?’ he murmured. ‘Julie bein’ alive, I mean.’
‘Purple was the one really went for it. If I’m bein’ honest, I quit hopin’ soon as we found the bike. Ain’t much of an optimist,’ Roland yawned. ‘Though I’m not adverse to bein proved wrong. I prefer it that way.’
Tom lay in the dark and listened as Roland’s breathing turned slow with sleep, aware of his own body and the way it seemed easier lying there in the dark with another person beside him. Another man. He bit his lip until he tasted blood and tried to keep his thoughts on God; the steps; his daughter.
One of his prayers had already been answered. The sudden idea that he might be given more than he had had the courage to ask was too terrifying to bear.
***
They didn’t allow him to see Julie the next morning, but he got to see her the two following days: short, brief visits, where he talked about whatever came into his head. Memories, mostly. The good ones. He wasn’t sure if Julie listened or not. She reminded him of Lucy, the way she used to sprawl out on the couch after a night of getting high with her eyes glazed and unmoving.
‘Do you know the way to the pink room?’ Julie asked him at one point, in a faraway voice. ‘That’s where I am. My kingdom. But you can’t go in unless you know how…’
The screaming, Tom decided, was better than this. Even if it was the remembering that caused it.
Nights at the motel passed by uneventfully. When Tom stayed clear of the motel when he wasn’t with Julie. He went to bed late and got up early, and only saw Roland as a dark shape for the better part of three nights — until the fourth, when he startled from an unformed dream with the realisation that he was awake and there was a low noise coming from the bed next to him, something closer to a groan than a shout. The kind made by someone trapped in a nightmare with nowhere to go.
Tom flipped on the light. Roland had his arm half-slung from the quilted bedspread, clearly still asleep, twitching and fussing like he wanted to crawl out of his skin. A memory, too quick to pin down: A small hand shaking him awake. Arms wrapped around his neck as he carried Julie back to bed, rubbing the grit from his eyes as he tried to get her to settle. Waking hours later with a crick in his neck and his child free from bad dreams at his side.
‘Hey,’ mumbled Tom. ‘Hey, man. You’re only dreamin’.’
Roland let out a grunt. A twitch of motion behind his closed lids. Not fair letting him suffer. Tom reached out and shook Roland til the other man sat up breathing fast, hand scrabbling for the gun-belt on the bedside locker before the dream had fully left him and he realised where and who he was.
‘Sounded like you were havin’ a bad one,’ Tom said, very aware that Roland slept without a shirt now that he was within hands’ reach. ‘Figured if it were me, I’d want to wake up. Sorry.’
Roland just looked at him.
‘It’s been a while,’ he murmured. ‘Shit, think I must’ve bit my own damn tongue. It bleedin’?’
Tom nodded, reach out unthinkingly to wipe the blood away with his thumb, but Roland jerked back.
‘Don’t,’ he grunted. ‘I got it.’
Tom sat there, as Roland dabbed the blood from his lip. A hard knot settled into his stomach, cold as a stone, killing whatever small hope had been growing there. He went back to bed and turned off the light.
A long while later, Roland said, ‘Maybe she remembers but she don’t know it, yet. Julie. You should try asking if she has any dreams.’ A pause. ‘That’s where I keep the shit I’d rather forget.’
Perhaps he thought Tom was asleep. Tom closed his eyes and thought of a house in pieces and a dull scorch mark on the lawn. Ash in the grass.
***
'84
There was whiskey in that drawer and he intended to drink it. Fumbled around and came up with a bible instead, the hard-bound kind no one ever read, just sitting there gathering dust and doing nothing. Tom lay back on the floor and flipped it open, read about a woman named Rachel with a bunch of dead kids who wouldn’t quit crying.
He ripped the page out. Threw it into the corner.
Restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, declared the Lord. Your children will return to their own land. Which went to show how much He knew about it; only had the one son, after all, and He didn’t stay dead for long. Shit, if He had lost a daughter He’d be mourning with the rest of them. Deadbeat fathers, sour grapes.
