now? To the police?”
I take his hand, which now feels so very small, and I pull him toward the sunlight of the street. “No. We’re going to our aunt’s in Idaho.”
He looks at me with those eyes of his. “What aunt?”
So much has been crammed into my head, a mass of loose ends that feel like they’ve coagulated inside my throat, that I really can’t speak. Instead, I jerk him down the street. Into a crowd of people hurrying to things that they know. A lunch date with a friend, a business meeting, a store in which they will shop.
My brother and I are hurrying into a very dark unknown.
And in one of the envelopes I have a gun.
THE KING STREET STATION IS just south of Pioneer Square, the city’s eclectic historic district with homeless and runaway teens fighting for corner space. I fit in there, I know. But I don’t intend to stay. And while I’m not sure about what I am going to do, I know of only one place to go.
“Two tickets to Wallace, Idaho,” I say to the clerk behind the glass partition at the railroad station’s ticket window.
“The line goes as far as Spokane. You will have to transfer to a bus for Wallace.”
I pay for the tickets, leaving us only a few dollars. I’ll need to do something about that. Hayden has been bugging me nonstop for information about what was in the safe deposit box. I tell him only bits and pieces. I don’t tell him how much of a liar our mother was. I don’t tell him that I’m so hurt and angry that I only want to find her so that I can yell at her.
“We have relatives in Idaho. We’re going there to stay. We’ll be safe.”
“Idaho? What relatives?” he asks excitedly, seemingly missing the point that up to that moment our parents have fed us a pack of lies.
“Mom has a sister. Apparently.”
We take a seat in the back of the second car. I let Hayden have the window. He’s tired and I’m hoping the monotonous beat of a rolling train will lull him to sleep. A woman in front of us is looking at the newspaper and I pray that it isn’t the same one we saw on the ferry that morning. The rhythm and rumble of the wheels against the track do precisely what I knew they’d do. Hayden’s asleep.
I pull out the envelopes and papers from the safe deposit box and consume the information on each page as if I were a human scanner. I am, sort of. I’ve always had the ability to remember things. I know that I possess a photographic memory. I never say so aloud. It sounds too conceited, but I do. And yeah, maybe sometimes, I guess I am a little conceited too. While I’m taking everything inside, while I’m feeling the gun in its paper wrapper, I’m thinking. I’m thinking over and over about what is happening to Mom. I am so mad at her for the lies she’s told me. I feel foolish too. I imagined the father I never knew, the soldier, and how he’d fought for our country. He was a hero. When I was little I used to pretend that I was talking to him on the phone all the way across the world. He was dodging bullets, bombs. He was facing death inside some burned-out village in the Middle East, but he stopped everything to talk to me. I saw my father as a kind of superhero worthy of respect, love, and a movie. All of that was a figment of my imagination.
My stepfather was a good guy. Decent. Yet still a mystery. Why would he take us on? There had to be something wrong with a man who would carry such a burden as to live on the run with my mother, me, and later, Hayden. I loved him in the way that one loves a trusted pet, one who might bite you, so you never get too close. He was solid. Caring. But he wasn’t my dad. He was Hayden’s dad. My stomach roils as I think of him nearly pinned to the floor of the kitchen with a knife, like some moth specimen in Biology class at South Kitsap. I want to cry for him right now. He deserves that much, but I can’t.
I can’t think of anything but my bio dad and who he was. He was not dog-tag material. He was not the hero.
I take his hand, which now feels so very small, and I pull him toward the sunlight of the street. “No. We’re going to our aunt’s in Idaho.”
He looks at me with those eyes of his. “What aunt?”
So much has been crammed into my head, a mass of loose ends that feel like they’ve coagulated inside my throat, that I really can’t speak. Instead, I jerk him down the street. Into a crowd of people hurrying to things that they know. A lunch date with a friend, a business meeting, a store in which they will shop.
My brother and I are hurrying into a very dark unknown.
And in one of the envelopes I have a gun.
THE KING STREET STATION IS just south of Pioneer Square, the city’s eclectic historic district with homeless and runaway teens fighting for corner space. I fit in there, I know. But I don’t intend to stay. And while I’m not sure about what I am going to do, I know of only one place to go.
“Two tickets to Wallace, Idaho,” I say to the clerk behind the glass partition at the railroad station’s ticket window.
“The line goes as far as Spokane. You will have to transfer to a bus for Wallace.”
I pay for the tickets, leaving us only a few dollars. I’ll need to do something about that. Hayden has been bugging me nonstop for information about what was in the safe deposit box. I tell him only bits and pieces. I don’t tell him how much of a liar our mother was. I don’t tell him that I’m so hurt and angry that I only want to find her so that I can yell at her.
“We have relatives in Idaho. We’re going there to stay. We’ll be safe.”
“Idaho? What relatives?” he asks excitedly, seemingly missing the point that up to that moment our parents have fed us a pack of lies.
“Mom has a sister. Apparently.”
We take a seat in the back of the second car. I let Hayden have the window. He’s tired and I’m hoping the monotonous beat of a rolling train will lull him to sleep. A woman in front of us is looking at the newspaper and I pray that it isn’t the same one we saw on the ferry that morning. The rhythm and rumble of the wheels against the track do precisely what I knew they’d do. Hayden’s asleep.
I pull out the envelopes and papers from the safe deposit box and consume the information on each page as if I were a human scanner. I am, sort of. I’ve always had the ability to remember things. I know that I possess a photographic memory. I never say so aloud. It sounds too conceited, but I do. And yeah, maybe sometimes, I guess I am a little conceited too. While I’m taking everything inside, while I’m feeling the gun in its paper wrapper, I’m thinking. I’m thinking over and over about what is happening to Mom. I am so mad at her for the lies she’s told me. I feel foolish too. I imagined the father I never knew, the soldier, and how he’d fought for our country. He was a hero. When I was little I used to pretend that I was talking to him on the phone all the way across the world. He was dodging bullets, bombs. He was facing death inside some burned-out village in the Middle East, but he stopped everything to talk to me. I saw my father as a kind of superhero worthy of respect, love, and a movie. All of that was a figment of my imagination.
My stepfather was a good guy. Decent. Yet still a mystery. Why would he take us on? There had to be something wrong with a man who would carry such a burden as to live on the run with my mother, me, and later, Hayden. I loved him in the way that one loves a trusted pet, one who might bite you, so you never get too close. He was solid. Caring. But he wasn’t my dad. He was Hayden’s dad. My stomach roils as I think of him nearly pinned to the floor of the kitchen with a knife, like some moth specimen in Biology class at South Kitsap. I want to cry for him right now. He deserves that much, but I can’t.
I can’t think of anything but my bio dad and who he was. He was not dog-tag material. He was not the hero.
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