We take Ben’s police cruiser to the east side of Atlanta, wind through older neighborhoods with leafy trees and cracked sidewalks. The houses look like something out of the seventies, but they’re well kept: nice lawns, recent paint jobs.
No trailers.
Ben takes a left and slows down as we reach a small, tan, ranch-style home. All the lights are on, and in the growing dark, the square picture window flickers blue from the television. Inside, a blond woman crosses the living room, hands someone a glass, and—
My shoulders hit the seat back. That’s my dad.
“How . . .” I swallow around the sudden, stupid lump in my throat. “How did you find him?”
“Little bit of luck actually.” Ben pushes lower in his seat, fingers tapping against the steering wheel. “One of the guys from my department recently transferred to the city and moved into a house a few streets over. He recognized your dad last week and called me.”
“I don’t understand.”
Ben exhales hard. “Yeah, you do. You just don’t want to.”
As we watch, the blond woman turns, greeting two small boys who hurtle in from another room. They run straight past her . . . to him. I lean forward, noticing how we have the same dark hair, the same wiry build. My stomach thumps into my feet.
“How old do you think they are?” Ben asks. “Two or three?”
“No idea,” I say, but I understand what Ben’s getting at: timeline. I don’t know squat about children. I do know these two look like him—nothing like me—and if they’re around two or three, that means my dad took up with their mom shortly after we moved here.
“You seen enough?” Ben keeps his eyes on the house, and as my dad hugs the two boys, my fingers wrap around the armrest and tighten.
“Yeah.”
Ben puts the car into drive, pulls away from the house and onto the main road. I can tell he’s waiting for me to say something. It’s certainly a moment that deserves it, but right now I’m shoving together pieces I didn’t understand—pieces I didn’t realize I didn’t understand—until now.
This is why he traveled so much.
This is why we never had enough money.
This is the real reason he left us.
Ben and I make it all the way back to my neighborhood without a word between us. He idles the car alongside our driveway and, as I start to get out, grabs my sleeve.
“You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?” he asks.
“No. Nothing stupid.” There’s no need. I’ve already been stupid. I went with Ben and now I’m going to have to go back inside and look at my mom and pretend I don’t know so I never tell her.
All that is stupid enough.
I should tell my mom. She deserves the truth.
Except that’s what I thought I deserved, and now that I have it . . . I feel worse. Nothing’s changed. The truth didn’t set me free. Everything’s still the same: He’s still gone. She’s still in bed. I’m still . . . alone.
“You going to tell May?” Ben asks.
“Hell no.”
“You’re both better off without him.”
I stare straight ahead; focus on the seep of shadows at the bottom of our street. Ben and Charlotte are always saying things like that. They’re the Proper Side of the family, the side who remembers when my mom was a Good Girl. Then she married my dad. They think he’s trash. I’m not sure what that makes me.
“Tell me the truth,” Ben says. “How bad are you two doing?”
“We’ve been better.” Right now, we have $12.04 in the checking account and another hundred under two feet of dirt in the backyard. My mom knows all about the first and nothing about the second.
If she did, the hundred I earned from mowing lawns last month would be gone, and I’m not sure which scares me more right now: that we don’t even have two hundred bucks to our name, or that, if we did, I couldn’t trust my mom with it.
Ben shifts the car into park at my driveway, leaning one arm against the console to get a better look at me. “So. The job.”
“I could learn it as I go.” I think. I’m almost positive. “Whatever you need, I’m in.”
“Knew you’d come through for me.” Ben moves like he might slap my shoulder, but thinks better of it. “When can you start?”
“Depends.” There’s my mom to deal with, the research I’ll have to do. Credit card scams aren’t my thing. I’ll need some time to prepare. “I’ll call you, okay?”
“Yeah.”
I get out of the cruiser, shuffle up the trailer stairs, and unlock the door. I’m here, but I’m not here. My head’s still so wrapped around my dad, I don’t even notice my mom. She’s awake—in the kitchen—and for a long moment, we just stare at each other.
“Hey, honey.” Her smile is tremulous, almost a spasm.