***
'87
That evening he sat on the tarmac and smoked his way through a carton of cigarettes. There’d been a phone call earlier, some receptionist looking for Mr. West. Mister, not Sergeant, which should’ve been his first warning, but he was too tired to catch the hint. He shouldn’t have answered in the first place. Not like he was expecting any calls, let alone ones from a doctor’s office. He wasn’t sick. Was Roland? His mind tripped past the potential scenarios with rising panic.
Tom got to his feet. There was a young woman in the parking lot, three men boxing her in, smiling and laughing in a way that meant they didn’t know her at all, and Tom was itching to do something about it.
‘Hey, assholes,’ he called. ‘Can’t you see she don’t want anything to do with you?’
‘We’re helpin’ her out,’ grinned one. Acne on his face, barely out of high school. ‘Aren’t we, darling? Needs help lookin’ for her daddy.’
‘Yeah,’ said the girl, glancing between them uncertainly.
‘Well, looks like you found him,’ Tom said, flicking his cigarette at their feet. ‘Now, fuck off.’
‘Hold up,’ said the bigger one. ‘How’d we know you just ain’t sayin’ that? Could be some kinda pervert. Hey, honey, this guy look like your dad?’
She mutely held out the photograph in her hand. In it a man with a mustache held a blonde kid on his shoulders, a frowning boy standing at his side, the three of them awkwardly posed in front of a distant waterfall.
‘You satisfied?’ snapped Tom at the boy. ‘Come on, sweetheart.’ He waited until they were out of earshot before turning to the girl and asking, carefully, ‘How’d you get here? You come here alone?’
Julie was in her hospital clothes, feet bare on the tarmac. Hair scraped into a loose ponytail.
‘You said you stayed in a motel,’ she said quietly. ‘I asked a nice man where I could find one. I walked here. It wasn’t hard.’
‘Jesus. They know you’re out?’ She just looked at him, blank as an empty window. ‘Course not. Okay, why don’t you come inside while I call someone to come pick you up? Ain’t safe for you to wander off like that.’
‘It’s all so big out here,’ she said. ‘You can see the stars, not like inside. I always wanted to see them but she never let me. Not even the moon.’
They had kept her somewhere she couldn’t see the sky. He felt sick. ‘That’s alright,’ Tom said, though none of it was right, not really. ‘We don’t have to go indoors. Here, you sit here. Don’t go anywhere, okay?’
He tried the phone but the power was out, so he groped around in the dark and grabbed whatever he could find. Was back in less than two minutes half-expecting to see her vanished, again, but there she was sitting on the sidewalk with her arms wrapped around her knees like a little kid, face tilted toward the hazy disk of moonlight above.
‘Here,’ he said, stiffly, handing her a pair of socks and his winter jacket. ‘Put those on.’
She did as he said, then sat and gazed at his face, expectant. He wanted to sink into the ground. ‘So it’s true,’ she said after a pause. ‘What you said to those guys.’
‘What?’
‘That you’re my dad,’ she explained, a little dreamily. ‘‘She said I didn’t have a father. But I knew everybody’s got to have one, so why wouldn’t I? She told me I didn’t need one.’
‘Some people don’t.’
‘I didn’t remember, at first, but then I looked at the pictures — that’s Will, see?’
‘Yeah. That’s Will.’
‘And that’s you.’
‘Mm.’
He was finding it very hard to look at her. How could he tell her she was his, when he had failed to keep her safe like any father was supposed to? He had been a fraud then, and he felt like a fraud now. He wondered what she saw, when she looked at him. Just some strange man with a rough haircut and a broken-down face, in need of a shave and closer to tears than not.
Julie held out another picture: Lucy flushed and exhausted, holding a tiny red baby in her arms.
‘She’s pretty,’ Julie said.
‘That’s your…’ he said, then thought better of it. ‘That’s Lucy. She’d be here if she could, but we weren’t able to find her to let her know you were okay.’
