I read another fashion blog update written by my daughter. She’s so talented, but these editors have her saddled with the most vapid material. I know she can do so much more with her skill and passion. All I really want is for Cherry to be happy. If this is what makes her happy, I will gladly spend the rest of my days printing out her gossip blog articles. I miss her, but I know she’s got her own life now in the big city. Things are too dull here for her. She deserves more than Bayonne has to offer, that’s for sure.
Finally, after days of holding back, a teardrop falls and stains the paper, blurring my name on the page. I sniffle and hold the journal tight to my chest, closing my eyes and leaning back against the seat. I had no idea my dad was reading all those dumb, silly articles I wrote. I figured he had much better things to do than track down every single useless piece I published. Suddenly I am terribly angry with myself for letting him down. I thought I had years—many years—left to prove my worth to him. I wanted him to live to see me become the writer he knew I could be, the heroic truth-teller he wanted me to be. I never expected to lose him before he got the chance to see me really shine.
And now, no matter how hard I work, he will never know. He died with the knowledge that his only child was nothing more than a puff piece writer. I swipe at my eyes furiously, my chest heaving as I finally let my emotions overwhelm me for the first time since his death. I can’t believe I’ve wasted so much time being anything less than he expected of me. All I want is to be good enough, but instead I’ve just spent my whole life messing around, taking the road most traveled because I’m too afraid to break free of the expectations the rest of the world puts on me. I’ve been living up to the image of my silly, girly name, instead of fulfilling who and what I really am inside.
Well, that’s going to change now.
“I can do better than that, Daddy,” I whisper aloud, shaking my head.
I’m going to prove to him that I can be tough, that I can track down the hard, cold truths that people want to keep concealed. I’m going to find out what happened to my father, really. I don’t know how I’m going to make it happen, but somehow I am going to make this right.
I look through his journal some more, turning on the radio for some background noise. After pages and pages of the same kind of stuff, I stumble upon a later entry describing something odd. I squint at the page, trying to make sense of the cryptic note:
Commercial field possibly up for sale. Suspect something off. Near the docks. Will coordinate with Volkov to investigate.
“Volkov?” I murmur to myself, trying to figure out if the name is familiar. But it doesn’t belong to anyone I can remember from my dad’s circle of friends. Maybe it’s someone he was working with at the plant. Or maybe… it’s someone from the union Club.
What if it’s Leon?
“Calm down,” I tell myself, rolling my eyes. I’m clearly just fishing for any reason to think about Leon right now. After all, he did give me the best sex of my life last night. I know there’s not much I can do to keep him out of my mind. Those strong arms, his powerful chest, and hard stomach… and that massive, glorious shaft.
I close the journal and toss it in the bag before pressing my face into my palms. I can’t afford to be distracted right now! I have way too much to get done. There is a huge mystery surrounding my dad’s death and I did not come all the way back to Bayonne just to get all googly-eyed for some hot guy. Even if he is really, really super hot.
I turn the ignition and start up the rental car, adjusting the seat and mirrors to suit my body. Luckily, whoever drove it over must have been a woman or someone small, since I don’t have to adjust anything too dramatically. I wonder if maybe it was Anya.
“Okay. Now where am I going?” I ask myself out loud, biting my lip.
I wrack my brain, trying to figure out what field by the docks my dad could be referencing in his enigmatic note. It’s one of the last entries in the whole journal, dated only a week before his death. I don’t know if there’s any connection, of course, but it’s the best lead I have at the moment, so I need to check it out. But where is it?
I’ve lived outside of town for so long, my memory of the area is a bit rusty. I screw my eyes shut tightly and think hard. Near the docks. I used to play around there a lot, riding my bike up and down the sidewalk that runs along the coastline. I hung out with some kids from that part of town who treated the abandoned industrial piping and building materials from deals gone bad like a playground like an obstacle course. We had all kinds of borderline dangerous adventures climbing on top of metal heaps and hiding inside huge cement pipes. That area always needed construction, always looked rundown and forgotten to some extent. And it kind of was.