The Almost Truth (21 page)

Brendan parked in front of the trailer, and I noticed my mom’s car wasn’t there. There were lights on inside.

“Do you need a minute?” Brendan asked.

I swallowed. “Nope. Let’s do this.”

My dad was pacing in the living room when we opened the door. He was shuffling a deck of cards in his hands. He turned around when he heard the door, but his face fell when he saw us.

“I thought you might be your mom. I hate the idea of her driving around when the weather’s like this. She had a bridal shower for one of the girls she works with. I guess I’m not used to being the one waiting at home.” He smiled at Brendan in the door. “You look like you’ve been walking around in the rain. You want a towel?”

“I need to talk to you,” I said.

My dad looked back and forth between Brendan and me. “Is everything okay?”

“I met the McKennas.”

The blood drained from his face.

M
y dad rubbed his hands over his face. He sank into his chair. Brendan and I sat across from him.

“Your mom told you about the foster care, right?” he asked.

I nodded.

Dad sighed. “What she didn’t tell you is that she was just sick about the whole thing. Losing you gutted her. It sucked all the joy and happiness out of her life. Whenever I called from jail, she was crying and I could hear in her voice that she was frantic to get our child back. She blamed herself, and if she didn’t get that little girl back, then I thought there was the very real chance she would hurt herself.”

I sat perfectly still, afraid that the slightest reaction might stop him from talking.

“There was nothing that woman didn’t do to try to make
things right. She started taking double shifts so she could get some extra money to hire a lawyer to help us through the foster appeals process. They sent people out to the prison to talk with me. She put up with tons of interviews and home visits. They had her assessed by all sorts of headshrinkers. To be honest, I didn’t think things would work out. People like your mom and me don’t tend to measure up to society standards.”

“But you got me back. You brought me home the same day Ava went missing,” I said. I kept trying to put my world back on its axis so that things would make sense again.

“Your mom couldn’t get that day off from work, and she didn’t want to wait a minute longer for us to be a family. So we decided I’d pick you up.” My dad gave a laugh that didn’t have a hint of humor in it. “I hadn’t spent any time with kids. I didn’t know what the heck I was doing. Maybe it’s easier to start with a baby, but starting with a toddler was a nightmare. I just about had a stroke trying to buckle that kid booster seat with the social worker watching. Well, whoever said kids find being driven around calming never drove around my little girl. Fussy and wriggling all around, like Houdini trying to break free. I decided to stop at the beach so we both could have a break, run around a bit. Get rid of some of that energy. Your mom wasn’t due to get out of work for another couple of hours, and it seemed easier to keep a toddler busy at the beach than in the trailer.” He looked around. “Never was enough room in this place.

“It’s funny, you know. You make a small decision that doesn’t
seem important at all at the time and then your whole world turns upside down.” Dad shrugged.

“Tell me about it,” I said. I still couldn’t tell where this story was going, but I felt as if we were walking along a cliff edge and at any moment we were going to plummet off the side.

“We went out to Seal Cove. I figured it was close to the hotel in case your mom could get out early, but it was also private, so no one would see me trying to figure out the whole dad thing. We weren’t down there very long. Then bold as brass, this other little girl comes wandering up wanting to play. She was acting like she was some kind of fancy social director.”

“Ava,” I guessed.

My dad looked me straight in the eyes. “You.” I swallowed. “You took Sadie by the hand and got her to help build a castle down by the shore. You were directing what could go where and what kinds of things Sadie could use. I could tell you were close in age to Sadie; you were the same size. You even looked a bit alike, but you could see the differences, too. Sadie was wearing something the foster mom must have gotten her. It seemed nice enough. I don’t want to make it sound like Sadie was some kind of sad Cinderella in stained rags or anything, but little Ava, you could tell she came from money. Your clothes were just so and your hair had this fancy clip.”

Brendan reached over and took my hand. He squeezed it so I could feel him there, backing me up.

“Course, at the time I didn’t know who you were. All I saw was
this little girl who wasn’t even old enough to be toilet trained, and still had more than my kid would likely ever have. Heck, she was already the boss of my little girl, telling her to do this and that.”

