Wheeler
I was stretched out on my back underneath a seriously leaky Ford pickup truck. The guy that brought it in told me that black goo had suddenly started dripping from the rear axle. What he failed to mention was that he’d obviously been trying to tow something the wrong way and had bent and torqued the damn thing into something that looked like a modern art sculpture. I would never understand why a customer thought minimizing their part in what they fucked up would also minimize the cost of what it would take to fix. This was going to require a whole new back end and it wasn’t going to be cheap.
Swearing under my breath, I rolled out from under the truck. It was going to have to go up on a lift so I could assess the full damage and it was well into February, so the cement floor of the garage never quite warmed up and lying across it even for just a few minutes made all the bones in my back hurt. I was giving instructions to a couple of my guys to move the truck when I caught sight of a familiar head of salt-and-pepper hair. I hadn’t heard from Zak since I confirmed with him I had the Hudson in my possession and was getting ready to start work on it. I assumed he’d gone back to California and our paths wouldn’t cross again, so needless to say, I was a little surprised to see him standing in my garage looking at the now painted Hudson like it was a rare and priceless piece of art.
I cleaned my hands off on the rag that was hanging out of my back pocket and made my way over to where the older man was standing. He had his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his canvas coat and his expression was set in serious lines. The previous two times he’d been to the garage he’d had on reflective sunglasses; now he didn’t. When he turned to look at me as I approached, I faltered a step and came to a complete and total stop. Staring back at me were eyes that were the same identical, unusual pale blue as my own. Suddenly he didn’t just look familiar … he looked like family.
I felt my hands curl into fists at my sides as we stared at each other until he broke the silence. “Wanted to make my way back before the holidays so we could talk, but my wife isn’t in the best of health, so I couldn’t leave her alone.” He took his hand out of one of his pockets and rubbed the back of his neck. “You did some spectacular work with this car, kid. Looks better than some of the ones I’ve worked on.”
“Fuck the car. Who the hell are you and why are you in my garage?” I crossed my arms over my chest and narrowed my eyes at him. “Keep in mind if I don’t like your answers this isn’t going to go well for you.” I felt like there was a hive of angry bees buzzing under my skin. I could hear each beat of my heart between my ears and every breath I took and exhaled sounded super loud and ragged in the space between us.
The older man sighed and dropped his head so that he was looking at the toes of his boots. “I had a kid with a woman when I was very young, just out of high school and torn between joining the army and trying to figure out my own way in the world. She was supposed to be a one-night stand, a way to sow some oats before I committed to one path or the other. She was a redhead, I always had a weakness for long legs and red hair. Things didn’t work out the way I thought they would. She got knocked up, asked me for money for an abortion, and disappeared as soon as I handed the cash over. Didn’t know her, didn’t really want to, but that was a mistake.”
He looked up to see if I was still following him. I was … and I didn’t like where any of this was going. “You trying to tell me that I’m that baby?” I knew my mom was shady as hell and that sounded exactly like something she would do.
He let out a bitter-sounding chuckle and lifted an eyebrow at me. “I know I look young, kid, but not that young. I’m trying to tell you that baby was your mother.” He sighed and rocked back on his heels. “I didn’t know the woman I hooked up with took the money but kept the baby. I was clueless to the fact that I even had a child until my little one showed up on my doorstep at sixteen, hungry, homeless, and pissed off at the world. Her mother hadn’t done right by her and neither had I. She was already deep into addiction, something I think she turned to in order to cope with the lifestyle her mother forced on her.” He cringed. “And I think she was self-medicating. Been around a lot of women in my day and I know when one is off. My baby girl … there was something not right with her.”
I held up a hand and closed my eyes briefly so I could pull my thoughts together. “You’re telling me that you’re my grandfather?” He didn’t look a day over forty-five, even with the silver in his hair. I was having a hard time processing that, but there was no denying that the reason I could swear I had seen him somewhere before was because we had the same face and the exact same eyes. It was like looking into the future. He was what was waiting for me as I began to age.
