She went for the door and tore out into the warm rain. When she reached the fence, she bent herself in half. No. No, he couldn’t have Charlie. He couldn’t have a piece of the only person in her life she cherished. Why couldn’t even this secret belong to her? The trees dripped heavily on her back. Baritone bullfrogs croaked in the distance. Manny showed up behind her. She turned and shoved him back a few paces. He held out his palms like an offering.
“Hey, hey,” he said gently, as if approaching a spooked horse. “You don’t have to worry. I don’t mean you harm. She’s yours, really. You raised her, you loved her all this time. I know what that’s like,” he said, “because of how I felt for you. All I ask, with your blessing, is to get to know her. I want her to know I wouldn’t have left on purpose.” His voice seemed to catch on a feeling, a shimmer passed across his eyes. “And if I had known, that you were still pregnant, that you really wanted to keep her, I never would have taken you out that day. I never woulda done what I did.”
Kit heard him, though his voice sounded faint and far as an echo. As she made room for this new possibility, the thrashing in her chest settled. She shook her head, not knowing where to land, tired of fighting it. Under the camouflage of rain, she released a few long tears. She hung there a good while before turning to him.
“How did you know?” she asked.
Manny laughed a big one. “Kitty Cat, come on.” He looked at her like she was joking. “She looks just like me.”
It hurt to admit it was true. Charlie had many elegant and striking features, none of which had come from Kit, but she had always considered those essential—and not heritable—traits. God-given features that belonged to Charlie.
He kept his distance but gestured with his jaw toward the house. “Can I beg your forgiveness where it’s nice and dry? Maybe share some of that Mexican food?”
“I don’t know how,” she said, not even wanting to utter the words to forgive, but even in admitting this was surprised to feel a slender ray of warmth, an opening in her breath.
Chapter Thirty
When Charlie tramped inside, soaked to her scalp, Kit froze like she’d been caught stealing. Manny stood up and put his hand on Kit’s shoulder. They passed a weighted thing between them, she and Manny, back and forth like a stone, until finally Kit cleared her throat. She held the words back, rolling them around in her mouth before she let them go, once and forever. As if preparing herself to jump from a great height, she imagined the possible outcomes. Would they hug and cry? Would Charlie run away, would they chase her down and hold her till she calmed? She couldn’t know until she said the thing she thought she’d never say.
“Go on and say hello,” she said. Her voice was dusky and tight. “This is Manny. This is your father.”
Charlie’s features were slow to register. She only stared as rainwater ran from the twists of her hair down her arm. Kit couldn’t get a read on what Charlie was feeling, or if she even understood. There was an off-center look that Kit couldn’t quite understand. Then, as if vomiting, Charlie hurled out laughter, a stream of uncontrollable gusts of sound, gasping for air. She held on to the banister and swung around, plopping down on the base of the staircase, stricken by hilarity that was only known to her.
“That’s it,” Kit said. “This was a mistake.” Then she turned to Manny and growled, “Get on out.”
Manny pressed the tension down with his hands. “Now, hang on a second. We just turned her world upside down.” More softly, he said, “Let me talk to her.”
Charlie was trying to speak but kept laughing over her words, wheezing. She dragged herself up from the step and came over to the kitchen table. She looked at Manny, checking him out. “You’re my dad?” she said. “Manny, huh?” Then she turned to Kit and pointed at her. “I thought you were acting crazy when he came by.”
Kit shook her head, willing herself not to turn this into a fight.
“Look, let me make this right,” Manny said, lifting a set of keys off their hook by the door. “Kitty, I’m taking your truck. Me and Charlie are gonna go get acquainted. I’ll have her back in an hour.” He went over and laid a hand on Charlie’s back and swept her toward the door, not by force, but as if she were already headed that way. She glanced back at Kit, as if expecting her to kick this guy’s ass down the steps, but Kit just stood there, frozen, unnatural as a scarecrow. Then, on a ten-second delay, she went after them.
“Wait!” she yelled and jogged out into the rain and down the front steps. “Where y’all going? I’m coming with you!”
Manny was already starting up the truck.
“I’m not gonna kidnap her or anything,” he said and winked. “I just got out of prison, Kitty. Not trying to go back there anytime soon.” He looked around and stuck his hand out the window. “Hey, look, stopped raining.”
As Manny drove away with Charlie, Kit ran the length of the driveway, cleared the cattle guard, and continued onto the main road for a ways until they were too far gone. When she lost sight of them, she bent at the waist, her hands propped on her knees, and caught her breath. Huffing, spent, she felt the blood fill her face and ears and fingertips, her tongue fat against her teeth, and wished she hadn’t let Charlie go. She stood up and got light-headed, her vision silvered and faded.
“They’re coming back, they’re coming back, they’re coming back,” she said to quiet her terrified heart.
The summer rain had fallen hard, and anything that wasn’t paved was mud. Charlie and Manny sat in the truck in an empty field, a humid mist just visible rising around them. Charlie ached with the shock of it, like a bone-deep flu. It was still unclear how she came to be sitting here with this man, her father. Father. When she first heard the word, Charlie had shuffled the pieces around until she arranged something that made sense. She’d stood there stupidly, letting those words fall to the floor, and could hear only the grind and squeak of toads and a hot gale rustling the leaves, envoy of a second rain. Then she had seen the storm in his brow, the way his lip cut across his teeth, and she knew.
Father. Maybe it sounded strange because there had not been a slot waiting for him to fill. There had been no trace of him to miss, no photo, no anecdotes, no fuzzy memories. It had always been simply Kit and Charlie, the End. She remembered what Mrs. Fowler had said about needing a man in the house, that kids needed discipline. Was that what he would be like? Spankings and groundings and stern words? Or touch football in the yard and frosty hunting trips at dawn?
“I can’t believe Mom let you drive the truck,” she said, hoping to puncture the silence. She recalled their conversation in the parking lot. The stolen Cokes, the friendly way he had called after her, had seemed concerned about her traveling alone. The way she had felt when he spoke to her in the parking lot, both curious and wary. In light of this new information, his actions made more sense. He must have known, then, who she was. But if so, why hadn’t he said something?
“She kind of owes me one,” he said, with a tone that rang sullen. “Hey, you like doughnuts?”