The only answer was a dull silence pierced by the vague sounds of trucks on the highway and waves crashing somewhere in the distance.
“Oh my God,” she mumbled, sweat pricking the back of her neck. Her hands tingled, and this time she couldn’t control the tears. “I’m going crazy. He was never here. I was dreaming…” She plopped unceremoniously to the ground, her tailbone thunking the cement hard when she heard the hum of an engine, saw the faint shadow of white parking lights.
There was a truck at her curb, and her father was in the driver’s seat. She looked at him and she was seven years old again. The wrinkles and the gray hair that she had been so focused on were obscured by the darkness, and it was as if no time had passed as he curled a finger out to her, his grin wide and welcoming. Still, Bex was tentative, hesitantly walking toward the car and approaching the driver’s side.
“Well, come on. Get in. Wait. Do you want to drive?”
She shook her head. “I thought we were just going to talk.”
“We are, Bethy. But it’s almost four in the morning. I think we’re going to be a little conspicuous sitting out front of your house, don’t you? And as much as I’d like to keep all this on the up-and-up…” He screwed up his face into some approximation of apology or shame.
“O-okay, but we’re not going too far.”
Her father threw open the passenger side door and Bex looked up at him, a daughter seeing her dad. He was innocent. He was harmless. He loved her.
“Aw, Bethy,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “Don’t tell me you believe all the lies they’ve fed you.”
Cold betrayal shot goose bumps down Bex’s arms, and she shook her head again, then stepped into the car, belting herself in.
“He was just a man, you know?”
They drove in silence for a few moments, until the truck’s tires began to spin under the dusting of sand on the blacktop of the beach parking lot. He pressed the car into Park and killed the engine.
“Is this your car?”
He shook his head. “You know…my circumstances, don’t you, Bethy?”
Bex bit her thumbnail and looked away, nodding curtly.
“I was so glad when you reached out to me.”
She turned back with a start. “When I reached out?”
“On the site.” He touched his chest.
Bex’s tongue went heavy in her mouth, her muscles liquid. She knew that he was GAMECREATOR, but somewhere in the back of her mind, she’d hoped it wasn’t true, hoped her father wasn’t lurking on a page that praised a madman. “So that was definitely you.”
“Well, yeah.”
“He’s a narcissist, Bex. He’ll be trolling the sites, enjoying that people worship him.”
“Why?” There was anger in her voice, and Bex could feel her nostrils flare.
“I wanted to find you.”
“That’s not why. You had no idea that’s where you would find me.”
He shrugged, his shoulders bigger and meatier than Bex remembered. “But I found you just the same.”
They stared at each other in dark silence for a beat until her father unclicked his seat belt. “What do you want to know?”
Thirty-Two
At first, Bex didn’t answer.
“You want to know if I’m guilty? You want to know if I did it?”
She didn’t know her father well enough to read the intonation in his voice—was it angry? Exasperated? In the darkness, the planes of his face were shadowed and Bex couldn’t read him at all. It didn’t matter because she couldn’t look at him. She stared at her hands in her lap.
“Did you?”
“Of course not! You know me, Beth Anne. I’m your daddy!” He touched her shoulder awkwardly, trying to get her to face him. “You know I couldn’t do something like that.”
But Bex didn’t know. This man was a stranger to her.
“How come you never wrote to me or tried to call?” The anger was softening, her words going from sharp and deliberate to a softer, more needy tone. Bex hated it.
“I thought it would be better for you if you just forgot about me, you know? Got on with your life. Tried to be normal and all.”
“So why now? Why did you decide to show up and come find me now?” Again, Bex was getting worked up. She could feel the hot blood pulsing through her veins, her every cell on high alert.
“I heard that your gran had died. I knew that they were going to put you in the system. I couldn’t let that happen.” He slid a single finger under her chin, edging her head up to face him. “I couldn’t let that happen to my little girl.”
Bex didn’t realize she was crying.
“If you didn’t do this, Daddy, why didn’t you fight? Why did you run?”
“You don’t think I was going to try that? I couldn’t afford a good lawyer, and they had the best and the fanciest lining up to have my head based on what they said I’d done. I knew then that you can’t fight the law, Beth Anne. They wanted to put someone in jail. And I just happen to fit in wherever there were holes. I had to go.”