Chasing the Skip (13 page)

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I expected Dad to chew me out about calling Ian after we got to the motel, but he took off almost immediately to go to one of his mysterious meetings. If it wasn’t a girlfriend, I just hoped it wasn’t hookers. If it was, I really didn’t want the details. Instead I turned on the TV and watched
America’s Greatest Chef
.

I wished I had my notebook, but that was still in the truck. I snagged the notepad in the hotel, intending to write down the details of the motel room. Instead I started listing the things I remembered about our last apartment—the bar stools where Mom and I would sit to eat breakfast, the bathroom filled with Mom’s hair stuff, my own room with my photo collages all over the walls. Mom on a park bench with her friend Rachel. Jamie on the back of his cousin’s motorcycle, trying to look all tough. Me and Anna on the park swings in the middle of the night. Taking down the photos when we switched apartments was a pain, but I always put them right back up again. That’s what made my room look like mine.

Now they were all in Grandma’s basement in a box. In Dad’s trailer I didn’t have a wall.

Tears snuck into my eyes. I went into the bathroom and wiped them. Then I took a long, hot shower, enjoying being in a real bathtub rather than a plastic stall where I couldn’t shave my legs without my butt hitting the wall.

When I came out, Dad was back, and he’d flipped the channel to some crime drama. I closed my eyes and thought about Ian grinning at me from the back seat. I was pretty sure he was better looking in my memory than he was in real life, but I smiled and snuggled down in the clean sheets, glad to have a real bed to sleep in.

Dad woke me by calling my name. I glanced up at the clock, 5:00 a.m. I’d had less than four hours’ sleep.

“Get up,” he said. “Time to go find our boy.”

It took us about ten minutes to get on the road, since we had next to nothing to pack. I slept an extra two hours in the car. When I woke again, the sky was finally starting to get light.

“I guess you can’t do homework,” Dad said. “Since Ian took it with him. Maybe you’ll get lucky and he’ll complete your assignments for you.”

“Not likely.”

“No kidding. Look, we need to talk anyway.”

When Mom said that, she’d have meant that she wanted advice about a relationship, or that she wanted details about mine. She’d come into my room and sit on the end of my bed, flopping back and hugging a pillow. “Ricki,” she’d say, “we need to talk.”

“About what?” I said, even though I already knew.

“About you calling Ian.”

“I told you before, I was trying to help you out.”

Dad sighed and took a long time to respond, like he was trying to figure out what to do with me. “I said I’d give you more to do if you proved you could do what I say. But you haven’t managed to do that even once.”

“It’s not my fault things keep going wrong. In case you haven’t noticed, your job isn’t exactly predictable.”

Dad sighed. “That’s exactly why I didn’t want you involved in the first place.”

This wasn’t going in a good direction. I softened my tone.

“I know the job with Ian is going badly. But it’s not fair for you to blame it on me. I watched Stan yesterday, just like you asked. I kept track of him, even though it was hard ’cause he went into the bar. I know you were pissed that I left the truck, so I thought I could make it up to you by finding out where Ian was. That’s all.”

That was mostly all, anyway. I didn’t hate the idea of seeing Ian again, but Dad didn’t need to hear about that.

Dad’s eyes flicked to me for a second and then back to the road. He clicked on his blinker, merging onto the freeway.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right. I knew this job was too chaotic for a fifteen-year-old. I don’t know what got into my head, letting you help like that.”

He wished I wasn’t here. That wasn’t what he was supposed to say. “Let me have another chance,” I said.

Dad’s lips pressed together. “I can’t put you in danger like that again.”

“I was talking on a phone. That’s not dangerous.”

“Depends who’s on the other end. Ian isn’t just a guy. We talked about this. He’s a criminal.”

“So he made some mistakes. That doesn’t make him different from us.”

“He broke the law. That’s the difference.”

“So because ignoring your daughter for fifteen years isn’t against the law, that makes it okay.” This had to be the lack of sleep talking. I never would have said that if I was in my right mind.

Dad’s hands tightened on the wheel, and I scooted closer to the door. “I’m sorry I haven’t been a great father. But I didn’t ignore you. I sent cards. Paid child support. I picked you up from Grandma’s. I always fulfilled my legal obligations to your mother. You ask her.”