“So you wanted to take her?” I asked, my mouth dry, picturing myself as a pushy, bold as brass toddler.

Dad met my eyes, his face shocked. “No. I didn’t want to hurt her.” He paused. “You. It made me mad, but not angry, if that makes sense. It was obvious you’d come from the hotel beach. You came right through that little trail they have there. I knew you must have wandered off from whoever was watching you. Here my wife and I had to prove six ways to Sunday that we were fit parents, and your parents had just let you stroll off. Anything could have happened to you. It wasn’t like I had a plan or anything. You just showed up, but once you were there I could see it was an opportunity.” He rubbed his hands on his pants.

“An opportunity?” I said.

“I wasn’t kidnapping anyone. You came to me, practically shoved yourself right into my care.”

“So you thought it was okay?” I asked.

“No. I thought . . .” He stopped talking, as if he was trying to remember what had been in his mind. “It was clear you came from money. I thought there wouldn’t be any harm in letting you play with Sadie for a bit and then I could bring you back to the hotel in a couple hours.”

Brendan scrunched up his face. “What would be the point?”

“The point was I thought they might be so glad to have their
little girl back they’d offer me a reward.” He shrugged, looking embarrassed. “Sounds stupid now, but I didn’t have a job, I’d just gotten out of jail. Any money would be helpful. I thought I could use that money to buy something nice for my little girl. Sadie deserved that. It wasn’t like they were going to give me anything they couldn’t afford. It wasn’t hurting anyone. It was just taking advantage of a situation that presented itself.

“So I led you two girls around the point. I knew we’d be out of sight, but we weren’t so far away from the hotel that if someone came across us, I wouldn’t have an excuse to be there.”

“What happened to Sadie?” I asked.

“You have to understand, I wasn’t used to kids. I didn’t grow up with little brothers or sisters. Both you girls looked small, but you were fast. One of you would run one way and the other would run the other. You, Ava, climbed up on a rock and then jumped into the water, making a big splash. You weren’t scared of anything. Scared the shit out of me, though. I was hauling you out of the water when Sadie called out. She’d somehow managed to climb up higher. She was yelling at us to watch. She was going to show you. She was going to make a bigger splash.” His voice choked and he paused to collect himself. “She slipped.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that. I swear I hadn’t had her out of my sight for more than thirty seconds. That’s all it took for her to climb up there and fall. She hit her head.” He stared out the window in the distance. “I can still hear the sound of her head hitting that rock.”

“She was dead,” Brendan said.

“Yep. You wouldn’t think something like that would kill a child. You think maybe a car accident, or if they fell out a window or something, but she didn’t fall more than three or four feet. Even when it happened, I didn’t think she was dead. I figured she was knocked out, but she was gone. I tried mouth to mouth, but even then I knew it wasn’t going to work. There wasn’t anything that was going to work. I hadn’t even had her back for a full day and I’d lost her forever.” He took a deep breath, fighting to keep control.

I jumped up. “So you just thought you would keep Ava? Oh, well, you didn’t have that much time to get attached to Sadie, might as well keep this other one?”

He stood up and faced me, looking angry. “No. It wasn’t like that at all. I’ll admit I was scared. You were screaming and crying by then. I didn’t have the best relationship with the police, and I had a little hysterical girl who wasn’t mine, and a dead child who was, but that wasn’t the problem.”

“You were worried about Sadie’s mom,” Brendan said, his voice soft.

My dad fell back into his seat. His eyes were full of tears. “It would have killed her. For years she’d been talking about getting Sadie back. Ever since we’d heard that we’d regained custody, she’d been busy decorating her room and buying little outfits. It was all she ever talked about. I know it wasn’t right. I’ve known it ever since that day, but all I can tell you is in that moment I panicked. I just had to do something.”

“So you exchanged the girls,” Brendan said.

He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he was saying either. “I swapped their clothes. They were close enough to the same size. Sadie was so small.” He swallowed hard. “I wrapped her up in my shirt and put her in the trunk of my car. I had a pair of shears in my toolbox. I cut your hair so it was short like Sadie’s and then I took you home to your mom. Late that night I snuck out and buried Sadie.”

