Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Saylor
Three days after he kissed me, and my mouth still remembers.
Not the pressure. The intent.
The way he said ‘tell me to walk away’ like he meant it, and the way I didn't tell him.
The way his palm found my waist without hesitation once permission was given.
Nobody has ever touched me like I was both fragile and dangerous at the same time.
I've been touched before. Boyfriends in high school, brief and forgettable.
A hookup freshman year at a party I left early because the boy was sloppy and the room smelled like Natty Light.
Well, that and the fact I couldn't stop thinking about what my name would do to his face if he Googled me in the morning.
Those were transactions. Bodies meeting because bodies meet. No meaning underneath it. Almost transactional, in a way.
The kiss at Backroads was neither of those things.
It was a man pressing his mouth to mine and meaning it with every pound of his body.
I kissed him back like I was furious about how much I wanted him.
It was real and terrifying, and I’ve been replaying it behind my eyelids for seventy-two hours.
He texted the following morning. Short, no pressure:
Had to handle something at the club. You okay?
I texted back:
I'm okay. You?
He didn’t waste any time replying:
Better now.
Two words. I read them four times.
We haven't talked about the kiss.
At our last shift at Backroads, we moved around each other behind the bar the same way we always do. Except now the space between us is charged, and we're both pretending it isn't.
He still hasn't told me his name.
Now it’s Saturday morning and my phone is ringing at a god-awful hour.
It takes me half a second to realize it’s my mom.
My mother doesn't call this early unless something is wrong.
I pick up before the second ring, already sitting upright in bed, feet on the cold floor. "Mom?"
Her voice is steady. Too steady.
The steadiness of a woman controlling every syllable because if she lets one slip, the rest will follow. "Hey, baby."
I've heard this voice twice in my life.
Once when she told me Dad was arrested. The other when she told me Christine was dead.
"What happened?" My feet press harder into the floor, anchoring.
She takes a breath. "A man came to the house."
My body goes still. Not frozen. Locked tight, every muscle held in place by something older than thought.
"When?" I'm gripping the phone so tight the case creaks.
"Last night. Around nine." She pauses. "I didn't call because I didn't want to scare you, and then I couldn't sleep, and now it's morning and I can't not tell you."
I press my free palm flat on the mattress. "Who was he?"
"I don't know his name." Her voice thins, loses a layer of control. "White, mid-forties, heavyset. Short hair, cropped close. He knocked on the door and when I opened it, he smiled at me."
She stops. When she speaks again, her voice is thinner still.
"He said Dennis sent him. Said he had a message from my ex-husband."
Dennis.
My father's name.
The name I haven't heard spoken aloud in years because my mother and I refer to him as he, him, or your father, never Dennis, because the name belongs to a man who no longer exists to us.
A stranger used it on my mother's doorstep like a handshake.
I curl my toes against the floor. "What was the message?"
"He said Dennis misses his family. Misses his daughter." Another pause, longer. "He said your father talks about you all the time. Showed me a photo."
My lungs tighten. "A photo of what?"
"You. At your high school graduation." Her breath catches on the word. "Your father must have kept it."
High school graduation. Four years ago.
Me in a blue cap and gown standing next to my mother in the backyard, both of us smiling because the camera demanded it, even though the trial had ended a couple months before and neither of us had fully learned to smile for real again.
My father kept it. Showed it to this man. Shared my face, my age, my milestone with a stranger in a prison cell.
I press my forehead against my knee. "What else did he say?"
My mother's voice drops. "He said he'd stop by again. He said it like he was being friendly, Saylor. Like he was a neighbor bringing a casserole."
Friendly.
Polite. Smiling. Well-mannered. Harmless.
These are the words people used to describe my father before the parking lot. Good neighbor. Nice guy. A man you'd wave to on your way to work.
"Did you let him in?" My fingernails are digging crescents into my kneecap.
"No." Her voice firms. "I told him I didn't have a message to send back and closed the door. Locked it. Watched through the window until he drove away."
I dig my nails into my kneecap. "What was he driving?"
"Dark truck. Blue or black, older model." She exhales. "I didn't get the plate."
I close my eyes. My molars ache from clenching. "Mom, we need to change your locks."
She clears her throat. "I'm calling a locksmith this morning."
"And I'm coming over." I'm already standing, pulling open my dresser drawer.
