daughter. I like the way it sounds. I look at the window and see it can’t get any wider. I look at the fan and see it can’t spin any faster. I look at Father Frank and see he can’t hold on much longer.
He coughs into his hand. There are flecks of blood on it. The original Frank that peeked out from under the cancer with that smile has slipped back under the surface. “She wouldn’t have left me, not at the end. I need for you to understand that. To believe that.”
“Isn’t it possible it all became too much for her? I know you don’t want to think so, but—”
He puts his hand up for me to stop talking. “Drew, that’s what he thinks. It’s what others think.”
“But not you.”
He reaches out and grabs my hand. His grip is strong. “Sometimes people know things. How many times on the force did you rely on instinct? How many times did you trust your gut? This isn’t any different. I’ve raised her most of her life, Noah. The last time she called me Uncle Frank was the same night you got her back for me. Since then she’s called me Dad. She’s gone from being my niece to being my daughter, and I know my daughter. I know her better than you know her, better than the sheriff knows her, better than anybody in this town knows her.” He closes his eyes. He grimaces. Something in his body — or perhaps everything in his body — is hurting. He keeps his eyes closed as he talks, a thin line of tears coming from them. “I get that kids keep secrets. I know they have boyfriends and girlfriends and they smoke and they shoplift and they sneak out at night and fool around. I know teenagers have secret lives and they hold back from us, but she wouldn’t have left without saying goodbye.” He says it again. “She wouldn’t have left without saying goodbye.”
I let that sink in. He sips some more water. Droplets spill down his chin. He wipes at it, his fingers rasping across his unshaven skin. He looks tired, like he could close his eyes and never open them again. It’s time to ask what needs asking. “Has she ever spoken of leaving?”
He says nothing for a bit. His head sinks into the pillow and he stares at the ceiling. He lets go of my hand. “Yes,” he says. “After I’ve gone, there’s nothing here for her. Her friends are moving on, she’s got no more family. She’s applying for universities. I know that makes it sound like maybe she couldn’t wait, but she was waiting. The thing is, Noah, I should have died months ago. She was there for me then thinking every day could be the last, so whatever notion you’re building up that she left because she got scared — well, you go ahead and scrap it.” He rolls onto his side to face me. It’s an effort for him. “Trust me, Noah. Something happened. I’m not . . . I’m not saying somebody kidnapped her, but something happened. She wouldn’t have left like that.” He reaches out and takes my hand again, and uses what strength the cancer hasn’t finished eking away to squeeze it tighter than he squeezed it before. He tries to sit up further, but can’t manage it. “You have to believe me. You have to find my daughter.”
“I’ll find her,” I tell him. “I promise.”
He takes me at my word, and he relaxes and lets go of my hand and settles back into the position he was in when we first arrived.
“She used to have nightmares,” he says. “About The Bad Man.”
“Maggie told me,” I say.
“She used to say back then you’d always save her.”
“Let me get my bearings,” I tell him, “and I’ll come back in a few hours. I’ll want to look through Alyssa’s room and go through her things, get the names of her friends from you. And I’ll talk to Drew, see what he says.”
“Anything you need.” Then he looks at me and goes to say something else, but doesn’t.
“What is it?” I ask him.
“It’s nothing.”
“Tell me.”
“I can’t . . . I can’t have you doing what you did last time,” he says. “I can’t have that on my conscience, but . . . but at the same time I need you to do what it takes.”
“And if what it takes is more than your soul is willing to bear?”
He doesn’t answer right away. This is a question he’s been grappling with ever since he decided I was the man who could help. “I don’t know,” he says. “Forgiveness is a big thing in my faith, Noah.”
“I’m going to find her,” I say. “I hope I won’t have to break any bones along the way, but if I have to, then I’m okay with you forgiving me.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“You’d rather forgive whoever did something to her?”
“I’m not saying that either.”
“So what are you saying?”
He exhales loudly, and it worries me because it sounds like it could be his last one ever, but then he sucks in a breath that rattles in his chest. “I’m saying . . . I’m saying do what it takes, I’ll do my best to square things up for the both of us when I’m on the other side.”
Eleven
Maggie gets Father Frank some fresh water and asks him if there’s anything else we can do to make him comfortable. He tells us that he’s fine, and promises he’ll have more energy when I come back later this afternoon.
We step outside and the day has gotten hotter. I listen to the porch timbers straining against the nails. It was hot back when I used to live here, but this is something different. This feels like somebody drilled for oil and went too far, venting heat out from the planet’s core.
There’s another car in the parking lot now. It’s shimmering in the heat, and the man leaning against it is shimmering too. He’s no longer in uniform, but he’s wearing the same hat he always used to wear. He has the same horseshoe mustache and the same gun strapped to his waist. He’s wearing a pair of aviators. He’s lost weight, and a lot of what’s left has been redistributed. His hair has gone gray, but it’s still thick, and the smile lines have turned to frown lines and the frown lines he had back then have turned to furrows deep enough to slot a dime into. He has his arms folded across his chest and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. There’s a chipped red portable oxygen tank next to him, parked up on a couple of wheels, a tube running from it to over his ears and under his nose. I’ve been back in town for thirty minutes, and other than Maggie everybody I’ve seen so far is on oxygen. Maybe the town is so hot the air here burns your lungs. I’d have thought that mixing smoking with oxygen was one seriously bad idea, but it doesn’t seem to bother him. Maybe he likes the idea of going out in a ball of fire.
I walk down the steps and my feet crunch into the shingle. I put my sunglasses on before my eyes catch fire. I stand a few feet away from Sheriff Haggerty who is no longer Sheriff Haggerty, but Walt Haggerty, a man I’ve known most of my life, a man who, under different circumstances, I’d be shaking his hand and telling him how good it is to see him. He stays leaning against the car and keeps his arms folded and I can’t see his eyes behind his glasses.
“Noah,” he says.
“Sheriff.”
“It ain’t Sheriff anymore, son.”
“I heard,” I tell him. “I’m sorry about your stroke.”
“That’s not the thing you need to be sorry about.”
I stare at him and he stares at me and the temperature gets a little hotter and the sun gets a little higher and the shadow he’s casting gets a little smaller.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” he says, and then he looks at Maggie. “You shouldn’t have called him. Frank . . . you know Frank’s not in his right mind.”
“Come on, Sheriff,” she says, putting on her lawyer voice. “Father Frank asked me for Noah’s help, and I wasn’t going to let him down. You have