Chapter Nineteen
Twila
I call Daddy at eleven seventeen that night because I promised I would.
I almost hang up before it rings. Not because I’m scared of him, but because I know what’s waiting on the other end.
Questions. Anger. Fear dressed up like authority.
A lifetime of Amos Dix believing the safest place for his daughter is wherever he can see her, and me spending half that lifetime proving I can stand somewhere else.
Whiskey sits on the edge of my couch while I pace the living room with the phone pressed to my ear. He doesn’t tell me what to say, ask me to put it on speaker, or even pretend not to watch me.
Daddy answers on the first ring. “Twila.”
Just my name. No hello. No Deputy.
My grip tightens around the phone. “Hey, Daddy.”
“Where are you?”
I glance at Whiskey. His eyebrows lift.
“My house.”
Silence.
Then, “Alone?”
Whiskey’s mouth starts to curve.
I point at him before he says anything. “No.”
Daddy breathes out hard. “He there?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I asked him to come over.”
That takes Daddy longer to answer. Good. Let him sit with it. Finally, he says, “I want to talk to you.”
“I know.”
“Alone.”
“No.”
Whiskey’s smile disappears.
Daddy goes quiet. “Twila.”
“I’m not asking permission.”
“I’m your father.”
“And I’m twenty-eight.”
“That man kidnapped you.”
“He also let me leave.”
“That don’t erase what he did.”
“I didn’t say it did.”
“Then why in God’s name are you defending him?”
“I’m not.”
Whiskey looks at me.
I flip him off.
He grins.
Daddy hears movement. “Is he laughing?”
“No.”
“Bullshit.”
Whiskey whispers, “Like father, like daughter.”
I cover the phone with my hand. “Shut up.”
Daddy snaps, “Put him on.”
“No.”
“Twila.”
“This is exactly what I mean.”
“What?”
“You call to talk to me, then the second you hear a man in the room, you decide you need to talk to him instead.”
“That man assaulted a deputy.”
“Me.”
“Yes.”
“Then talk to me.”
Another silence follows, but this one feels different.
Whiskey stops smiling.
Daddy finally says, “Come over.”
“To your house?”
“Yes.”
“Not the station?”
“No.”
That gets my attention.
Daddy lives in the same brick ranch outside Paradise where I grew up. Same porch Mama used to sit on with sweet tea balanced on the arm of her chair. Same narrow hallway where my high school wrestling pictures are probably still hanging because Daddy doesn’t understand the concept of redecorating.
Something about him wanting this conversation there instead of behind a desk tells me he already knows what I’m going to ask.
“Okay.”
“Alone.”
“No.”
“Twila.”
“Whiskey comes or I don’t.”
Whiskey looks at me. I know what he’s thinking. I don’t need him. That ain’t why I want him there.
Daddy breathes through his nose. “You trust him?”
I don’t answer fast enough. Whiskey looks away. That bothers me. “I trust him to stand beside me.”
His gaze comes back.
Daddy says, “That ain’t what I asked.”
“It’s the answer I’ve got.”
A long pause.
“Fine.”
He hangs up.
I lower the phone.
Whiskey stands. “You sure?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t need me there.”
“I know.”
“Then why am I going?”
I look at him. “Because I want you there.”
That shuts him up. Always satisfying.
He picks up his cut. “Okay.”
“That easy?”
“You said what you wanted. Ain’t scared of Sheriff Dix.” He reaches toward my jacket draped over the chair.
I snatch it first. “I can carry my own clothes.”
He looks at my hand, then at me. “Was handing it to you.”
“Oh.”
“Trauma response?”
“Fuck you.”
“Later.”
Daddy’s porch light is on when we pull into his driveway, and the kitchen glows through the blinds. Whiskey parks his Harley beside Daddy’s cruiser, and the sight is so wrong I almost laugh.
King of Anarchy beside Paradise County Sheriff. If either machine spontaneously catches fire, I’m blaming God. I climb off and pull off my helmet while Whiskey studies the ranch.
“Grew up here?”
“Yep.”
I look at the faded brick steps, old metal railing, and Mama’s empty flower hooks still screwed beneath the roof. “It does not.”
“Got sheriff energy.”
“You’re nervous.”
“Ain’t.”
“You’re making jokes.”
“Always make jokes.”
“More when you’re nervous.”
He looks at me. “You know too much.”
“Occupational hazard.”
The front door opens before we reach it. Daddy stands there in jeans, an old gray T-shirt, and bare feet.
That somehow makes this worse. Sheriff Dix I can fight. Daddy is harder. His eyes go to Whiskey first, of course, then come back to me before he steps aside.
“Come in.”
Whiskey waits. For me to go first. I notice. Daddy notices too. I walk inside.
The house smells like coffee and lemon furniture polish, same as it has since I was little. My high school graduation picture still sits beside the television. So does Mama’s last Christmas photo, her blonde hair shorter from treatment but her smile still big enough to fool anybody who didn’t know.
I look away from that one.
Whiskey doesn’t. His gaze pauses on it. Daddy sees. Nobody says a damn thing.
“Kitchen,” Daddy says.