“You saw me at Grandma’s a couple of times
in my life
. You even forgot my birthday half the time.”

“I always remembered your birthday. I just didn’t always call. Look, I’d fix it if I could, but I can’t redo any of it.”

That made me want to punch him in the face. “I think I know where Mom might be,” I said.

Dad’s face shifted, but I couldn’t quite tell what he was feeling. I couldn’t read him the way I could read Mom.

“How’s that?” Dad asked.

“I got into her e-mail. But I need you to help me finish tracking her down.”

Dad shook his head.

“I need her back, you know.”

“She left you,” Dad said. “I never thought she’d do that. Thought she’d be a better mother to you than she was a wife to me. So I paid your support and stayed out of her way.”

I rested my arm on the cracked leather armrest, tapping my index finger over and over. I wanted to defend Mom, tell him she was a good mother. But she wasn’t here now.

“It would have been easier to come live with you if I’d seen you more often,” I said. “Wouldn’t have killed you to drop by.”

“Wasn’t that I didn’t want to see you,” Dad said. “I kept your picture right here.” He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, revealing an old, yellowed picture of me—my second-grade school photo. One of my front teeth was missing, and you could see my tongue poking through the hole.

“I’m seven in that picture,” I said. “That’s not me.”

“It’s still you,” Dad said. “That’s the way I remember you.”

“Well, I’m different now. If you’d been around, you would have noticed.”

Dad sighed. “I’m sorry, Ricki. I’ve been trying, over the last year. I know it seems way too late, but I’m trying.”

“What changed?” I asked. “Why suddenly start calling when I’m fifteen years old?”

Dad was silent for a long moment, but something in his face told me not to interrupt this silence. I held my breath, waiting. I needed an answer. Any answer, except that he didn’t want me.

“I got sober,” Dad said finally. “That’s what changed.”

That stopped me. “You what?”

Dad reached into the ashtray of his truck and pulled out a large coin. He flipped it at me, and I caught it.

“That’s my eighteen-month chip,” Dad said. “It means I haven’t had a drink in a year and a half.”

“And before that?”

“Before that, I drank.”

I stared down at the coin. It had a triangle on it, and the words “Unity,” “Service,” and “Recovery” that explained his mysterious meetings.

“I didn’t know that.”

“Now you do.”

“Were you like Stan?”

“I kept it together a lot better than him. I held this job, most of the time. I supported myself, and I steered clear of the law. But I also did a lot of things I regret.”

“Like what?”

“Like ignored my daughter, for one.”

I turned the coin over in my hand. Dad started calling me a year ago. That’d be six months after he got sober.

“I wish I could change all that,” Dad said. “But I can’t.”

“Would you?” I asked. “If you could do it over again?”

Dad shook his head. “If I could do it over again,” he said, “I’d skip that party where I met your mom.”

I stared out at the road, watching the yellow dashes slide past the windshield wipers one after another.

He wished that I didn’t exist. Then he wouldn’t have to feel guilty that he hadn’t been around. That probably would have been better for Mom, too. Then she wouldn’t have to worry about me when she headed off to have fun.

“Sure,” I said, trying to ignore my tingling tear ducts. “That probably would have been easier on everyone.”

Dad looked at me, shaking his head. “Nah, Ricki,” he said. “I didn’t mean it like that. I meant you should have had another father. One who wasn’t too drunk to be around. One who could have given your mother what she needed.”

What did Mom need? Mom always told me she didn’t need a man for good, just to play with now and then, and brush off when she got bored. But what kind of husband had Dad been? Had he hurt her so bad with his drinking that she’d given up on men? I tried to picture what Dad would be like drunk, but I couldn’t. And I didn’t have enough memories of him to remember ever seeing him drink.

“I still don’t see why you couldn’t have been around more. Even if you were drinking.”

Dad sighed. “Seeing her brought back too many memories. Made a mess of me, made me want the liquor even more. I couldn’t take you out and stay sober, and I knew you deserved a better father than that. I just didn’t believe I had it in me.”

