Chapter 20: Alex

Why the fuck had I ever taught her how to drive, I had no idea.

I felt a raging headache overwhelm me, the veins in my head pounding incessantly, threatening to burst. My heart raced as I pushed down harder on the gas, willing the truck to move faster, taking wild guesses at every intersection as to which direction Kelly was driving in.

She lied to me. She stood there in my house, slept in my bed, and all the time, she had been lying to me.

I pushed the thought away. Right now, none of that mattered. My little girl was driving around town in a car she could barely control. If anything were to happen to her, I’d probably kill myself.

Then you probably shouldn’t have taught her how to drive.

“Shut up, Janice.”

The sun had almost set completely, and the streetlights flooded the roads in their orange glow. The worry found its way to every corner of my body. I had taught Kelly how to drive the car in cases of emergencies, but always during the daytime. Nighttime driving was a whole other issue.

The hospital. Check the hospital.

I doubted Kelly would be able to find her way there without stopping to ask someone, but then again, Kent wasn’t Miami, and if you took enough left and right turns, you were bound to get to where you wanted to go.

I turned left right down Elizabeth Road, making a mental not to check the bridge leading across the river next, and stepped on the gas. Luckily, there wasn’t much traffic around, and I was able to get hallway to the hospital before I caught sight of my car parked outside Kent Park. I slowed down, took the U-turn, and quickly pulled up next to it, jumping out quickly and rushing past the main gate.

My eyes scanned the empty picnic tables and park benches, the few people left already packing up and leaving as I looked for Kelly. I felt terrible for shouting at her, the first time it had ever happened, and I knew that that little outburst was bound to put a scar in our relationship I’d never be able to fix. I was more than ready to start blaming Jenni for all this when I began to panic. Kelly was nowhere to be found.

Maybe she just parked here and went across the street. The library?

I shook my head at the thought. If Kelly wanted to hide in the library, she would have parked at the library. She was smart, but not cunning enough to be able to throw people off like that. There were some things she was still too innocent to do.

The pond.

“Fuck, of course!”

I raced down the narrow path leading past the playground and cut through the trees, taking a short cross across the small hill that rose and then fell towards the duck pond. I only slowed down when I caught sight of her sitting by the edge of the pond, legs pulled up to her chest and rocking back and forth.

“Kelly?” I called to her when I was close enough for her to hear me.

She turned around, looked at me through watery eyes, and turned away again. “Leave me alone,” she stammered.

I felt my heart drop and sighed heavily as I approached her. “Kelly, what were you thinking?”

“I said leave me alone,” she repeated.

I ran a hand through my hair and sat down on the grass beside her, silently grateful that she didn’t move away from me. I looked out at the pond and didn’t say a word. We just sat there, quietly lost in our thoughts, neither of us willing to be the first to break the silence.

“You never shouted at me like that before,” she finally said, and when I looked at her, I could see the tears running down her cheek.

“I’m sorry, baby,” I said. “I didn’t mean to. I was angry at Jenni, and I took it out on you. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” she said, sniffing and wiping the tears away with the sleeve of her windbreaker. “And you shouldn’t have made Jenni cry.”

“Let’s leave that discussion for another time,” I said. “Jenni did a horrible thing, and I don’t think we’ll be seeing her anymore.”

“What?” She looked at me, fresh tears rolling down her cheeks.

“I’m sorry, chipmunk,” I whispered.

“Why?” she asked her lower lip quivering. “Why would you do that?”

“It’s hard to explain right now,” I replied.

“Try.”

“Kelly.”

“No!” she yelled. “You can’t do that! You can’t just tell me I can’t see her again without an explanation. I deserve an explanation!”

“Sweetie, I don’t have one,” I said. “Not one that will make sense to you.”

Kelly shook her head at me and covered her face with her hands. “You do that all the time.”

“Do what?”

“Think that you’re protecting me by not telling me things, and all that really happens is I get hurt.”

“Sweetie, what are you talking about?”

“Like when you got shot,” she said. “You acted like it was nothing, like you weren’t hurting. But I knew you were.”

I sighed, feeling like she was confusing two completely different things together. “Kelly, of course you knew I was hurting. You helped me through it.”

She shook her head. “That’s not what I meant,” she said. “I meant even before that. You always came home and told me these crazy stories about your day. You made it sound like you were just doing your job, but I understood what you were telling me. I understood the risks you were taking.”

“Understood what exactly?”

“That you want to die,” she sobbed.

I froze, staring at her in shock as her tears rolled down her face. She looked at me, meeting my gaze, challenging me to deny it. And the funny thing was, I couldn’t.

“I don’t remember mom, but you do,” she said. “And you carry her with you all the time. I hear you talk to yourself sometimes and say her name. I know you haven’t gotten over her death, and that every risk you take at work is like you’re hoping you’ll get shot or something.”

Her words cut through me like a knife, and my heart suddenly began to ache. How someone so young could analyze me in a way I never could scared me a little. But she was right. Deep down I knew she was right. I hadn’t let go of Janice. To this day, I thought about her constantly, wishing I could turn back time, find some way to stop the cancer before it metastasized and stole her from us.

“And you know when you finally stopped?”

I looked at her and shook my head slowly.

“When you met Jenni,” she said. “For the first time in my life, I actually felt like you were happy, dad. Really happy, and that made me happy. And now you don’t want us to see her again, and we’re going to go back to Miami, and you’re going to keep doing the things you do. And then, one day, Raul is going to come to me and tell me that you’re dead. Really dead this time. And then what am I supposed to do?”

I felt my own tears well up, and I quickly wrapped my arms around her and pulled her close. "I’m so sorry,” I whispered, my voice cracking as I hugged her close. “Sweetheart, I’m so sorry.”

Kelly cried in my arms, her face buried in my chest. “Please don’t leave me, daddy,” she stammered. “Please don’t leave me.”

Tears rolled down my face as we rocked together by the edge of the pond, holding each other as I promised her over and over again that I wouldn’t.