He nodded and started to pace in front of me. “I took your mother in, put her in a program, got her some professional help, and prayed I could undo all the damage that was done at the hands of her mother.” He gave me a look full of remorse and failure. “It didn’t work. She’d get clean and go right back to using. She’d go to her sessions with the doc and then disappear for two or three days. She was erratic, violent, and unpredictable on her best days. She was bringing dangerous people around and refused to see that the drugs weren’t helping; nothing really seemed to make a dent. I was married by the time she showed up, had an okay life and not much to complain about. My wife left because of the chaos your mother caused and I didn’t care. She was my child, my daughter, it was my job to set her straight.”
I let out a snort and gritted my back teeth. “She was never straight. When I was a baby, she would forget about me when she was high and when she wasn’t she was annoyed I was there. When I was older, she would take me with her to score and leave me with whoever happened to be around. She still hung around dangerous people, so I was lucky that she gave me up when she did because who knows what kind of horrible shit I would have had to face when she was blitzed out. I needed someone to save me from her.”
He made a strangled sound in his throat and lifted a hand so that he could drag it roughly over his face. “I know she never got better. After my wife left, your mother and I had it out. I told her it was rehab and living clean or she was out.” He tossed his head back so that he was looking up at the ceiling. “I woke up the next day and she was gone. She took my ’52 Hudson with her.” His face contorted at the memory, and when he looked back at me it was tortured. “She pawned the car for a couple of thousand dollars and vanished. I never heard from her again.”
I laughed but there was no humor in it and I felt like the center of my chest was going to cave in on itself. “Well, she did the same thing to me but I was four, so I assure you it sucked way worse for me than it did for you.”
He turned to face me with a somber expression. His body was stiff and I could tell he was trying to keep his emotions in check. “I tried to find her. I hired private investigators, pulled in favors from clients, asked some guys I knew from back in the day who had connections that weren’t exactly legal. No one could find her, maybe because she was living on the streets, hanging with people that didn’t want to be found. I got close once when she got locked up on a solicitation charge in New Orleans.” He looked down at the ground and then back up to me. “Her pimp bailed her out before I could get down there and she disappeared again. She must have changed her name after that; maybe she stole someone’s identity because she was a ghost. I looked for her for years and years, waiting for the day I was going to get a phone call telling me they found her body in a ditch somewhere.” His entire frame shuddered and I saw his eyes go shiny with unshed tears. “That call came in the middle of September. She overdosed in a women’s shelter in Dallas. She was sick, kid, really sick, and there was no way to heal her.”
Fuck me but that hurt. I put a hand to the ache that was kicking hard at my ribs and closed my eyes. I always thought she was terrible not just to me, but an actual terrible person. I knew she didn’t end up the way that she did without some help and now knowing she might not have had any control over her sickness made me feel guilty for downright hating her all these years. There wasn’t a shot in hell that she was ever going to be a good mom and do right by me, so the kindest thing she could do was let me go. I’d never really had her, but knowing she was gone in such an ugly, lonely way burned bright and fierce in my blood.
“The only reason I found out about her passing was because she kept a box of personal belongings on her. Inside they found one of my business cards, so they called and asked me to ID her. I flew to Dallas so I could put my baby in the ground, and when I got back to California I went through the stuff she kept close even through all her running and using.” He took a couple of steps closer to me so that we were eye to eye. Both of us fighting back hot emotion and struggling with the loss of a woman that had torn both of our lives apart. “In the box was a birth certificate. My baby had a baby and I didn’t even know about it.” A tight smile pulled at his mouth and his chest expanded as he blew out a long breath. “She named you after my favorite car but I have no clue where ‘Wheeler’ came from. Maybe it was your dad’s real last name, or maybe she made it up. I have no clue but it explains why I never knew you were out there. I hired the same guys I hired to find her to find you, only this time it took them half a day. Your garage is all over the Internet. People that know cars know your name. I saw your picture and nearly passed out. You looked just like me when I was in my twenties and you had my knack for fixing things most people have forgotten about. I remarried and she’s a good woman. Stood by my side while I spent thousands upon thousands of dollars trying to find someone that didn’t want to be found. She held me when I cried over my daughter’s grave and she gave me her blessing not only when I told her I was going to meet my grandson but when I told her I was giving him that same car your mother took off in all those years ago. She’s a good woman with a failing heart. She doesn’t have much time left, so trying to figure out a way to finesse this, to ease my way into your life, went out the window. She wants to meet you before it’s too late and I promised her I would make that happen.”
