David Bell - Never Come Back

“He’s not here,” Dan said. “He had to leave. I think he was tired.”

“You’re just there alone?”

“I thought you wanted me to stay here and keep an eye on things.”

“Dan, you don’t have to,” I said. “I’m glad you did, but it’s too much.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “I brought a book to read. George Eliot.”

“Oh, Dan. Look, I have to go, okay? But thanks for calling me. And please call me if anything else happens. Please.”

“I will,” he said.

“And, Dan? Thanks. Thanks for everything.”

I disconnected and looked at Beth.

“Ronnie’s okay,” I said. “It looks like he’s going to be okay.”

I saw more emotion on Beth’s face at that moment than at any other time. “Thank God,” she said. “I don’t think I could handle losing anybody else.”

Her comment struck me as strange. Someone else, someone besides my mother and my uncle, cared about Ronnie. I wasn’t used to that, and I wasn’t sure how quickly I could open up and include someone else in my family. I’d mouthed those words to her— He’s okay —out of instinct. Beth seemed troubled by Ronnie’s condition, and I wanted to ease her mind. But would we always be like that, the two of us? Would I have to include her from that moment on?

“Is Dan your boyfriend?” Beth asked.

I hadn’t realized I had said his name. “Not really,” I said. “We tried that. He’s… he’s just a guy. A pretty decent guy.”

“Those can be hard to come by,” Beth said.

“I know. I need to appreciate him more.”

“Take it from me,” Beth said. “Good men are hard to come by.”

I didn’t want to get sidetracked into relationship talk. She still had a few things to tell me, and it was getting late. Neal was waiting outside in his car, and we had an hour-long drive back to Dover.

“Are you able to finish the story?” I asked.

I didn’t want it to be a question, even though I framed it as one. I just wanted her to tell me the rest.

“Sure,” she said. “There are only a few things left to tell. Where was I?”

“Gordon said Mom was involved with his illegal activities,” I prompted her. “There’s no way that was true. Mom would never harm someone. She’d never get involved in anything like that.”

“I know that now,” Beth said. “I asked Mom about it, when I came back. It hurt her just to know Gordon had ever told me that. But you’re right, of course. Mom wouldn’t do such a thing. It was just Gordon messing with me.”

I let out a deep breath. “How cruel.”

“Yes. He was —is . But maybe I also believed it a little, when I was fifteen, because it made it easier for me to leave and stay away. I could use it as an excuse, even if it was ridiculous.”

“So then what happened?”

“Right. Gordon stared at me for a while, there in the dark and the rain. I could see that his mind was running through all the possibilities. He needed to do something with me, something that would make sure I wouldn’t tell what I knew. One possibility was obvious.”

She looked at me knowingly.

“Do you think he wanted to kill you?” I asked.

“I bet he did. Looking back, I feel certain it crossed his mind. The only reason he didn’t do it was because of Mom. I think some part of him, some tiny, decent part of him, just couldn’t go all the way and kill his child. He couldn’t kill Mom’s child.”

“So what did he do?”

“He told me he was going to make me very happy.”

“How so?”

“He didn’t tell me right away. He told me to get down on the floor of the backseat, to duck down and hide my head. He said he didn’t want anyone to see me in the car. This was 1975, and cars were big. There was plenty of room. He took off his sport coat and draped it over me. I guess he really wanted to make sure I was hidden.”

“I would have been terrified,” I said.

“I was. My heart was pounding. I still thought I might die. It was dark, and I was shaking. I told myself he wasn’t going to hurt me, that he was my dad and he wouldn’t. But I didn’t know what was going to happen. I didn’t fully trust him. Not really. Pretty soon, I heard someone else come walking up. I heard the footsteps on the driveway. Dad told the other person to drive. Then he got into the backseat with me. He put his hand on my head to keep it down and out of sight. I thought for a moment about trying to jump up and run. But then what would I do? He’d find me, right? I was his daughter. And then the car started and drove off. I couldn’t do anything then.”

“Jesus.”

“We drove a long time. It felt to me like hours. Just hours. Dad didn’t say much. He gave the driver a few directions. ‘Turn here.’ ‘Up here.’ But otherwise nothing else was said. The driver must have turned on the radio. It was classical music, of all things. Dad never listened to that. I heard that and the beating of the windshield wipers. Back and forth, back and forth. Anyway, we just drove on and on. I felt a little carsick, riding like that. In the dark, not seeing anything outside the car. I wished I could have fallen asleep. We were going fast for most of the time, so I figured we were on the highway, but eventually the car slowed down. We made a few turns with Dad giving the directions again. Finally we stopped.”

She shivered a little bit.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

Beth nodded. “Dad told the driver to get out of the car and wait. He told him—I assume it was a him—to go get a cup of coffee or something. Before the person left, Dad said, ‘Do you have it?’ Something rustled around, something like paper, and then I guess the other guy was gone. It was just me and Dad. He leaned down close to me and asked me if I knew where we were. I said no. He told me we were in Columbus at the bus station.

“He said, ‘I’m going to take this jacket off you, and you can sit up if you’d like. No one’s around right now. It’s the middle of the night.’ I sat up. It was dark, and we were next to some run-down building. The streetlight glowed through the front windshield. I remember the big drops of rain beading on the glass. They looked like clear marbles. And I saw the bus station up the street. A few people stood around outside, smoking and talking. Otherwise, we were the only ones there. Dad held out his hand. He had money, a wad of bills. I couldn’t tell how much, but it was more than I had ever seen at one time.

“‘This is five hundred bucks,’ he said. ‘It’s yours. I want you to go into that bus station and buy yourself a ticket.’ ‘Where?’ I asked. ‘Far away,’ he said. ‘It won’t cost that much. You’ll have enough left over when you get where you’re going to start up a new life. Isn’t that what you really want? To be away from here, from shitty, small-town Ohio?’”

Beth looked around the little room. She seemed to be taking stock of her surroundings in the dim light from the lamp behind her. I tried to see what she saw—a lower-middle-class home that had seen better days. An old TV, a worn carpet. Ugly curtains.

“I wonder how many people can look at one night—one moment really—and clearly see their life pivot from one place to another. What if I hadn’t gone to that party? What if I hadn’t opened that garage door? What if I’d had the courage to say no to my dad and just run away? Where would I be?”

“You were afraid, though,” I said. “You can’t blame yourself.”

“That’s nice of you to say. But I can blame myself in a lot of ways. I was a snot of a kid.”

“All kids are.”

“But Dad was right,” Beth said. “I did want to get away from little Haxton, Ohio. I’d been counting the days until my eighteenth birthday for a long time.”