Chapter 56 Caro #2
“It could have happened with me,” she says, and she feels that same flash of recognition—the feeling she described to the other women earlier on this very trip.
Even though she’s upset with Dan for losing her dad, he’s the kind of person you could ask to keep an eye on your dad in the first place.
He’s so good. He’s the best person she’s ever known, and she’s been lying to him.
“Is anything going on?” he asks. His voice is very gentle. He knows there is.
“Besides my father being missing and my friend getting swept away in a flash flood?” She lets all of the anger she’s feeling at herself out in her voice. She lets him think it’s for him.
I am a terrible person.
“Okay,” Dan says, after a moment. “I’ll be in touch.”
“Same.” She turns away before she can see the hurt in his eyes.
It’s late afternoon now, but the cars at the drive-in theater are still unbearably hot inside, even with the windows rolled down.
The chalkboard says that they’re showing Hope Hanover movies all day, but this one is a sci-fi alien western movie called The Last Portal.
It’s so bad it might actually be classified as a B movie.
Caro can’t imagine that Hope’s ever been in one of those.
Almost no one else is watching, and those who are brought camp chairs and quilts to sit under the patchy shade provided by the trees Sonnet has planted—cottonwood, because they grow fast. As Caro watches, the movie rings more and more of a bell.
It was filmed near here when she was in college.
Everyone made a big deal about how low-budget it was at the time, but everyone wanted to be an extra on the set anyway.
She remembers the weekend two years ago when she and Dan came down to St. John to check out residential care facilities for Henry.
They’d arrived at Lookout Pointe, and Dan had been unable to get over the incongruous lighthouse built in front of it, painted red and white and emblazoned with the name of the facility.
“What’s up with the lighthouse?” Dan had asked when they started the tour. “We’re landlocked by a few states in each direction.”
The director had clearly been asked this question before.
“It goes with the name,” she said, sounding defensive. “Lookout Pointe. We’re keeping watch over your loved ones.”
“I like it,” Dan said. “It also feels kind of like the eye of Sauron.”
“Excuse me?”
Caro had punched his arm.
Dan had begun referring to the facility as “Lookout Pointy,” because of the extraneous e, which had cracked Caro up. She’d needed that.
It wasn’t as funny when she brought her dad to check it out the next day.
He was having one of his affable, gentle days, clearly unsure as to what on earth they were doing but determined to be a good sport about it nonetheless.
He gamely walked around with her, expressed appreciation for all the things she pointed out.
(“Look, Dad, they have a soft-serve ice cream maker! You love soft-serve ice cream!”) But at the end of the tour, when she’d said, “So what do you think about living here?” as gently as possible, he’d been baffled.
“Who would live here?” he asked.
“Well, you,” she’d said.
“Me?” He sounded genuinely astonished. She supposed it made sense. He’d spent so much time taking care of other people, being the expert, that his being the one who might need to live here did not compute.
Her phone begins to ring.
Wait, not her phone. Her dad’s phone. Henry’s phone. It’s a number she doesn’t recognize. She almost drops it in her haste to answer. “Hello?”
Tears instantly flood her eyes when she hears Henry’s voice. “Hello?” he says. “Who is this?”
“It’s Caro.” Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, she thinks, to whatever higher power has done this. “Dad, where are you?”
“Why do you have my phone?” he asks. “I’ve been looking for it everywhere.”
“You left it at Wendy’s.” She’s trying to level and calm her voice. She doesn’t want to frighten him. “The police found it. Where are you now? Whose phone are you calling from?”
“I lost her,” Henry says.
“Okay,” Caro says, trying to understand. “You lost her?” Is he talking about her mom? It’s a common way of describing someone who has died, but his tone sounds so urgent, like this is happening right now, like there’s still a chance that this person, this her, could be found.
“That’s what I’m saying,” he says, his tone now entirely unlike him. It’s angry, unkind. “Do you need me to repeat myself?”
“Dad,” she says, shocked.
“I don’t have time for this,” he says, and hangs up.
Caro stares at the phone. Her father has hung up on her. This has never happened to her before. As far as she knows, he has never hung up on anyone, ever.
Something is so wrong.
Hands shaking, Caro calls the number Officer Clark gave her and puts the phone on speaker so she can text. “I heard from my father,” she says. “I’m texting you the number.”
“Got it.” Officer Clark’s voice is energized, which Caro is going to take as a good sign. “We actually have a call in from that number right now,” he says. “Hold on.”
Sweat trickles down Caro’s back as she waits, but the sun is lowering.
She doesn’t want her dad to still be lost when it gets dark.
Come on come on, she thinks. More people are bringing chairs over to the lengthening shade of the trees.
The alien movie has ended. The popcorn machine is still going.
A few kids run past, and Caro’s heart aches. There is so much I can’t have.
“Okay.” Officer Clark is back. “A woman just called us from that number. She said she picked up your dad because he was hitchhiking and something looked off. He asked her to drive him to Eden, but she didn’t want to take him all that way.
She asked if there was anyone he could call, and he said yes, and then apparently he called his own phone. ”
“Yes,” Caro says. “He’s had the same number for years. It might be the only one he can remember off the top of his head.”
“Okay,” Officer Clark says. “After the call with you, he ran away. She called 911 and now she’s trying to follow him in her car. We have officers on our way to her.”
Caro’s on her feet. “Okay, great. Where should I meet you?”
“Stay put for now,” Officer Clark says. “I’ll be in touch shortly.”
“Okay,” Caro says. “Thank you—”
But he’s already ended the call.
This is good, Caro tells herself. We have a lead, and Dad was physically okay, at least, minutes ago.
But what does I lost her mean?
Who, exactly, is he looking for?
She opens the photo app back up on his phone.
And why, Caro wonders, does he have so many screenshots of Hope Hanover?