Headlights(104)

The wolf watches us as we pass.

Inside, Tom’s waiting. He takes us to a private room, says the Wi-Fi’s been down, meaning we shouldn’t have any problems. Lucky. Like the Wi-Fi at the hotel and the car getting buried back there. Like the storm is helping us. Like the world wants all of this to happen, or something does. Just the things a delusional guy thinks before it all comes crumbling down.

Hannah and I sit in two chairs opposite an empty one across a table. I leave my jacket on. Hannah does too. I shuffle my boots on the floor.

My palms are sweating as they go to get him.

Calvin.

We don’t talk. It’s quiet in here. I try to breathe. I have a Bad Feeling. Of course I do.

The door at the end of the room abruptly opens, and I swallow. Turn.

A guard steps in, an inmate beside him.

Here, in the room with me.

Shit. I—

Bruises on my wrists. On Mom’s.

The bottle in his hand, swinging at her.

Both of them yelling, crying, both of them crying. In public. At home. Anywhere.

Dad, and Mom, in the front seats of the car singing along to country music. Smiling at each other.

Dad, showing me how to throw and catch a baseball, in the parking lot of the motel we lived in before the Happy Inn.

Dad, throwing the bottle at the wall behind me, just missing my head.

Dad lifting me up onto his shoulders and making sure I could see the stage at a show at Fiddler’s Green.

Mom as he slit her throat.

Dad staring at me through the mirror at the Happy Inn.

Dad. Here. Now.

Bad Feeling.

Dad, here, and me.

It’s him.

Hannah squeezes my hand.

Calvin Keller sits across from us.

I blink, try to push past the memories, see him, here, now.

He’s shorter than I am, by a few inches. Balding. Heavy wrinkles. He’s thin. I remember him with a beer gut, but I guess he can’t drink in here. His eyes look the same. They look like mine. All of him, like looking in a fun house mirror, an alternate reality in which I’ve made his choices instead of my own.

A lifetime of wondering if one day I’d wake up and turn out to be just like him, if it’s genetic, if it’s a broken thing passed down. Being terrified to get close to people, because what if that same switch flipped in me? A lifetime of hating myself for carrying any part of him forward. Fear, hate. Guilt. The overwhelming, all-consuming guilt for escaping it, for getting a family as loving as the Stansfields, for getting to live in that big house and go to school and have friends and safety and a hot meal in front of me every night. For knowing I didn’t deserve any of it.

All of it, from this man in front of me now. All of it, his doing.

Calvin Keller.

It used to be my name too.

He sits down, looks at Hannah with a question in his eyes, and then glances at me, squints at us, trying to figure out who we are. My heart is pounding, and I feel like I’m four years old. I feel like a little boy who’s scared shitless. Maybe that’s all I’ve ever been.

He does a double take at me. Hannah’s hand grips mine below the table as my dad sees me for the first time as an adult. As he recognizes me. I want to throw up. I want to run. Hannah’s hand on mine, pressing into my thigh.

We stare at each other long enough, Calvin and me, that Hannah nudges me, reminding me we don’t have much time. I clear my throat again, open my mouth to speak.

Before I can say anything, he says, “You look so much like her.”

His voice, unlocking more memories, more moments. I don’t— Dad, drunk, yelling at Mom to get her nose out of her books and act like a wife.

Mom, gone. Me, hiding behind a dresser. Dad finding me and asking me where she is. I don’t know, and he— I try to speak. Try to push this forward and be a man.

“Am I dreaming this?” he asks. My dad asks.

I shake my head, wishing we both were. This man who could be the spitting image of what I would become, if I let myself. This man who is the worst possible version of me.

I clear my throat again, heart racing, palms sweaty. And I take a breath. “No,” I say. And I see him flinch at my voice, tears beginning to well up in his eyes.

“You’re a man,” he says. “Shit. I must be old. You were just…”

“I need to ask you some questions,” I say.

“Calvin,” he says.

“That’s not my name.”

Confusion flashes in his eyes.

“Picked a new one. With my family,” I say.

That hurt him. It’s clear in his look. And I know I did it on purpose, but it gives me some resolve. Some momentum. Dear old dad taught me that.

You hurt me, I hurt you. I hurt you, I feel better.

“I…” I clear my throat. Again. Shit. “I need to understand. What happened that night. Why it happened. Why you came in yelling at her, what it was about.”

A tear runs down his face. He swipes at it with a finger. “I’m so sorry, Calvin. I didn’t—”

“That’s not my name.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Why did you do it?” My voice breaks.

“You know, no one gives you a guidebook on how to be a dad. No one tells you…”

“Murder probably wouldn’t have been in it.”