‘Is she gone, too? Like Will?’
‘Just missin’.’
‘Oh.’
Julie clutched at her elbows. ‘She broke my arm,’ she told him, staring out at the gleaming row of parked cars. ‘But we decided not to tell.’
She had broken her arm at seven years old, but she had fallen from the jungle gym at the playground. Two months’ rent worth of hospital bills, Tom having to leave work early to pick Will up from school. Why weren’t you watching her? / Don’t you fuckin start at me, Tom. Julie miserable for weeks. Colouring hearts in red marker on her cast.
‘I don’t remember it like that,’ Tom said, carefully. ‘You sure? It was at the playground.’
‘Sure. She was callin’ me but I kept climbing. She tried to pull me down. I fell. It was an accident, see, so there was no point tellin’ anyone about it. It was my fault. I remember that, now.’
The simple way she said it, like it was fact, put a lump in his throat. He couldn’t start crying now. He’d already embarrassed himself enough, but there was the prickling at the corner of his eyes, hot and impossible to ignore.
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ he choked. ‘None of it.’
‘You cry a lot, you know. I don’t think I ever saw you cry before.’
Tom rubbed his face on his sleeve. ‘Guess not.’
It came as an unfamiliar surprise when she reached out and took his hand in her own. He could feel the slight tremor in her fingers, the pulse in her wrist. She held onto him as he blinked back fresh tears and said a silent prayer of thanks to the dark sky above.
That was how Roland found them, nearly an hour later: Julie dozing with her head on Tom’s shoulder, her hand in his.
‘And here I was, tryin’ to figure out how I was gonna tell you we lost her all over again,’ grunted Roland, but the relief was clear in his face. ‘Christ. You could’ve called.’
‘Power’s out.’
‘I’ll radio someone to come pick her up. Why don’t you two head inside? It’s cold as shit out here.’ Didn’t sound like someone with something to hide, but Tom kept thinking back to the sight of him slumped over that bar. He was as good at wearing masks as the rest of them.
Roland helped Tom rouse Julie to her feet and tuck her into Tom’s bed.
‘Who’s that?’ muttered Julie, half-asleep.
‘That’s Roland. He’s —’ Not family. Not a stranger, either. ‘He’s helped out, these past years. Kept me from gettin’ lost as well.’
She nodded and closed her eyes, grown-up but seeming very young at the same time. Tom sat there in the dark listening to her breathe while Roland called dispatch.
‘Everyone’s busy with the blackout,’ Roland said on his return, 'So I said we’d drop her back in the morning. She okay?’
‘Think so.’
Tom felt his way to his feet and nearly bumped into Roland in the dark.
‘Whoa.’ Roland’s hand came up, flat and steady on his forearm. ‘How about you?’
‘She remembered who I was,’ Tom whispered, hardly believing it now. ‘Some of it, anyway. Came lookin’ for me when the power went out, I guess.’
‘Got a knack for walkin’ out of places, that’s for sure. Here, you better take the bed.’
Tom would have argued the point, but somehow Roland had steered him further into the room; the back of his knees hit the bed and he sat down, hard, Roland’s hand on his shoulder now to underscore the point. All rebuke lost as his body froze. He waited for Roland to wrap a hand around his neck or push him backwards onto the mattress as the memory of rough hands and hurried encounters suddenly flooded his mind, but Roland only patted him once on the back and moved to a darkened corner of the room.
‘It’s a start,’ he said, while Tom tried to settle his leaping heart. ‘She got a chance at a life. It’d be a lot harder if you weren’t here. As a suitable guardian, I mean. Don’t care what those child services types say, I’m in your corner on this one — if that’s what you want.’
‘Course I want it. I’ll do anything they say, man, anything.’
‘So many folks don’t get through it, but you did. Done good for yourself. I’m real glad there’s something at the end to make it all worthwhile. You deserve that.’
‘Don’t know if deservin’ has anything to do with it. Ain’t exactly in control of what the Lord decides to take or give.’