Mom and Dad had separated before Mom even knew she was pregnant, and divorced by my first birthday. Surely he could have gotten over it sometime in the last fifteen years. But I thought about Stan, drinking because of his dead kid and his lost wife—because he had an addiction and couldn’t stop.

“And now?” I asked.

Dad stayed quiet, and I thought he was going to cop out of the conversation again.

“Well?” I said.

“Now I think that was bullshit,” Dad said. “I think I could have changed all along, I was just too damn scared.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I did deserve better.”

Dad nodded, eyes glued to the road.

I hated it when people did that—just let you insult them without arguing back. It made me feel guilty, which I probably deserved. A good daughter would have said she was proud of the way he finally decided to change. A good daughter would have been able to forgive him, now that she knew the truth. But I couldn’t help feeling like I’d finally learned for certain the thing I’d been so afraid of all these years: he loved his other life more than me. The fact that the other life was alcohol rather than being a superhero didn’t soften the blow.

Tears burned into my eyes. I leaned toward the window, resting my temple against the glass. If Ian wasn’t full of shit, he’d be waiting for me in Des Moines, thinking I was planning to slip away from Dad and take off to California with him. To find Mom. There were only three D. Longwells in San Diego. If I couldn’t find Denis, I’d send Mom a letter at our old address. And Ian would be with me every step of the way—helping me out in ways that Dad flatly refused to.

But here Dad was, finally telling me the truth. That had to count for something. Still, it had taken him six months to contact me once he was sober, and he hadn’t come to get me until Grandma insisted. He had no other choice. He was stuck with me.

I held my breath, blinking back the tears and watching the yellow line continuing to whiz by. We’d be in Des Moines in a few hours. If Dad cared, he’d follow after me, wouldn’t he? And if he didn’t, well, he could just go back to his regular life, and I could find Mom and get back to mine.

That was a crazy idea, and I knew it. I wanted to be near Ian, but he was also on the run from the law, and if I went with him, I would be too. But if I stayed with Dad, I’d never know if he really wanted me now or if he was just taking care of me because he had to. I closed my eyes to keep the tears from welling out. They pooled in the corners, and I brushed at them with one hand, wiping them away before Dad noticed.

I couldn’t know what I should do until I saw whether or not Ian was really waiting for me. I’d just have to figure it out when we got to Des Moines.

Des Moines, Iowa.

Days since Mom left: 32.

Distance from San Diego, California: 1749.41 miles.

13

We reached Des Moines around one o’clock. Flat, gray clouds stretched across the sky, and fat raindrops pelted the windshield, running in ripples as the wind blew them toward the edges. Dad had been quiet for most of the ride, which was just as well, because I didn’t want to talk to him, either. Dad used an actual map to get to Ian’s sister’s house, since his GPS was still in the truck. As we pulled down her street, I caught sight of our red pickup parked crookedly against the curb.

Dad grinned. “We got him,” he said.

My spine prickled. Had Ian actually stuck around? Did that mean he was hiding somewhere, waiting for me?

“I need you out of the way,” Dad said, “but I know you’re not going to stay in the car.”

My skin tingled. If I got out of the car, I might really run off with Ian. And then what? “I will this time,” I said. “I promise.”

Dad chewed on his cheek. I could tell he was wrestling with wanting to trust me and knowing he couldn’t.

He was right.

I held up my palm. “I will stay in the car. I swear.” Even I was afraid of what I might do if I didn’t.

“All right,” Dad said, but I wasn’t sure if it was because he was giving me another chance or because he didn’t have another good option.

Dad parked two houses away from the truck and got out, taking the keys with him. He trusted me, but not that much.

My heart picked up pace. If Ian really was waiting for me, he’d wait for Dad to go inside and then come get me. But I’d told Dad I’d stay in the car, so I would. That was the smarter thing to do, right?

I didn’t watch as Dad walked up to the house. Ian probably wasn’t here. If he was smart, he’d already run off in some other stolen car and left Dad’s truck behind for us to find. He’d probably just told me he’d wait for me to lead us in the wrong direction.

I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes. I took long breaths, trying to calm down.