Her breath hitches. "Saylor?—"
"I'm coming over." I yank a sweatshirt off the shelf. "Don't argue with me."
She doesn't argue. She says okay in a voice so small it makes my ribs hurt.
I get dressed in the dark and don't bother with coffee.
I get to her house in eleven minutes because the speed limit is a suggestion when your mother is alone and a man from your father's world knows where she sleeps.
Her porch light is on.
She's at the kitchen table when I let myself in. Two mugs of coffee already poured, because even when she’s scared, even when she’s shaken, my mother takes care of people.
I sit across from her and wrap my fingers around the mug and we look at each other.
"He found a way." My voice is flat.
She nods.
"The letters weren't enough. The calls weren't enough." I stare at the coffee. "So he sent someone."
My mother's palms are flat on the table. Mirror images of mine on the counter every time the fear gets loud. "We don't know what this man wants, Saylor."
"He wants access." The word tastes like the inside of a locked car. "Dad can't reach me, so he sent someone who can."
I set the mug down harder than I mean to. "A messenger. Except the messenger is a stranger who showed up at your house at nine o'clock at night with my graduation photo and a smile."
She reaches across the table and squeezes my wrist. "We've handled worse."
Her voice steadies as she says it. "We changed our name. We rebuilt. We'll handle this too."
"Mom, a man you've never met knows where you live." My voice is climbing. "He knows my name, my face, what school I went to. He knows prison things. Cell-to-cell things."
Her grip on my wrist tightens. "I know, baby."
"Dad's been talking about us. For years. Handing pieces of our lives to someone, and now that someone is out and standing on your porch."
She pulls my arm toward her until my wrist is resting on the table between both her palms.
"We'll change the locks. We'll be careful. And if he comes back, we'll call the police."
The police.
Who will take a report and probably won’t do a damn thing, because a man smiling on a porch isn't a crime, and a message from an inmate isn't a threat, and the system my father broke isn't designed to protect the people he broke it around.
I turn my wrist over in her grip and hold on. "Okay."
We spend the morning together.
The locksmith comes at ten. New deadbolt, new chain. My mother pays in cash, thanks him, and locks the new lock behind him. Then tests it twice.
I recognize the gesture. It's mine. The knob check, the double-test.
The inheritance of fear, passed from mother to daughter through locked doors.
By noon, I've checked every window and tested the motion light on the side of the house and programmed the locksmith's number into her phone.
By one, I'm sitting in my car in her driveway, engine running, not moving.
A man who did time with my father is walking around Morgantown with my photograph and a message.
I don't know his name. I don't know what he did time for.
I don't know if the message from my father is all he came to deliver, or if he has his own reasons for finding me.
I don't tell Rookie. This is my weight, not his.
We've kissed once. One time. He doesn't even know my real last name.
Dropping my father's prison contacts into his lap would be the fastest way to watch his face change, and I've spent my whole life watching faces change.
All I want is normalcy.
To be known for being myself, not for being his daughter.
I drive home, try to study, but the words on the screen mean nothing.
After a while, I try to eat, but the food doesn’t taste like anything. It’s like I’m chewing on a sponge.
By nine, I grab my keys. I can't be alone in this apartment for one more minute.
I need to be with someone whose body doesn't shake.
His room is at the compound. I've never been there.
The compound is on the way to Backroads. I've driven past the gate dozens of times without thinking about what was behind it.
Tonight I pull in.
There's a guy at the gate. Young, wiry, wearing a leather cut and a bored expression that sharpens when my headlights hit the chain-link.
He leans down to my window before I've fully stopped. "Can I help you?"
"I'm here to see Rookie."
He looks at me, at my car, and takes one last glance back at me with an expression caught somewhere between amusement and pity.
"Rookie." He repeats the name like he's making sure he heard it right. "You could do a hell of a lot better, you know."
"Are you going to let me in or give me dating advice?"
He grins, steps back, and waves me through. "Third building. His bike's the one that needs a wash."
I pull past him and park next to a Harley that does, in fact, need a wash, and text him.
I'm outside.
Thirty seconds later, he's at the door. Black t-shirt, sweats, bare feet. Hair pushed back like he's been running his fingers through it.
He looks at me and his face does something different. Not alarm. Assessment.
"Hey." He holds the door open, one arm braced against the frame. "You okay?"