‘Well, I’ll be the first to tell the old bastard he better leave well enough alone. Not tryin’ to offend you, mind, but it’s about time, don’t you think? All these years, not like you got anything other than a raw fuckin deal —’
‘Gave me you,’ Tom said, braver than he felt. ‘That was something.’
Roland made a soft noise in his throat. ‘I’m sorry about that too. Always felt I could’ve done more, on that regard: checked in to see how you were doin ‘stead of letting it slide.’ He sighed. ‘I saw you, y’know.’
‘What?’
‘In the mini-mart. ‘Bout a year back. You were in the grocery aisle and I remember thinkin’ that you looked well, like that AA talk had really stuck. Thought maybe you’d prefer if I didn’t come over draggin’ up all that old shit.’
He’d almost forgotten: the sound of a familiar voice, looking up to see Roland in jeans and flannel, leaning over a cart while a pretty dark-haired woman swatted his arm.
‘Yeah, I remember. You were with someone.’
‘Lori. Shit, why didn’t you say anything?’
‘Figured you had enough of the job followin’ you home, and besides, looked like you were occupied. It’s past, ain’t it? Not like it meant anything.’
‘If you say so. I saw you, is all. Just so you know.’
‘Alright.’
An even longer pause this time, the rise and fall of Julie’s chest the only noise between them. Tom figured perhaps Roland had fallen asleep in the lumpy armchair by the window, but then his voice rumbled again from the gloom, slow and tired.
‘You only know so many people,’ he mumbled. ‘And there’s enough of them that don’t stick around. Seems like the least a guy can do is say hello when he runs into you at the store.’ A bitter laugh. ‘Half my rodeo buddies are dead or in jail. Purple’s got a family. Buried more old friends in the past five years than I did the whole time during ’Nam. I’m fuckin’ tired of it.’
Tom swallowed thickly. There was something hovering on the edge of the conversation, something ugly and unsaid. He thought he recognised it but he was too chickenshit to ask; he didn’t want to be wrong, but it scared him, being right. It meant all those times he had looked at Roland and felt that terrible wanting, Roland had been looking right back.
‘You got a call,’ Tom said to the ceiling. ‘Forgot to say, earlier. Might want to ring back in the morning.’
Roland didn’t ask who had called. At some point during the following hour the bathroom light flickered on along with the sudden click of the radio, an electric hum. The shaft of light stretching out across the floor to where Roland’s boots were abandoned on the floor, the jut of his socked feet on the carpet. Julie’s pale sleeping face at Tom’s side.
***
He woke to the sound of voices. Roland and Julie sitting knock-kneed at the small table, Julie listening intently as Roland poured himself a coffee and spun some yarn about life on the rodeo circuit. Looking like father and daughter with their dark blonde hair and matching button-down shirts. The sight of it didn’t feel as wrong as it should.
‘Oh hey,’ said Roland. ‘If you’re awake, we’re thinkin’ of gettin’ pancakes in that diner down the road.’
‘Uh-huh.’ His daughter and a former homicide detective, making plans without him. Pancakes. Jesus Christ. It was cold outside. Julie still had his jacket, along with a borrowed pair of Roland’s slacks and boots — made the most sense seeing as they were about even height, but the fact that the clothes fit so well still surprised him. When did she get so grown?
They ate their breakfast in silence, Julie staring around at the surrounding families with wary interest. None of them spared her a second glance.
‘We need to drop her off straight away?’ asked Tom. ‘Hopin’ we could do something first.’
‘Playing hooky from the inpatient ward, huh. Well, may as well commit to it.’
They drove with the window down despite the cold, Julie with her eyes closed and her face in the wind, hair rippling behind her. The graveyard was empty apart from a few straggling crows. Roland stayed in the car while Tom and Julie picked their way past the headstones until Tom found the one they were looking for.
‘You wanted to see Will,’ he said thickly. ‘He’s, uh. He’s been here the whole time.’
