WEST McCRAY [PHONE]: I’m going to find Sadie and all she’s gonna want is to be left alone. You do realize that, don’t you?
[THE GIRLS THEME]
WEST McCRAY [DINER]: You’re telling me she had a different hair color than she does in this photograph? She was blond instead of brunette?
RUBY LOCKWOOD:
Yeah, and by the looks of it, she’d done it herself. And she was rail thin, a wisp of a thing, not much to her. Didn’t talk right either. That stood out more than anything else. She had a stutter.
SAUL LOCKWOOD:
Oh! Yeah … I remember her now. She ordered a … coffee. I thought she was a runaway. She pissed you off some, didn’t she, Roo?
WEST McCRAY:
So you did talk to her?
RUBY LOCKWOOD:
She talked to me. She wasn’t just passing through. She was looking for someone, so she made a point to ask.
WEST McCRAY:
Who was she looking for?
RUBY LOCKWOOD:
Her father.
WEST McCRAY:
What?
RUBY LOCKWOOD:
She was looking for her father, so she said. She had a picture of him and everything. Knew his name, she knew he’d been a regular down here at the diner a couple years back. She wanted to get in touch with him and she wanted to know anything I could tell her.
WEST McCRAY:
What did you say?
RUBY LOCKWOOD:
I told her I’d never seen the guy. But she seemed pretty desperate and I felt sorry enough for her I asked for her phone number and said I’d call her if I ever saw him.
WEST McCRAY:
Do you still have that number?
RUBY LOCKWOOD:
Well, get this—she said she didn’t have a phone and that was the second weird thing about her, because every kid and their granny has a cell phone these days, right? I got one—hell, my ninety-year-old mother has one. I ended up giving her a menu and told her she could call the diner and check in with me to see if he’d been around.
WEST McCRAY:
Back up—you said that was the second weird thing about her. What was the first?
RUBY LOCKWOOD:
I knew the man she was asking after and he didn’t have any kids.
WEST McCRAY [STUDIO]: His name is Darren M. I’ll omit his last name until I track him down. I searched him online and got a lot a results but every Darren I made contact with wasn’t the one I was looking for.
WEST McCRAY [TO RUBY]: And you knew him.
RUBY LOCKWOOD:
I sure did. Actually, he told me he’d been a regular through the years. When he was passing through, I guess he made a point to stop for the apple pie—but it wasn’t until he lived in Wagner that I considered him a regular. He shacked up with some woman in town for a few months and he’d have lunch here by himself every day. Real good guy. Kept to himself. Never caused trouble.
WEST McCRAY:
Do you have the name of the woman he was with?
RUBY LOCKWOOD:
It was Marlee Singer.
WEST McCRAY:
Are you still in contact with Darren?
RUBY LOCKWOOD:
No. Once he ended it with Marlee, he was gone from here. I didn’t even see him every now and then. I used to have a phone number, because Ray was alive at the time, he was getting toward the end, and Darren asked me to tell him when Ray passed. Darren sent the most beautiful flowers when it happened, they were white roses and baby’s breath. I thought that was such a thoughtful thing to do. But I don’t have that number anymore.
WEST McCRAY:
Could you look for it maybe, and tell me if you find it? If I can get ahold of him, it would be really helpful.
RUBY LOCKWOOD:
I doubt I’ll find it and I’m telling you, Darren doesn’t have kids.
WEST McCRAY:
You sound so certain of that but if he only lived here briefly, it seems fair to assume there’s a lot about him that you never got around to knowing.
RUBY LOCKWOOD:
I’m certain because I asked. He sat where you’re sitting now, shooting the shit, and I asked him if he had kids and he said no. What do I care if he has kids? What’s he got to gain by lying to me? Nothing.
WEST McCRAY:
What’s Sadie got to gain by lying to you?
RUBY LOCKWOOD:
[LAUGHS] Come on. You think she’s the first girl trying to put the screws to some man she calls daddy? I’ll tell you what else, she was damn rude.
WEST McCRAY:
Rude how?
RUBY LOCKWOOD:
When I said I hadn’t seen Darren before, she called me a liar. Take my word—I’m telling you, she was running some kind of con. She didn’t like that I saw through her.
WEST McCRAY [STUDIO]: When I’m done talking to Ruby, and before I search online for Darren, I try to get in touch with Marlee Singer, but she doesn’t pick up the phone. Then I call May Beth. When I tell her the news, she’s absolutely stunned.
MAY BETH FOSTER [PHONE]: No. No, that can’t be right. Sadie didn’t know who her father was. She always told me she didn’t give a damn.
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]: Well, his last name isn’t Hunter, if it is this guy.
MAY BETH FOSTER [PHONE]: Darren …
I’m telling you, I never heard that name in my life. [PAUSE] But I guess that doesn’t mean anything. Claire had a lot of men in and out, before and after Irene died … God. She’s really looking for her father? That’s what she said?
WEST McCRAY [TO RUBY, IN DINER]: There a chance anyone else in the diner was in contact with Sadie?
RUBY LOCKWOOD:
Anyone other than Saul and me, I got no clue. She was only here for … couldn’t have been an hour.
WEST McCRAY:
If I leave a photo of Sadie with you, you think you can put it up? Ask around?
RUBY LOCKWOOD:
Sure thing.
WEST McCRAY [STUDIO]: A day later, I get a phone call from a man named Caddy Sinclair.
sadie
The cafe is called Lili’s.
I duck inside and navigate past the ridiculous line at the register, trying not to breathe in the scent of food, of caffeine. I feel like I never want to eat again. I feel like if I don’t eat something soon, I won’t make it much further. My body is trembling, tremoring, and I’m freezing, even though it’s hot, my teeth chattering. I don’t know how to make this go away. I need to make it go away. I slip into the bathroom and sink-wash myself in frustrating stop-starts as women filter in and out. I just. Want to be clean. I use the cheap floral soap and gritty paper towels to rub a weak lather over my arms and legs with my shaking hands. The dirt from the house washes away, leaving a mishmash of tiny cuts on my shins that I didn’t notice from my trek through the grass. I slip my hand up my shirt, cleaning the sweat from under my breasts. My hair has about another day left in it before I have to find some way to wash it. I twist it into a tight bun. I lean forward against the sink and let out a sob, whispering okay, okay, okay, until I feel its cold porcelain beneath my fingers.
He took Darren under his wing, sort of, just made a point of being nice to him. Fucking Marlee. He took Darren under his— Fucking Marlee. Silas could sense it, I bet, that same sick soul lurking underneath, someone he could share himself with. He was just better at hiding it than Keith was. But Marlee had to have known it, she had to. I don’t talk to my brother anymore. Why else would she give up the only relationship she had with the one person who could bankroll her? I pound my fist against the sink because there’s nothing else in here I can hit. She. Knew.
And now I know.
I run my hand over my mouth. My eyes are wide and wild and I can’t see myself beyond them. I can only see what they’ve seen.
Do I kill him?
Do I kill Silas Baker?
I stole Keith’s switchblade the night Mom kicked him out.
That night didn’t end how it was supposed to, in a lot of ways, but I thought I could kill him when I was half the girl I am now, a coltish thing. Or maybe I didn’t think I would kill him—maybe I was too young to imagine anything so final, so irreversible—but I wanted to hurt him badly enough to make him afraid of me the way I needed.