Chapter Thirty-One
Thirty-One
Gwen
Natalie Shea’s face was all over the place, or at least it felt that way to me as every internet algorithm had me pegged in no time. Marin Haggerty had returned—the blonde hair and light eyes that, to me but no one else, were blatantly unnatural.
I remembered the first time I met Natalie, more afraid of herself than anything the outside world could throw at her.
What she hadn’t known was that I knew the outside world was so much scarier than anything she could imagine.
She’d hung on my every word. My father would have liked that.
I liked that. I liked the control I thought I had over her and I let my guard down.
I’d really underestimated Natalie. Again.
Part of me was impressed. How had she even found out the truth about me?
I assumed that missing file meant someone had discovered that Marin Haggerty was Gwen Tanner.
Was it possible instead that the missing file meant Natalie had discovered that Gwen Tanner was Marin Haggerty?
The facility didn’t know who I was, but there must have been some kind of contact information in there, or at least a record of who had dropped me off and signed me away—the hand that had held that pen was the same one attached to the arm that had arrived on my doorstep.
What was the use in hiding anymore? Marin Haggerty had been revealed. Why would anyone suspect I was someone other than the Gwen Tanner I said I was?
It was time to talk to my father.
- - - - -
I sat down on the stool they told me to sit down on.
I put my hands on the short counter between myself and the glass, then I put them down in my lap, then back up.
I sensed he was coming before I could see him.
There was a catch in my throat that morphed into a shiver down my spine. Then I saw his beard.
My father landed on the other side of the glass and I kept my head low and let my hair fall to conceal my face. I watched him the best I could without untucking my chin. He reached for the phone and I did the same.
“Welcome,” he said like a cult leader at a job fair. I was still Gwen Tanner.
I didn’t know where to start.
He tried to kickstart the conversation he thought we were going to have. “You said in your letter that you know Elyse Abbington?” Of course I had mentioned her. I knew from Dominic and Porter that my father was as obsessed with Elyse as I was, and I needed Gwen Tanner on his visitor list.
I swallowed on par with the whale from Pinocchio before lifting my head.
I wished what I felt was fear or anger, but it wasn’t those at all.
I exhaled for the first time in twenty years.
My eyes locked on his, and in that moment, I would have followed him anywhere.
I needed to feel that again. It was the reason I was there.
I thought my face would be enough, but I had done my job well. He didn’t recognize me.
“Are you going to speak?” he asked. “No need to be nervous.” He smiled and it was as rewarding to me as it had been when I was a child. His teeth had yellowed in prison, not that they were particularly white to begin with.
I didn’t know what else to do so I rotated on the stool and lifted my shirt to show him the scars. He squinted at them and the phone fell a fraction from his ear. I dropped my shirt and turned back around.
“Mar—” he started before I grimaced, shaking my head, and he realized it was not something I wanted overheard.
He combed his hand through his beard, grooming it to help him think.
He stared at me as if trying to communicate telepathically.
If it was ever going to work, it would have to be right then between him and me.
That was our bond and that was his power, but I had no idea what he was thinking.
“I heard…” he mused, “my daughter has come out of hiding.”
“I saw that,” I said, finally ready to speak.
He nodded and it was clear we both understood what was going on. “Do you know her?” he asked.
“Yes, we met when I was a kid.” I wasn’t sure how to elaborate, nervous what details he would consider insignificant—the instinct to avoid disappointing him as poignant as ever. I waited for him to tell me what to say, think, know, feel.
“And now?” he said. “Did you know she was coming forward?”
I shook my head. Whatever was going on, if he was displeased, he needed to know it wasn’t my doing.
He nodded again, a processing nod. “I think about my daughter every day,” he said, an affection I wasn’t prepared for. His head was still, but his eyes twitched, not following any pattern I could track.
I smiled. I couldn’t help it.
His face relaxed into an idle stare.
I didn’t know what to say next. It wasn’t our relationship for me to lead the conversation. My job was to sit quietly, wide-eyed, and absorb every word of his gospel.
“I th-think…” I stuttered when he kept staring at me. “I think a guy named Porter visited you?”
