Stevens Chevy - Never Knowing

I took a deep breath and nodded. Sandy handed me a pair of gloves. After I slid them on, she passed me the box.

“Just hold it by the edges and don’t touch anything else.”

As I examined the doll carefully, I tried not to think of Danielle, how pretty she was, how her hair was the same color as mine, how she died with my father’s hands around her throat.

John called later that day from his cell when I was making a cup of coffee.

“Did she get it?”

“The doll arrived, yes. Thanks.” I almost choked on the last word.

“Did you give it to Ally?”

“No, she’s just a little girl, John. She wouldn’t understand—”

“You won’t let me talk to her, and now you won’t let me send her presents? I made it for her .”

“I’ll save it until she’s older. She’s so young — I was worried she’d lose it.”

He was breathing heavy into the phone.

“Are you okay?”

It sounded like he was talking through clenched teeth when he said, “No — the noise. It’s bad right now.”

I stood motionless, my hand still on the coffeepot. What noise? I strained my ears. Did he have another girl? I heard something. Laughter? Then chopping sounds. An axe hitting wood?

I forced myself to take a slow, deep breath.

“John, where are you?”

The sound stopped.

“Can you please tell me where you are?”

“I’m at a campsite.”

My heart went into overdrive. “Why are you there?”

He hissed into the phone, “I told you— the noise .”

“Okay, okay. Just talk to me. What are you doing at the campsite?”

“They’re laughing .”

“Drive away. Please, I’m begging you, just drive away.”

The sound of a truck door opening. “They have to stop—”

“Wait! I’ll meet you. Okay? I’ll meet you.” God help me.

Now you know why I had to see you a day early. It took me a few minutes to get John back in his truck and away from the campsite. I just kept telling him how great it would be to meet him, basically getting him to focus on something else. It was hard at first — he kept talking about the noise, then about the campers laughing. Then I’d say something like, “I can’t believe I’m finally going to meet my dad.” Eventually he calmed down and said he’d phone soon so we could arrange our meeting. I’m supposed to go see Billy and Sandy after I’m done here — they want to go over everything in case John wants to set up something right away. He’d called from just north of Merritt, a small town only four hours from Vancouver. He was heading in this direction.

When I told Evan last night he said, “They’re just manipulating you, Sara.”

“They who?”

“All of them — the cops and John.”

“Don’t you think I’m smart enough to know when I’m being manipulated?”

“Meeting with John is reckless when you have a child. Did you even think about her? You had no right to agree to something this big without talking to me first.”

“Are you kidding me? I put Ally above everything — you know that. And where do you get off telling me what I have a right to do ?”

“Sara, you need to stop yelling or I’m—”

“You need to stop being a jerk .”

Now his voice was raised. “I’m not going to talk to you if you keep yelling.”

“Then you shouldn’t say asshole things like that.”

He was silent.

“So now you’re not going to speak at all? And I’m the immature one.”

“I’m not discussing anything with you until you take it down a notch.”

I gritted my teeth and took a few big breaths. Forcing myself to speak calmly, I said, “Evan, you have no idea what it was like talking to him, knowing he was picking out his next victim. If I didn’t say the exact right thing, someone was going to die. Can’t you understand how horrible that felt? Billy said the faster we catch him, the faster he’s out of our lives. And it’s true. Even if the cops are manipulating me, it doesn’t change the facts.” Evan was silent for a long moment, then finally said, “Shit. I hate this, Sara.”

“Me too. But can’t you see I didn’t have any other choice?”

“You had another choice — you just didn’t take it. I get why you felt you had to say yes, but I still don’t like it, and I don’t agree with it. If it’s going to happen, then I want to be home. I’ll shut down the lodge if I have to, but I want to ride with the cops when it goes down.” “I’m sure they won’t have a problem with that.”

We talked for a little while longer. He apologized for accusing me of being reckless, I apologized for calling him names, then we said our good nights. But I don’t think either of us actually had one. I spent hours staring at the ceiling. All I could think about was the campers John had been watching. They didn’t know how close to death they’d come. Then I wondered how close I was.

Right now, I’m a train wreck. The more Evan tries to calm me down, the more upset I get. Then I hate myself, which makes me lose it even more, so Evan tries even harder to calm me down or goes all take-control-alpha-male, so then I turn into an irrational bitch from hell.

But when I finally get a reaction from him, when his face flushes and he raises his voice or walks off, that’s when I calm down. Then I look over everything I’d just said or did and feel horribly ashamed, so I suck up, trying to squirm my way out of whatever mess I’d just caused. Thankfully he doesn’t hold a grudge for long and in typical Evan fashion drops it and moves on, but I’m the one who can’t let it go.

This isn’t the first time we’ve talked about my overreactions, and then my overreaction to my overreaction. It’s funny I can even use that term with you, because if anyone else in my life even hints I’m overreacting it’s guaranteed to make me see red. You’ve told me it’s never about the situation at hand — that’s just the switch. It’s the currents between people sparking off each other that cause the problem. You have to deal with the way you’re fighting, not what you’re fighting about. How many times did you try to hammer that into me? You’d think I’d have gotten the hang of it by now, but in the moment? It all goes out the window. At least now I know where I got it from.

After John’s initial excitement about meeting I thought he’d want to set something up right away, but when he called after I got home from our last session he just wanted to talk about Ally. I kept trying to change the subject, but when I mentioned the meeting he said he was still considering how best to go about it, then he brought up Ally again. I hated talking about my daughter with him, hated wondering what he was doing with the information.

Sandy and Billy, who I saw every day once I agreed to meet John, didn’t understand why he was stalling either but agreed it would look odd if I started pushing and said I should let him bring it up. Now that I’d made the decision to meet, I couldn’t wait to get it over with. Especially because it didn’t look like we were going to get him any other way.

He’d called from near Cranbrook, which was a surprise. They’d expected he’d keep heading south, not eight hours east. His next call came from a pay phone even farther east, almost to the Alberta border. I spent hours staring at the map, trying to figure out what he was thinking, why he was heading in the opposite direction.

Every call he wanted to know more and more about Ally, and I was walking a tightrope between truth and lies. I didn’t know how Internet-savvy he was, so on things I thought he could verify, like birth dates or school info, I was careful to tell the truth, but when he asked about her likes and dislikes, I lied my butt off. Ally now hated cheese and red meat, was easygoing, shy with strangers, and terrible at sports. I had to make notes so I wouldn’t forget the details about this new daughter I was creating.