We follow him down the familiar hallway. Three coffee cups are waiting on the old oak table. That tells me everything. He planned for Whiskey to stay once he agreed.
Would never admit it.
Still did it.
I sit across from Daddy. Whiskey takes the chair beside me, leaving enough space that his knee doesn’t touch mine. He doesn’t put an arm around me, reach beneath the table, or stake any kind of claim in front of my father.
He just sits.
Daddy looks at him like he’s deciding whether killing a man at his kitchen table qualifies as bad manners.
Whiskey looks back. Quiet. Waiting.
I flatten both palms against the scarred tabletop. “You’ve been warning me away from Pearly Gates since I was sixteen.”
Daddy’s hand stops halfway to his coffee. Whiskey catches it too. I know without looking.
Daddy lowers his hand. “Who told you that?”
I almost laugh. “Nobody had to tell me. I remembered.”
“Twila.”
“Every time anybody mentioned that place, you shut it down. High school kids wanted to go out there one Halloween, and you threatened to arrest us. Lester Boone said something about it when I first started patrol, and you told him to quit filling my head with ghost stories. Now Pearly Gates is tangled up in everything we’re dealing with, and you’re ordering me away from it like the building itself is gonna climb through my window. ”
Daddy looks into his untouched coffee. “Some places ain’t worth curiosity.”
“Bullshit.”
His eyes flick toward Whiskey.
I lean forward. “No. Don’t look at him. Look at me.”
Daddy does.
“You know something.”
“I know enough.”
“What?”
“Enough to tell you to stay the hell away.”
“That ain’t an answer.”
“It’s the one I’m giving.”
Anger rises fast, the old reflex that usually gets both of us yelling before either one listens.
I force my palms flat against the table instead.
“No.”
Daddy’s eyes narrow. “No?”
“You don’t get to do this again.”
“Do what?”
“Decide I can’t handle the truth because you’re scared of what I’ll do with it.”
Something crosses his face. Whiskey hasn’t moved. Not once.
I keep going. “You knew something before Kaylee disappeared. Before the girls the Kings were already tracking led them deeper into Pearly Gates. Before Sophie ever followed Montgomery money into it. Before I even put on a badge. This goes farther back than any of that, doesn’t it?”
Daddy looks down.
“Tell me.”
Nothing.
“Daddy.”
His shoulders sink, but it doesn’t look like surrender.
It looks heavier than that.
I’ve never thought of Amos Dix as old. Tonight, beneath the yellow kitchen light, I can see every year in his face.
“It was 2014.”
I stop breathing.
Sixteen. Exactly.
Whiskey shifts slightly back in his chair, giving Daddy room without going anywhere.
“You remember the old service road behind Mill Creek Baptist?” Daddy asks.
“Yes.”
“County got a call around four in the morning. Farmer heading out early saw somebody walking the shoulder.”
My fingers curl against the edge of the table. “A girl?”
Daddy nods.
“How old?”
“Seventeen. Maybe eighteen. Hard to tell.”
“What was her name?”
His mouth twists. “Depends which piece of paper you believed.”
Cold creeps along my arms. “What does that mean?”
“It means she gave us one name. Somebody claiming to be her guardian gave another.”
Whiskey finally speaks. “Who found her?”
Daddy looks at him.
Then at me.
“I did.”
Daddy’s voice gets quieter.
“She was barefoot. Had a nightgown on under a man’s coat that didn’t fit. Dirt all the way to her knees. Pupils blown so wide I thought she’d taken something.”
“Drugged?”
“I believed so.”
“Did you test her?”
“We tried.”
That word catches.
“Tried how?”
Daddy drags one palm over the worn tabletop. “She couldn’t stay awake. Kept coming in and out. Every time she came around, she asked if the door was locked.”
My stomach knots. “From who?”
“She wouldn’t say.”
“What did she say?”
Daddy looks at me. This is the part he doesn’t want to give me. I know before he opens his mouth.
“Blue room.”
The kitchen seems to shrink.
Whiskey’s boot shifts once beneath the table.
“What?”
“She kept talking about a blue room.”
Cider. The blue room. I think about Royal’s face at the clubhouse. About Cider carrying broken pieces of memories nobody has been able to put back in order.
Daddy keeps going.
“She said girls cried there at night. Said they weren’t supposed to cry loud because it made him angry.”
“Who?”
“She called him the Reverend.”
Whiskey mutters, “Fuck.”
Daddy’s eyes snap to him. “Watch it.”
Whiskey looks across the table at him. “With respect, Sheriff, ain’t the fucking time.”
“Did she say Crowley?” I ask.
“No.”
“Pearly Gates?”
“Not directly.”
“But you connected it.”
“Eventually.”
“How?”
“She had something in the coat pocket.”
Daddy gets up and walks to the old china cabinet against the wall, the one Mama used to keep holiday dishes in. He kneels, opens the bottom drawer, and reaches all the way to the back.
I stare. “You kept it?”
He doesn’t answer.
He pulls out a manila envelope old enough that the corners have softened and the paper has yellowed where somebody has handled it over the years.
He lays it on the table.