“Yes, he did.” He wasn’t going to give me any more to go on. He was waiting to see what my angle was, how I knew Porter, why I cared to ask.
I psyched myself up, the mental equivalent of pounding my fists against my chest. “I don’t want you to let him visit anymore.”
“Is that so?” He tilted his head, curiosity showing in the arch of his eyebrows. His stare was squeezing my brain, the pressure building.
I didn’t know what words wouldn’t add fuel to the fire.
My reason couldn’t be for Porter’s well-being and it couldn’t be for mine.
He wouldn’t appreciate that my relationship with Porter was for my well-being.
He would interpret it as a weakness. It would inspire him.
There was only one reason he would respect.
“He’s getting in my way,” I said.
That jump-started his eyes again. He leaned in toward the glass, showing something very different in his face. “Explain,” he said.
The intensity paralyzed me. I stayed quiet and he didn’t approve.
“Now!” he demanded, shoulders flinching toward me.
I cowered at the tone of his voice and was grateful for the glass in between us. I broke the stare and shielded my face, burying it as far into my chest as my neck would allow.
“I’m sorry, my dove,” he purred, causing me to glance back up at him. He lifted his hand to the glass.
I had no choice but to reach up and align my fingers with his. “It’s nothing I can’t handle,” I said. “But I don’t need him here connected to you. It will complicate things for me.”
“And you have a bigger problem.” He finished my thoughts for me.
“Do you know about Reanne?” I asked, certain he did.
He nodded, short on words, but not in some calculated way. I could tell it bothered him, but whether he was sad or offended that someone had dared, I couldn’t tell. “What do you know?” he asked.
“I think it was the same person who killed James Calhoun and Oswald Shields. I think your daughter might know.”
He remained still, subtle twitches in his eyes showing he was processing what it all meant.
I had to speak before he could think much more on it. I lowered my head again, struggling to look at him when I spoke. “I have to do something, something I did once before.”
He inhaled, and like the trained animal I was, I allowed it to suck my head back up. We locked eyes and I waited to see if he would infer what I meant.
“You haven’t done it again?” he asked. Of course he knew what I meant. “Not since the first time?”
I shook my head.
He pulled his hand from the glass and ran it through his beard, watching to see if I was lying.
“You’re surprised?” I asked.
“I am.”
“Are you disappointed?”
“No,” he said, teasing the possibility of humanity. “You’re still young. I didn’t understand my role until later in life either.”
“It’s not my role,” I snapped, as much as I could while keeping my voice low. I was aware of how scarred I was by that idea—that I was supposed to be this, that nothing I could do mattered. It struck a nerve.
He stuck out his lower jaw and then rolled it back in—a familiar tic—and I knew better than to speak to him like that again.
I didn’t want to dwell on the moment of my defiance. I needed to know one thing. The most important thing standing in the way of taking care of Natalie. “Are you involved in any of this? Something to drum up interest in your book, maybe?”
“No,” he answered without fanfare, and I believed him.
What was happening, what Natalie was doing—my father had no control over it, no input, no proprietary insight.
He didn’t even know who she was. In that moment, extricating him from all this shifted something in the dynamic.
It was immeasurable, inexplicable, and maybe temporary, but I think, in my mind, it minimized him.
He had to be involved; it was the only thing that had made sense.
Everything in my life had revolved around him.
Every decision I made, every thought I tried to hide from was because of him and what I thought it made me.
But not this. This was mine. I had never really considered that was possible.
That taken away from him, stripped of my identity and any influence he could have, I had caused this.
I was the reason this was happening. I had created Natalie all by myself.
“I thought Marin might be involved,” he said, unfurling a little grin. “That’s what Dominic thinks.”
I hadn’t mentioned Dominic, but I had been stupid enough to make a dig about the book, and that’s all my father needed to put it together. “He told you that?” I asked, remembering Dominic’s inner struggle with whether or not to tell Abel his theory.
“He didn’t have to.”
Say what you want about my father—evil, crazy, narcissistic, heartless—but above all he was a gifted mentalist. He had an incredible talent at reading people and using it to manipulate them.
If he had harnessed his powers into a job selling magic beans, we could have been rich.
I’m confident that if it weren’t for what I did, he never would have been caught.