Things clicked into place for me. “She’s buried under that rosebush, isn’t she?”

Dad’s Adam’s apple bounced as he tried to keep from crying. He nodded.

“That’s why we never moved away, isn’t it? You should have. It would have kept you out of jail and it wasn’t like Mom was married to this place. She always wanted to go someplace else.”

“She always talked about living someplace warm. You know how she loves the sun.”

“But you couldn’t go. Sadie was here.” I sighed. “And Mom never knew?”

“She hadn’t seen Sadie in over two years. You were crying for your mom, but social services had warned us there might be issues with the transition, so your mom chalked it up to you missing your foster family. She was so busy trying to make up those missing years. She had toys and cupcakes and all sorts of things she wanted to do with you. Sometimes I think she
wondered if something was off, but she never looked too close. She didn’t want to know.”

“What about the McKennas? Did you feel anything for them?”

“Of course I did, but what could I do about it then? I couldn’t come forward the next day and explain the whole thing had been a horrible accident,” Dad said, his voice rising. “I knew I screwed up. I should have confessed first thing, but I didn’t. It was the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life, but there are some mistakes you can’t fix. There wasn’t any going back. The only choice I saw was to keep going.”

“What about the police? Didn’t they ever show up?”

“About a week or so later.”

“And they didn’t notice?” I asked.

Dad smiled. “Didn’t I teach you anything about why cons work? People see what they expect to see. Diversion. Everyone on the island knew we were due to get our daughter back. Your mom had told everyone she knew; heck, she told people she didn’t know. Social services had been out and given us a passing grade. The day the cops came out to talk to us you were running around the front chasing Ms. Flick’s cat. You were covered in dirt and cat hair. You had summer allergies, so you had that constant smear of snot under your nose. The cops looked right at you and then right past. You didn’t look like a fancy heiress, you looked exactly like the kid they expected would be here. That was the end of that investigation. The only thing I had to be careful
about was keeping your mom from taking you to the hotel. She wanted to show you off to all her friends, but I couldn’t be sure how many of them had seen Ava. With your haircut and without the fancy clothes, they might not have recognized you, but I didn’t want to take the chance. I convinced her it would be wrong to parade you around when that kid had gone missing.” Dad shrugged. “Kids grow fast at that age, so after a month or two I figured you’d changed enough, and that people wouldn’t likely remember anyway. People don’t pay nearly as much attention as you might think.”

“I don’t believe this is happening,” I said. I felt like I could pass out.

“That first year I kept waiting for someone to discover what I did, for the cops to come pounding on the door, but they never did. At least not about that. You grew up, our lives went on. Eventually, after a while, it seemed like you really were our kid.” Dad shrugged as if the past fifteen years just slipped away from him.

“You never felt that though, did you?” I clenched my hands into fists. I couldn’t believe I’d said that. I felt like crying and hated myself for having this needy “tell me your feelings” moment. I shrugged like it didn’t matter. “You don’t have to say anything. It was obvious my whole life that you didn’t like me that much. I guess at least now I have a reason. I wasn’t your real daughter and you knew it.”

Dad reached over and touched my arm. “That’s not true.” He sighed. “I’m terrible at this stuff. It wasn’t that I didn’t care
for you; it was that I knew what I’d done. You could have grown up with anything you wanted, and instead you grew up here, and that was my fault. It was never you, it was always me.”

I knew he was waiting for me to say something, but if I opened my mouth, I would start crying.

My dad stared into my eyes. “I know I messed up. There were a million things you should have had in your life, but the one thing you never were short on was love. We couldn’t give you what the McKennas would have, but we loved you just as much. I used to tell myself that was enough. I’m sorry for what I did. I’ve been sorry every day, but I’m most sorry if I ever made you feel I didn’t want you.”

I threw myself into his arms and he held me close. My tears melted into his T-shirt. He patted my back, and I felt as if I’d flashed back to when I used to fall off my bike and the only one who could make me feel better was my dad. After a few moments my dad pulled back and kissed me on the tip of my nose.