Chapter 4 #3
“It’s like we were playing the same movie on repeat,” she murmurs. “He came around full of promises, said he wanted to be in her life, agreed to short visits, confirmed he’d follow through…”
So he was a deadbeat? Got it.
“The first visit was fast food and sugar. Again. Second time, he didn’t even turn up.
Again. But it was worse, because at nine years old, that rejection hit harder.
She was excited about the prospect of being like her best friend.
Ya know…” She brings devastated eyes up to mine.
“Having a dad to call her own. So when he ditched, it was like she was experiencing her first ever breakup. It was horrible. He didn’t contact us again until she was fourteen.
He said all the same things and made all the same promises.
He even waited outside her school one afternoon.
I fully intended to tell him no, he couldn’t see her, since I didn’t want her heart to break again like it had the time before.
I didn’t even plan to tell her he’d called, but he went over my head and met her and her friends at the school gates before I could intervene.
She didn’t recognize him at first, but once she did, she told him to beat it and never come back.
” She brings her tissues up and wipes her nose.
“I never spoke badly of him. In fact, except for that short period when she was nine, we never really spoke about him at all. But the three of them—Josey, Tairneyy, and Caleb—came running home after that confrontation at school, whooping and giggling, like comrades returning from battle. Jose said he had the audacity to act offended by her attitude problem.” Her lips curl into an unhappy sneer.
“He said she was rude and ungrateful. Disrespectful. Apparently he tried anger at first, and when that didn’t work, he tried to act hurt.
When that didn’t work, he offered to buy her things.
He said he’d remarried not so long before, and they had a baby boy, so of course, Josey would want to meet her brother. ”
“Did she want to meet him?” Drake asks. “Did she meet him?”
She scoffs. “No. How could he expect her to be attached to this infant she didn’t even know existed minutes before? Ultimately, she told him to go away and never come back. And he just…” She looks down at her shredded tissue. “He did. Haven’t heard from him since.”
In my peripherals, Drake writes a heavy-handed ‘find father: alibi?’ In his notebook.
I mean, it’s about that time.
“Do you think her father might’ve wanted to hurt her?” I shift where I sit and pull her focus away from Drake’s pen. “Was he a violent man?”
“I don’t…” She exhales a shuddering breath.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. He was lazy, ya know?
He’d rather seduce a kid who didn’t know better than deal with women his own age, since they’d already figured out he was useless.
I honestly don’t know what he did for work, or if he worked at all.
He dropped out of high school, and though he said it was because he had plans to become a famous motocross rider, hindsight tells me he was just too lazy to study.
I’d heard rumors about another baby between Jose and that little boy he was telling her about, but I doubt he parented any of them.
Parenting is hard work.” She draws a deep breath and expands her chest. “He wasn’t violent with me, but he always had something to say about everyone else: why his parents were the worst. His teachers were the worst. Bosses were the worst. Everything was always someone else’s fault.
But I can’t see…” She shakes her head, her jaw trembling as emotion spills from her eyes.
“I wouldn’t think he’s responsible for any of this, because that would mean actually getting off his butt and doing something. ”
I pick up the cooling cup of tea and hold it in the space between us.
“Detective Banks and I will do everything we can to figure this out, alright? I promise we’re gonna try our very best.” Transferring the teacup from my hand to hers, I swipe Drake’s notebook straight out from beneath his arm and tear a page from the back.
Snatching his pen, too, and ignoring the feral growl rolling from his chest, I offer both to Sylvia.
“Please give us a list of every family Josey tutored, as well as her father’s full name and date of birth.
” Straightening my leg and searching my pockets, I take out a card.
Not just mine. But Minka’s, too. “You can contact me at any time, alright?” I pass her the first. But then I grip the second and meet her eyes.
“You can also call the medical examiner’s office.
Chief Mayet, or one of her staff,” Aubree, “will answer your questions if you have any. For right now, Detective Banks and I are gonna head out and start talking to some people.” I trade Minka’s card for the sheet of paper when she’s done.
“In the meantime, is there anyone we can call to come sit with you?”