I fell back a step and shifted my eyes to the car that I knew was special even before I saw it. “You were the guy I bought the Hudson from? You were the one that cut the price down to nothing?”
“The guy that bought it from the pawnshop had no idea what he had. He ran the car into the ground, trashed it like it was any regular ol’ daily driver. He refused to sell it back to me, no matter what I offered. He claimed it paid for itself in pussy and considering he was a fat slob with a comb-over, I don’t doubt he needed the car to get laid. He ran into some money trouble a while back and called me up offering to sell it. His price was outrageous but I bought it anyways. Little shit didn’t bother to tell me he’d parted the thing out for some quick cash before sending it my way. I was holding on to it, telling myself I would rebuild it when the time was right. I walked onto your lot that first day, saw your Caddy, and knew the car wasn’t mine, it was yours.” He gave me a sheepish grin. “Part of the reason I drove my Hornet across country was because I was hoping you would recognize it, that there would be something there.”
I tossed my head back and let out a laugh. “It’s actually my girlfriend’s. I gave it to her a couple of weeks ago.” I knew the car meant something.
His dark eyebrows scrunched together and the corners of his mouth pulled down. “The pregnant one? My wife nearly lost her mind when I mentioned there was a great-grandbaby on the way.”
“No, my girlfriend isn’t pregnant. My ex-girlfriend is.” It sounded like a Jerry Springer episode when I had to explain it to someone else.
“Oh … well … that is complicated, isn’t it?” He gave me a grin that revealed a dimple in his weathered cheek in the exact same place as mine. “Do you know if you’re having a boy or a girl? My wife will be all over great-grandma duty if you wouldn’t mind. It would be much appreciated if you let her be a part of your life for whatever time she has left, Hudson.”
I placed my hands on my hips and rocked my head from side to side. “Don’t know. We’ve done several ultrasounds but the baby seems fond of mooning us and not much else. Kallie, the baby’s mom, decided she wants it to be a surprise, so I’m rolling with it. Poppy, my girlfriend, decorated the nursery in my house yellow and gray, so those are the colors we’re sticking with.”
I’d been so happy when she asked if she could tackle the project of turning my spare room into an actual room for the baby. She’d been pensive and quiet lately, the events in Texas weighing heavily on her mind. Every time her cell rang she rushed to see if it was her mother calling for help and her face fell when it wasn’t.
I’d taken her as my date to Cora and Rome’s wedding on Valentine’s Day hoping that being surrounded by nothing but family and friends celebrating the love of two wonderful people would shake her out of it … and it had, slightly. She turned her attention away from the woman she couldn’t help and instead focused on the ones she could. She was spending more and more time with her victims’ advocacy group but now she was going in as a counselor and an advocate as well as a survivor. She was serious about helping other women who had been where she was and I was proud of her, but I was also worried that for every one woman she saved there would be another one, like her mother, that she couldn’t. I knew that would weigh on her soul. There was a balance there that she was going to have to figure out and I had no problem holding on to her until she found it.
“Yellow and gray it is, then.”
He looked at me expectantly and all I could do was shrug. “I’ve been on my own a long time. Never had a family that I could call my own. Made a baby with a girl that promised me hers but that didn’t work out because promises are easy to break. I found the girl that was meant to be mine all along. She’s more than family to me. She’s the first person that has ever made me feel like I really, truly belong somewhere. I belong with her.” I lifted an eyebrow at the older man who had my face and my eyes and gave him a slow grin. “Because I know what it feels like to be alone and unwanted, I would never want that for my kid. I want my baby to be loved by as many people in this life as possible. My baby is going to have family through blood but also through choice. I don’t see why you and your wife can’t be both.”
