Set Me Free (21 page)

A barge down on the Mississippi let out a low, long bellow. The cat jumped up on Nat’s lap and meowed at him a few times until
he scratched behind her ears. She hopped over to Willa’s lap and leaned steadily against the girl. Willa bit her lip and waited.
Then she asked in a soft voice, “And what happened then?”

“What happened then is that Caroline left me. She announced it to me one evening. She said she’d found a new life for herself.
In New York. Apparently, she’d been busy on those trips down to the city. She said she’d found a group of people who believed
what she believed. She said she was going to help them. They were going to change the world. She had already packed a bag.
She left most of her things behind. She said she wasn’t going to need them anymore.”

“Just like that?” Willa asked, petting the cat instead of touching her father.

“Just like that.”

“And you let her go?”

“Your mother wasn’t the kind of woman I could keep still. She had her own mind, Willa.”

“But what about me?” Her eyes were blurry, and her voice was
uncontrollable. “And who were those people? What does that mean, they believed what she believed? What’s that supposed to
mean?”

“What it means,” Nat said gently, “is that she fell in with a group of radicals. They were involved in what they called the
Movement. Their idea was to repatriate the southern states and call them New Africa.”

“What do you mean?”

“They wanted those states to secede from the Union, and they wanted to give those states to African-Americans whose ancestors
had been brought over during slavery.”

“I don’t know what any of that means,” Willa said. She was frustrated at how calm he sounded. She wanted him to get to the
point.

“It means she became very politically involved. With this group of people she left me for.” He paused. “She left
us
for.”

“But she loved you,” Willa said. “I know she loved you. And what about
me?
“

“Yes,” he said, laying his hand on top of her head before she shook it off. “She loved me. She loved you. But she reminded
me that I had always been the one who wanted kids. I was the one who would know what to do as a father.” He was careful when
he said this, trying to keep the anger from his voice.
“She
needed to change the world.”

“But that’s crazy,” Willa said. “That’s crazy, Dad. She really believed that stuff about New Africa? She really thought that
was going to happen?”

“She said she did, yes.”

“But she wasn’t crazy, was she? I know she was hard to get along with, and I know you guys fought, but I didn’t think she
was—”

“She wasn’t crazy,” Nat said, resisting the urge to physically comfort her. “She developed firm beliefs. After she died, I—”

“You said she died in a fire,” Willa said as she studied Nat’s face. “That’s true, right? You said that’s what happened. You
said you guys lived together, but then one night, she was with a group of friends, and the house—”

“I’m getting to that.”

“She came back to you, right? You’re going to tell me that after she came back to us, she died in the fire?”

Nat sighed. “Your mother died in something like a fire.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” The pitch of Willa’s voice was rising.

“She died in an explosion.”

“An explosion?” Willa pushed Ariel from her lap and leaped up from the car. Her body was one long swerve
of
kinetic energy. “What are you talking about?” she asked, raising her voice. She was angry, accusatory. “That’s not how my
mother died,” she said. “She died in a fire.”

“Listen to me,” Nat said, though he made no move to touch her. “Hear me out. I need to finish telling you—”

Willa’s hands were over her ears. “No,” she said, but she looked at him with hope in her eyes.

“After she left, I looked for her,” Nat said, “but the city was too big. I didn’t even know where to begin. Besides, when
she left, she told me there was no point in my looking. She said she had found her new family. It broke my heart, Willa, but
I had to let her go. I knew her. I knew that if I kept looking, even if I found her, it wasn’t going to do any good. She wasn’t
going to come back to me. She didn’t want me. She told me, to my face, that she would die if she had to spend even one more
day in the house we’d shared. So I let her go, Willa. I let her go.”

Willa wasn’t moving away, but she wasn’t coming back either. Nat decided to keep this part succinct.

“One day she came back. She told me she’d done something terrible. Something terrible for ‘the cause.’ That’s what she called
it. She told me she wasn’t staying. She had to go to a place they called a safe house. She said she’d be okay there. But she
made me promise that if anything ever happened to her, I would find a man named Elliot Barrow and deliver a message for her.
I begged her to stay. I begged her to tell me what she’d done. But she left. And she
never came back. Three days later, she was killed in an explosion in New Jersey. I read about it in the newspaper. She was
staying in a house with six other people, and they were making bombs in the basement. And that’s how she died.”

“I don’t believe you,” Willa said through her teeth.

“I know you don’t,” Nat said, “but I’m telling you the truth. It was time for you to know it. I’m sorry that it is the truth.
And I’m sorry you have to know it.”

Willa was shaking her head.

“You can ask me anything,” Nat said. “You can say anything you want.”

Willa seemed beyond words, but she gathered herself enough to ask, on a sharp intake of breath, “What did she do?”

“What do you mean?”

“What was the terrible thing she did? The reason she had to go to the safe house? The place they were making those bombs.”
Her lower lip quivered.

“She helped kidnap a man. And then the man died.”

There was a beat. “You mean she murdered him.”

“No one knows, Willa. No one knows what really happened, because most of the people who helped in the kidnapping died when
the explosion—”

“I have to be alone,” Willa said, gripping her stomach as though she was about to be sick. “I have to take a walk or something.”
She strode quickly away, up the edge of the bluff, skirting the edge of the Mississippi. He watched her determined walk until
she was a small dot in the distance. He did nothing. In the past, he would have followed behind unobtrusively, just to make
sure she was all right. But this time he knew she wouldn’t fall. She had too many questions to waste them with a fall. She
would be back. He was sure of that. He wished he could have told the story more kindly. He wished he could have said, “Your
mother was a gentle woman. I’m sure she had nothing to do with that man’s death.” He wished he could have told Willa all the
facts up front. But he wanted more
time. Surely, all the truth would come. There were jagged connections and undefined time lines in the story he had cast. Willa
was a smart girl. She would begin to unravel the past he’d given her and start to worry at the frayed truth.

