This business about her father always talking about her surprised Corrie, but she didn’t show it. She didn’t even look at Merv, who was clearly hugely embarrassed. “So—you all know my father?”
“He’s probably up at his cabin,” the nicer one said.
Bingo, thought Corrie. She’d been right. She felt a huge relief this hadn’t been a wasted effort.
“Where’s that?”
The man gave her directions. It was about a mile up the road. “I’d be happy to give you a ride,” he said.
“No thanks.” She hefted the knapsack and turned to leave.
“Really, I’d be happy to. I’m a friend of your dad’s.”
She had to stop herself from asking him what he was like. That wouldn’t be the way to go about it—she had to find out for herself. She hesitated, gave the man a once-over. He looked sincere, it was freezing outside, and her knapsack weighed a ton. “All right. As long as Perv, I mean Merv, here doesn’t tag along.” She gestured at Beer-Gut Number One.
This elicited laughter.
“Come on, then.”
She had him drop her off at the spot where a shortcut trail to the cabin left the main road. It was just a steep track in the pinewoods, which started out in a big puddle of mud she had to skirt around. She had what looked like a half-mile walk to the cabin, and as she went along the track—now and again crossing one of the switchbacks of Long Pine Road—she felt herself start to unwind, to really relax, for the first time in ages. It was a typical early-December day: the sun was shining through the branches of the oaks and pines, dappling the ground around her, and a smell of resin and dead leaves hung in the air. If ever there was a great place to hide from the cops—or Nazis, for that matter—this was it.
But as she thought about her father, and what she would say to him, and he to her, her stomach began to tighten up again. She could hardly remember him physically, had no real idea of what he looked like—her mother had thrown away the scrapbook of pictures of them together. She had no idea what to expect. So, he was now a bank robber? God, he might be an alcoholic or a drug addict. He might be one of those criminals full of whining self-pity and justification, blaming everything on bad parents or bad luck. He might even be shacked up with some horrible sleazy bitch.
And what would happen if he were caught, and there she was living in the cabin with him? She had already looked up the federal statute on the web, 18 USC § 1071, which required them to prove she’d actually harbored or concealed him and had taken steps to prevent his discovery or arrest. Just living with him wasn’t enough. Still, how would it affect her future law enforcement career? It sure as hell wouldn’t look good.
In short, this was a stupid idea. She hadn’t really thought it through. She should have stayed back in his house where she was perfectly safe, and let him live his own life. She slowed, stopped, shrugged off the knapsack, and sat down. Why had she ever thought this was a good idea?
What she really should do now was turn around and go back to Allentown, or rather West Cuyahoga, and forget all about this bullshit. She rose, slung the knapsack back over her shoulder, and turned to leave. But then she hesitated.
She had come too far to run away. And she wanted to know—really wanted to know—about those letters in the closet. The postmaster at Medicine Creek was about as dumb as they came… but she didn’t think he was that dumb.
She turned around and trudged on. The shortcut trail left the road for good, went around a bend, and there, in front of her in a sunny clearing, was the shack, all by itself, no other buildings even remotely nearby. She stopped and stared.
It was not charming. Tar paper had been tacked on with irregular strips of wood. The two windows on either side of the door were curtained but broken. Behind and through the oaks she could see an outhouse. A rusted stovepipe poked up through the roof.
The yard in front, however, was neat, the grass trimmed. She could hear someone moving inside the house.
Oh, God, here we go. She walked up to the door and knocked. A sudden silence. Was he going to bolt out the back?
“Hello?” she called, hoping to forestall that.
More silence. And then a voice from inside. “Who is it?”
She took a deep breath. “Corrie. Your daughter. Corrie.”
Another long silence. And then suddenly the door burst open and a man tumbled out—she recognized him immediately—who enveloped her in his arms and just about crushed her.
“Corrie!” he cried, his voice choking up. “How many years have I prayed for this! I knew someday it would come! My God, I prayed for it—and now here it’s happened! My Corrie!” And then he dissolved into great hiccuping gusts of sobbing joy that would have embarrassed her if she hadn’t been so completely flabbergasted.
25
INSIDE, THE CABIN WAS SURPRISINGLY COZY, NEAT, AND even charming in a beat-up, rustic sort of way. Her father—she called him Jack, unable to bring herself to say Dad—showed her around with no little amount of pride. It consisted of two rooms: a kitchen-living-dining area, and a tiny bedroom just big enough for a rickety twin bed, bureau, and washstand. There was no plumbing or electricity. An old Franklin stove supplied heat. An upright camping stove on legs, supplied by bottled gas, was used for cooking, and next to it an old soapstone sink was set up on two-by-fours, its drainpipe simply dumping water onto the ground under the floorboards. Drinking water came in plastic jugs lined up by the front door, filled, he said, at a spring half a mile from the cabin.
Everything was in its place, clean, and orderly. She noted no liquor bottles or beer cans anywhere. Red paisley curtains added a cheery note, and the rough wooden kitchen table was spread with a checked tablecloth. But what surprised Corrie the most—although she didn’t mention it—was a large cluster of framed photographs that dominated the wall above the table, all of her. She had no idea so many childhood and baby pictures of her even existed.
“You take the bedroom and get settled in,” Jack said, opening the door. “I’ll sleep on the sofa.”
Corrie didn’t argue with him. She dumped her knapsack on the bed, and rejoined her father in the kitchen. He was standing over the stove.
“Are you staying for a while?” he asked.
“If that’s okay.”
“More than okay. Coffee?”
“Oh, my God, yes.”
“It ain’t French press.” He laughed and dumped some coffee grounds into an enamel pot filled with water, stirred it, and put it on to boil.
So far, after the initial effusive greeting, both of them had somehow refrained from asking questions. Although she was dying to—and she knew he must be, too. It seemed neither one wanted to rush things.
He hummed as he worked, brought out a carton of doughnuts, and arranged them on a plate. She suddenly remembered that humming habit of his—something she hadn’t thought of in fifteen years. She examined him surreptitiously as he bustled about. He was thinner and seemed astonishingly shorter, but that must be because she’d grown up. No man could shrink from giant size—which is what she remembered—to a measly five foot seven. His hair was thinning, with one jaunty tuft that stuck out from the top; his face was deeply scored but still strikingly handsome in a kind of sparkling, cheerful, Irish way. Even though he was only a quarter Irish, the other parts being Swedish, Polish, Bulgarian, Italian, and Hungarian. “I’m a mutt,” she remembered him once saying.
“Milk, sugar?” he asked.