Bex smiled thinly. For the past two days, she had been emailing GAMECREATOR. She was sure now that he was her father, and she refused to allow herself to think of anything else—not Darla, not Detective Schuster. She would draw him out when the time was right, but for now, Bex was enjoying their e-chats, her father asking her about Gran and bringing up memories—ones that no one but her father could have known.
“Are your foster parents coming?” Trevor asked.
“Michael and Denise are the coolest. I wish my parents would give me up for adoption. I’d sign up to stay with them.”
Laney shot Chelsea a murderous look and Chelsea shrugged, sticking a piece of tape to the crepe paper and smacking it to the wall.
“Um, I guess,” Bex said. But in her mind she pictured her father here, talking to her teachers, impressed at how quickly she caught up, examining the series of ocean paintings she had done in art class.
“Bex! Bex!”
Bex snapped to attention. Trevor was standing directly in front of her. “I don’t know where you’ve been all day, but it sure isn’t here.” His voice was playful, but there was an edge to it that made guilt flutter through her.
“I’m sorry. I’ve just got…a lot on my mind.” She unfurled the last of the crepe paper, and Chelsea stuck it to the wall. “Are we good here?”
? ? ?
When Trevor dropped Bex off, she was ready to race to her room to start another chat with her father, but Denise met her on the landing.
“I was just going upstairs,” Bex said.
Denise gently turned her around and led her down the stairs and into the kitchen where Michael was chopping vegetables.
“You’ve been holed up in your room every day for a week now.”
“Yeah,” Michael said. “What have you been doing up there? Running a meth lab? A salamander-fighting ring?”
Denise stole a stalk of celery from Michael; he waited for her to turn around before handing Bex a cookie.
“Just a lot of schoolwork,” Bex said, her mind going to the web forum, to her father who was probably waiting to talk to her.
“Well, tonight schoolwork can wait until after dinner. You’re starting to get computer screen pallor.” Denise pulled out a chair. “Sit, talk, interact.”
Bex did as she was told, answering questions about Trevor and school and whether she was interested in any school activities. She tried to be as social and as normal as possible, but she wanted to talk with her father. When dinner was mercifully over, she bounded up the stairs and sat in front of her screen, frowning at the only message in her inbox:
GAMECREATOR has left this conversation.
A beat passed before the icon showed GAMECREATOR logging back in. Bex started to type, but stopped when GAMECREATOR’s message came through:
Don’t have access to computer much longer. Can I talk to you?
Bex tried to swallow the boulder in her throat. Slowly, she watched her hands settle on the keys. She watched herself type the three letters that would make GAMECREATOR and her father real.
BETHANNER: Yes.
She gave him her phone number, then stared at her phone, feeling beads of sweat running down the back of her neck. She jumped at every little sound, certain it would be an incoming call.
And then the phone rang.
She stared at it, dumbfounded. Her hand shaky, she slid the phone on.
“Hello?” Her breath came out a strangled whisper.
There was no sound on the other end of the phone, just a dull static and Bex could feel herself straining to hear if there was someone there. She pressed the phone hard against her ear, listening for a wisp of breath or the peals of laughter from a prankster screaming that, as always, the joke was on her.
“Bethy.”
The man’s voice plucked her from her surroundings and dragged her back ten years to the last time she heard it. Bex wondered how she could have ever thought she’d forget. It was as if he’d never stopped talking to her, never stopped calling her Bethy.
Bex’s uncertainty about what to call him, how to address him went out the window and the word rolled out. “Dad!”
She hadn’t meant to cry. The tears rolled over her cheeks. “Dad.”
Her father sniffed and chuckled on his end of the phone. “I’ve dreamed of hearing your voice for ten long years.”
Bex nodded her head in agreement. “Me too.”
“I can’t believe it’s really you.”
She remembered she was supposed to be skeptical, analytical, on guard, but all she could think was that she was on the phone with her father—her dad!—and he was crying and sniffling and as stunned and happy as she was.
He did miss me. He does love me.
“Bethy, I don’t have much time.”
“Where are you?”
A slight pause, a sound like he was sucking air through his teeth. “I can’t tell you that.”
“I can help you, Dad. I know I can. And Michael and Denise—”
“That the couple I saw you with?”
Bex’s heart dropped into her gut. “You saw me?”
“We’re family, Bethy. The first thing I did was come and find you.”
Thirty-One