A
MELIA

Stolen, Oregon
Sunday, October 6, 1996

Lydia dropped Amelia off at the end of the driveway. “Sorry,” Lydia said as she braked, “I’m not up for the Wrath of Barrow.
Good luck.” As Amelia blinked her way into the early afternoon, Lydia unrolled the passenger window and called out, “Remember,
no matter what happens: it was worth it. Just remember Victor’s luscious ass.”

Amelia smiled over her shoulder and waved as Lydia pulled a U-ie and headed back toward the highway. The gravel skipped under
Amelia’s feet as she walked. She hadn’t told Lydia everything, just that she and Victor had spoken. These delicious secrets
were the kind everyone kept. The sky spilled golden light in shafts, parting the clouds. It was as though the world had decided
to open today, bigger, better, brighter, than it ever had before. She shivered, but she was not cold. Her fingers felt electric,
as though by touching something, she could infuse it with life. She hugged herself and smiled.

At the house, as she opened the screen door, she heard voices coming around from the side porch, where kids usually sat between
classes. But today was Sunday, and the voices were earnest and clear. The voices of adults. She had a choice. She could sneak
upstairs and wait for the inevitable or face it right then. And then it was not her choice anymore, because as Amelia stood
with her hand on the door handle, Helen’s head peeked around the side of the house. Ferdinand appeared right after Helen.
He slathered Amelia’s hands in giddy kisses.

“Hello! Come join us!” Helen pulled the dog back by the collar and beamed at Amelia. Such jollity had not been heard in this
place just about ever. And though Amelia was feeling positively jolly in her deepest self, the sight of her father’s ex-wife,
the physical proof that Helen existed, triggered Amelia’s defensiveness.

“Oh. Hey.”

“Your dad’s been telling me all about the school and how you helped him build it.”

“I didn’t help. I was, like, a baby.”

Helen came toward her. Amelia’s first instinct was to recoil. But she fought it. She simply stood there until Helen’s arm
was around her shoulder, and then she was being steered around the side of the house, into the shadow of the porch. As they
walked, Helen leaned in to whisper, “I’ve loosened him up for you. I think we can get through this without any yelling.” Helen’s
familiarity was jostling and new.

Elliot was sitting in a rocking chair, a mug of tea in his hand. The autumn air was cool and he was smiling. The word “lounging”
occurred to Amelia. He looked the closest she had ever seen him to being perfectly relaxed. He even smiled, the smile of the
lazy who don’t plan to get up anytime soon.

“Hey,” said Amelia.

“I’m going to bring down another pot of tea,” said Helen. “Do you want anything else, Elliot?”

“I’m fine, thanks.” Helen left. The dog settled down for a snooze. Amelia stood at the edge of the porch, trying to quell
the flutter in her stomach, from Victor, from too much beer, and from having to face this strange vision of her father, the
way she often dreamed of him being. The way he never was. It was very confusing.

“Listen, Dad, I’m sorry.” He had this way of making her apologize when she least expected it.

“I know,” he said. “I need to do a better job.”

“You do a good job. I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.”

He nodded.“I should have gotten on my own that you’re growing up. I keep you too close sometimes. I have my reasons. But I
know it can’t be easy.”

Why did Amelia feel as if she was going to cry, as if all the happiness she’d gained in Victor’s company was dispersing? She
wanted to hold on to how mature she’d been the night before, like a real adult. At the moment she felt about nine years old.
And more than a little self-righteous. If only Elliot could have seen his beloved Ponderosa students getting wasted by the
bonfire. “Do you even begin to get how responsible I am? If I told you the things people my age are
doing,
you wouldn’t believe it.”

Elliot’s chair made a gnawing sound against the floorboards as he rocked back and forth. “I’d have you sainted, huh? That’s
what you mean?”

Amelia nodded. She didn’t want to cry. Already, great hot tears were spilling from her eyes. She hated crying. She was glad
when Elliot took it from there.

“I propose we start over. We make new rules. I try to trust you more. I tell you when I am inviting my ex-wives to come live
with us.” He smiled. “I’m kidding, Amelia.”

“I know,” she said reluctantly.

“And you must inform me when my rules are terribly unfair.”

“Okay.”

“The rules exist because I want you to be safe. I would never forgive myself if something happened to you. You’re all I have,
Amelia. Perhaps that makes me an uncool father.”

“No.” Though Amelia did not want Elliot to dump this responsibility upon her, it was what he did. He believed, and would always
believe, that she was all he had. She wanted him to have so much more, and in truth, he did. He did not see any of the rest
of it; all he saw was her. She went to him. She wanted to crawl on his lap, the way she used to in the ancient days between
them, but she was too big. Too tall. Too heavy. She sat at his feet and put her head on his lap. She examined the heavy blue
of his Sunday jeans, the snags in them, the paint on them, and rubbed the thick denim between her fingers. It was good to
be this close to him, the way they had been when her only way around had been
in his arms. The chair rocked her back and forth. Her tears seemed to disappear the second her cheek touched his legs. She
hugged her arms around his calves. She wished she could hand him her happiness. She wished it could always be like this, and
that this would be enough.

He began to sing to her. The simple song she knew in her bones. The song he had always sung to her and had not sung in a long,
long time. There were words, and the words mattered, but more than that was the joy she felt as his voice hummed through her
body and made her feel small, cared for, at peace.