It took me all of one second to regret my outburst.
Oh, damn.
Oh, hell.
What did I just do?
I watched this beautiful twenty-year-old girl, whom I treasured, whom I loved more than life itself, disintegrate before my eyes. I wanted emotion from her, and I got it. She crumbled into pieces. She sobbed.
I tried to apologize. I said it over and over. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Anna, I’m sorry, please forgive me, I didn’t mean that, I’m upset.
But you can’t take the words back once you’ve said them. They’re out there forever. I reached out to take hold of her arm, to hug her, to comfort her, but she twisted violently away from me. Her tears turned to fury. She was speechless with sorrow, humiliation, and rage. She turned and ran away from me up the stairs, and I knew, I knew, she was gone.
She was going to leave just like I’d told her to do, and she wasn’t coming back.
And meanwhile, my father was missing.
There haven’t been many times in my life when I’ve been a wreck, but that night, I was a wreck. I wasn’t able to function. I couldn’t drive. I called Adam, who told me he’d come to the house. I called Monica, who was an hour away, but as soon as I told her about Dad, she started getting dressed and getting ready to head back through the winter night to Everywhere. I probably sounded hysterical to them, and I was.
Adam arrived first. I half expected him to use his motorcycle, which he drove on off-hours throughout the winter, but he came in his sheriff’s truck. He was out of uniform, and the first thing he did was ask for coffee, because I could smell that he’d been drinking. He didn’t look thrilled to be here, but he hugged me and sat me down in the kitchen and tried to keep me calm.
“I’ve called out every deputy,” he assured me, putting his cell phone faceup on the table. “They’re all out on the roads, every one of them. I called the boys in Stanton, too, and asked them to give us a hand. Wherever Tom is, we’ll find him.”
“Did someone look in the sheriff’s office? Maybe he’ll go there.”
“That was the first place I checked.”
“I just don’t know how his mind works, Adam. He could think it’s years ago. He could think he’s still working a case somewhere.”
“Like I said, we’re covering the whole county.”
“It’s cold. It’s practically zero. If he’s outside...”
“I know, Shelby. We’re doing everything we can.”
I stood up again, because sitting down and doing nothing was driving me crazy. “I’m so sorry about this.”
“Don’t be.”
“He wandered off and didn’t take his phone. I don’t even know if he remembers how to drive. I’m going to have to do something. This is the beginning of the end. I can’t let this go on.”
“Worry about that tomorrow. For now, let’s just focus on finding him and getting him home.”
I nodded, because Adam was right. I opened the refrigerator door and closed it. Don’t ask me why. I poured myself a cup of coffee and poured it out. I pulled a half-empty garbage bag from under the sink, tied it up, and replaced it with a new one. I had to keep moving and doing something, no matter how useless it was.
Finally, I ran out of power like a wind-up toy. I sat down again.
“Thank you, Adam.”
“You don’t have to thank me. It’s my job. Besides, you and I go back a long way. So do me and Tom.”
“Well, this is above and beyond, and I really appreciate it. You’re a good sheriff. You know that, right?”
“I’m competent, Shelby. That’s about all. Let’s not pretend I’m the sheriff Tom was.”
“Hey, come on. That’s not fair.”
Adam took a pack of nicotine gum from his shirt and unwrapped a stick. “It’s okay. I’m used to living in other people’s shadows. I’ve been doing it since I was a kid.”
“What do you mean?”
He reached into his pocket and found his wallet. He opened it and took out a small photograph of his mother. It was from decades earlier, when she was a young athlete. He had a glossy magazine article folded inside his wallet, too, and he spread it out on my kitchen table. It was from a sports magazine that had done a retrospective on his mother’s Olympic career after she’d died. I felt a little bit of kinship with him at that moment, despite all the differences between us. Sooner or later, we all become orphans.
“Just look at everything my mother did,” Adam said.
“She was an amazing woman.”
“Yes, she was.”
“But?” Because I could hear the “but” coming.
“But she also went out of her way to make me feel like a failure my whole life. Nothing was ever good enough for her. I know she didn’t mean to be that way. I don’t blame her for it. It’s just who she was.”
I didn’t have anything to say to that. I’d known his relationship with his mother was troubled, but I’d never heard him go that far. Adam wasn’t the kind of man who typically shared personal things. He picked up the photo of his mother and stared at it, and then he put everything back in his wallet. I noticed that he folded the magazine article with care and made sure the corners of the picture stayed unbent.
“I’m just saying that you’re lucky to have a father like Tom, and Tom’s lucky to have you.”
I nodded. He was right about that, too.
On the table in front of us, Adam’s cell phone lit up with a call. I tensed, because the ringing of the phone meant there was news, and all my fears ran through my head in a single instant.
He answered the call and listened. I couldn’t read his face. When he hung up, my throat was so dry I couldn’t even swallow. “Well?”
“We found him,” Adam said, his face breaking into a smile. “He’s alive, he’s fine.”
“Oh, thank God!” Tears of relief began to run down my cheeks. I felt as if my whole body would melt. “Thank God, thank God! Where is he?”
“I’ll drive you over there. He’s at Shelby Lake.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Dad sat in his truck at one of the campgrounds near the lake. With clouds hiding the moon, I had trouble seeing the frozen cove in front of us. He was dressed for the cold in his winter coat, winter hat, and boots, and he’d even made coffee and brought his thermos with him. According to the deputy who’d found him, he was sharp and perfectly focused tonight. And yet he had no recollection of coming out here and no memory of how to get home. It was strange, the randomness of the disease. It was as if the wires in his head were loose, sometimes working, sometimes failing.
“Hi, Dad,” I said, climbing into the truck next to him.
He reacted as if this situation weren’t strange at all. Me showing up at the lake with him in the middle of a January evening. He looked over with a big smile, then reached out and squeezed my shoulder. “Oh, hello, Shelby. I’m so glad to see you.”
“What are you doing out here?”
He blinked, as if that were an odd question. “I come here all the time.”
I knew that wasn’t true. He didn’t drive anymore, which meant he hadn’t been here in at least two years. But it made me wonder if he’d been doing this for much of his life, and I never knew about it.
“Why?”
“Well, it’s a beautiful spot. My favorite spot in the whole world. Shelby Lake. This is the place that gave me you.”
“I know.”
“I was thinking, all these years have gone by, and I don’t believe I ever asked. Do you like the name I gave you?”