He exhaled a long, relieved sigh and briefly closed his eyes. “You made this a lot easier than I thought you were going to, kid.”
“Mom made shit hard for both of us. I’m not into a repeat of that, lived with enough struggle and sacrifice already. I choose to believe you when you say you tried to help her and I choose to believe that if you had known about me you would have done your best to help me as well.”
He swore under his breath and nodded. “Kills me that you were in the system … fucking kills. I would have given you a home. I could have been the one to teach you about cars, not some underqualified shop teacher. That’s like a knife right in the center of my chest.”
“Can’t focus on what was, only on what is.” I reached out a hand and clapped him on his shoulder. I was going to be one good-looking motherfucker when I was an old man. “I’m sorry about your wife.”
“Don’t be. We had a lot of good years and she isn’t gone yet. She took care of me when all that stuff with your mom was going down. Now it’s my turn to be strong and take care of her.”
“That’s what love should look like.” I was certain of it.
“That is what love looks like, kid. You want to pop the hood on this beauty and show me what you’ve done so far? Everything looks original. I’m impressed.”
I couldn’t help but feel proud. I’d never had anyone to tell me what I did was impressive before, at least never anyone whose approval mattered. “Thanks. I told you I had a guy that could find anything.” My phone started to go off in my back pocket. I recognized Poppy’s ring tone right away, so I held up a finger. “Give me a sec to take this. My girl doesn’t usually call when she knows I’m working.”
I tapped the screen, and before I could get out any kind of greeting, all I heard was a blood-curdling scream and the sound of Happy losing his little puppy mind. “Poppy?” I couldn’t keep the panic out of my voice as I immediately turned away from the man who wanted to be my family and started toward the front of the garage.
The phone clicked and scratched, making me think she dropped it. I could still hear the dog barking and Poppy screaming but now it all sounded muffled, kind of like it was underwater and far away.
“Poppy!” I screamed her name so loudly every single head in the shop turned to look at me as I bolted out one of the open bays and jumped down to the snowy ground below. My boots hit the asphalt with a thud as I ran toward my truck. “Honey, where are you?” I knew she couldn’t answer me because I could hear her struggling and choking on the other end of the phone.
“Give me your keys, kid. You don’t look like you have it together enough to get behind the wheel in this weather.” I didn’t think, just tossed the keys to Zak and kept calling Poppy’s name into the phone. I could hear Happy growling and getting more agitated by the minute.
“D-ad … st-o-pppp.” Her wail was cut off and I could hear her trying desperately to suck air in. I screamed her name again and jumped into the truck. Knowing I couldn’t listen to her die over the phone without doing something to try and save her. I hung up and called 911. The dispatcher had to ask me to repeat myself three times because I was talking so fast and barking out orders to her and to my grandfather at the same time.
“My girlfriend is being attacked by her father. You need to send help.” I was breathing hard and I felt light-headed. I couldn’t see straight.
“Where is the attack taking place sir? I need an address to give the responders.”
I was blindly guiding Zak toward her apartment assuming she was home after work but the reality was she could be anywhere and I wouldn’t be able to get to her in time. Nobody would. I narrowed it down to the veterinary clinic where she worked, her apartment, and my house because those were the only places she typically brought Happy with her.
I rattled off her address and also told the dispatcher to send someone to the vet clinic in case her crazy father had jumped her when she was leaving work for the afternoon. I pleaded with her to also send someone over to my place. The woman stayed calm and assured me she would get units to all the locations but I didn’t know if they would arrive in time. Poppy had sounded like she was slipping away as she begged her father for her life. I couldn’t believe she had come all this way, done everything in her power to escape, only to end up back in his breaking hands.
“We’ll find her, Hudson.” The stranger sitting next to me suddenly became my only grounding point in a world that was spinning too fast and totally off center.
I knew we would find her. It was the condition she was going to be in when I got to her that I was worried about.