He leaned down and pulled some weeds from the base of the granite stone, so as not to see her face as she stared down at the patch of earth where her brother lay. She sat down. The headstone with her name on it cast his feet in shadow, while she ran her fingers through the grass and frowned up at the sky. As he walked back to the car he heard her talking out loud, low and muffled and secret as a note passed under a door.
‘She takin’ it okay?’ asked Roland from where he leant against the iron fence, scratching the stubble on his jaw.
‘Better than I would. She’s got a way about her. She’s strong.’
They stood side by side and shared a cigarette. When Julie returned she was clutching a single carnation to her chest.
‘That’s nice,’ Roland commented. Eyebrows up, like he was waiting for Tom to say something about stealing flowers from the dead, but Tom just shrugged and got into the car.
‘I think I want to go back, now,’ Julie said. ‘Please.’
‘Alright, kid. Let’s go.’
She handed Tom the flower in the clinic lobby, before the nurses came and shepherded her away. Tom held onto it the whole time as he and Roland drove back to the motel, feeling the rough-cut stem on his fingers. Roland pulled over on an empty stretch of road and got out of the car, sun on his back as he headed for the abandoned phone booth up the road. Tom watched him put money in the machine. The way he stood with his arm pressed against the glass and the phone jammed against his ear, a solidly-drawn shape in the confines of the glass frame.
Tom knew what it was like, waiting for bad news. A bolt from the blue. Kids gone and his life shot through with holes. He got out of the car and waited until Roland put the phone heavily back on the mount. Scratched glass between them, along with whatever the voice at the end of the receiver had said.
The door was one of those folding ones. He slid it open and cleared his throat, but Roland didn’t turn around. He had his head on his arm, the broad span of his back blocking Tom’s view of his face.
‘You, uh,’ said Tom. ‘You okay?’
He touched Roland on the shoulder, hesitant, but Roland made no move to shrug him off. Let out a shaky breath. Tom felt the muscles in his back tense and relax. He rubbed an absent circle on the fabric of Roland’s yoked shirt, thinking that he wanted to let his touch wander to the front, to feel his chest and his belly and his thighs with his own hands, but there was only so much a man could take.
‘I’m fine. Better than fine,’ Roland said. ‘I’m good, man.’
‘Yeah?’
When Roland faced him his eyes were dry.
‘Cleaner than clean. Jesus Christ.’ He ran a hand through his hair, cracked an attempt at a grin. ‘Fuckin’ woman couldn’t’ve talked slower if she’d tried. Talk about suspense.’
They were very close now. The lines under Roland’s eyes made him seem tired. There it was again, that hand of mercy, giving something back instead of leaving him with nothing. Julie was his. Roland was — Roland was here to stay, whole and healthy and looking at him with the same relief he had handed Tom earlier that week.
Roland leaned forward, buried his face in Tom’s neck. It took him a second to realise he was being hugged.
‘I don’t want to mess this up,’ Tom mumbled. ‘Roland. Help me out here.’
‘I know what it’s like, having a good thing and watchin’ it fall to pieces. Done it a time or two myself.’ His voice muffled in Tom’s shirt. ‘Got this far, right? Got that kid back. You just keep walkin’ the line, man. Unless you’re talkin’ about giving a damn hug, in which case, just keep doin’ what you’re doin’. That’s it.’
It was overwhelming, being held, but it was what Roland needed so he brought his arms up around his back and ran his fingers through the short hair at the base of Roland’s neck, trying to sooth his own nerves as much as anything. When they broke apart Roland looked up at him. Nothing he had done could have made him deserve any of it: this was just one more thing, one more reason to keep wading through that never-ending flow of give and take.
‘Here,’ Tom said. ‘Got you something.’
He handed Roland the carnation, the flower a splash of colour in the small space between them, kind of crushed but still good. Still whole. Roland laughed as he put it in his breast pocket, so bright and real Tom had to look away at the flat expanse of field beyond the glass.
The road was empty and ran out in both directions far as the eye could see. There was always a way heading forward.