Here went nothing. This was my last and only chance.
Chapter Fifteen
Feeling at the wooden wall, I located a metal switch, flicked it, and smiled as the room flickered into view thanks to an orange light bulb on the ceiling. Who knew what I would’ve done if I’d had to stumble around that old place in the dark.
And yet, as soon as my eyes took in their surroundings, my victorious smile fell to a horrified scowl.
Trashed. The whole cabin had been trashed. Russell’s men had been in there all of a minute, and they’d still managed to topple the couch and fridge, kick over the chest, and shoot holes in the wall. The monsters.
A frightened squirrel raced out of the kitchen, shooting past me and squeaking angrily. The loft upstairs was a sea of soft white sheets and clear shards of glass. Even the pictures downstairs had been destroyed: a bullet in one, a smashing of the other. The third, the one of the chickadee, was the exception. Ironic that it had been the one salvaged. I carefully took the frame off the nail it was hanging on and turned it around.
The canvas was soft to the touch, supple. On the back was a bar code that, in the corner, read “Albertson’s”.
The craft store, of course.
I took the chickadee canvas to my chest and spun around. Finally, finally a lead. It was something I could go off. It was nothing certain, nothing even likely, and yet it was enough. It was hope.
I carried the canvas out of there like my fourth child: cradled in my arms, nestled to my breast, pressed to my heart. This was the greatest thing I could’ve found there—a piece of the man I had only gotten one sweet night with, the man I was now intrinsically linked to whether I liked it or not.
The canvas went in the passenger’s seat. I flopped into the driver’s. Then we were off.
By now the sun had started to rise, casting long beams of light through the trees, illuminating everything. The whole forest, every last tree, was celebrating with me.
This time the drive was one long smile, one long sigh of relief. Even my body seemed lighter. I didn’t wonder when the ride would finally end; I only hoped it wouldn’t. I didn’t want to lose this weightlessness, the first I’d felt it in months.
Maybe I wouldn’t have to be alone. Maybe I could find Brock and tell him. Maybe, just maybe, everything was going to be all right—better than all right. Maybe it would be good, great even.
Once out of the forest, I stocked up on some pistachios, grapes, and water bottles before gliding from the checkout counter to the car. The ride back was filled with more bathroom breaks, but I didn’t mind. I glanced over at my friend the chickadee and smiled.
One thing was for sure: I was going to have a busy next few weeks.
It turned out busy was an understatement. Colorado had no less than 16 Albertsons’ stores. That was 16 drives, with the estimated time to reach each multiplied by two given the bathroom and food breaks and just general avoiding mental breakdown breaks. Sixteen letdowns. And, after each, after asking blasé cashiers about the man whose picture printout didn’t even really look like him, after shoving the chickadee painting in front of them, after hearing the same uncaring “no,” it began to get more than a bit depressing.
“What do you mean you don’t think?” I demanded of a particularly sullen, pink-haired cashier. “Either you have, or you haven’t.”
“I haven’t.” Her red lips snapped back before she returned to texting.
I slumped away, onto another fruitless search, another dogged driving-off to who knew where in search of the man who might not even welcome being found.
All the while, between my journeys, I had to listen to Tiffany voicing her doubts and my mom voicing her over-the-top fretting.
“What if you start giving birth right in the middle of driving, right in the middle of nowhere?!” my mom, Alice, had cawed on one such memorable lunch outing, her penciled brows rising so high that they almost hit her hairline. “And what if, while that’s happening, a motorcycle gang or something come across you and steal all your money!”
My mom was well-known for her negative flights of fancy, but even that was pushing it.
“I have no money,” I’d said, and then I’d escaped to the bathroom.
And really, I did understand their concern; I just didn’t have time for it. I had a father to find.
And so I searched. I tore through every last Albertsons’ in Colorado, plowed through every stupid one of the blue-boxed stores in Wyoming, and even ventured into New Mexico’s small supply of stores.