Headlights(105)

“Protecting you is all that ever mattered to me. I just knew I had to keep you safe, and she was gonna take you away from me. And I couldn’t trust her.”

“She was gonna take us away so you couldn’t hit us anymore. So you couldn’t break bottles over our heads, or throw telephones or books or TV remotes at us. So you couldn’t stumble in drunk and beat the shit out of the two most helpless people you could find, the ones who were trapped and waiting for you all day.”

“I regret all of that. Every day. And I will for the rest of my life. But you don’t know, your mother … After she took you to Aspen—”

Aspen.

John Denver Sanctuary. The rock in the middle of the river.

I pause, thrown off.

“What happened in Aspen?” I say.

He stares at me, then says, “You don’t remember.”

My pulse pounding, in my hands, my throat. I can’t talk to him. His voice, so many moments pushing in. Tears burn at the backs of my eyes.

He shakes his head. “She wasn’t … She didn’t mean it. To take you away, to do what she did. She just…” He runs his hands over his head. The same way I do.

“I ask myself all the time,” he says. “If I regret that night. And … I regret that you saw it. I regret the way that must have affected you. I can’t imagine. I regret that by doing it I ensured you wouldn’t have a dad around anymore. And—” He swipes at tears in his eyes. That nausea threatening again. I want to look away, but I don’t let myself.

“I regret all the times I lost my temper and hurt you both leading up to it,” he says. “But that night in the Happy Inn was maybe the one time I was a good father. It was maybe the only time I really did right by you. That woman was poison. And if being here is the price for that, I’ll take it. I think about it every day, and I welcome it. The pain, the penance.”

He stops talking. And …

What do I do with that? What the fuck am I supposed to do with any of this?

“If I hadn’t gotten to Aspen when I did,” he says, “she would have taken you away forever. And that night at the motel, she was going to do it again. I just … you’re my boy. You can’t understand, what that’s like, what you’d do for your kid.”

I see every moment he hit me, feel every ounce of terror hearing the key unlock the door, not knowing if he’d come back and be my dad who loved me, who I could play with, who would hug me before bed, or before leaving. Or if he’d be drunk. And angry. If I was going to have bruises and cuts and the dizzy ear-ringing feeling after my dad’s fist colliding with my head.

John Denver Sanctuary. My ears ringing.

Ringing so loud.

Calvin Keller in front of me. John Denver in the movie spending his whole life just trying to win the approval of his dad. All the men on this earth with all the shit fathers.

Except … I don’t know if I can call myself one. Noel Stansfield was the best dad anyone could have hoped for. The worst thing he ever did was leave this world before I was ready for him to. But I’d never have been ready. And he went with Marianne, didn’t make her go alone. Even in the end, he was there for her. He was there for me until then. He was as kind and decent as anyone could be.

Thinking of Noel reminds me of who I am. Even while my heart pounds and the nausea nearly overwhelms me.

I remember. I sit up straight in the chair.

I’m not that little boy in the Happy Inn.

I lean forward, toward him, Hannah’s hand still in my own. And this time I hold his eyes. I don’t flinch.

Because I’m Daniel fucking Stansfield, and I don’t have time for this.

“What do you know about the Drifter murders?” I ask.

Calvin gives me a blank look. “What is that?”

“Surely you get the news in here. Surely people talk.” Ryder Smith, Theo Wharton. Different prison, but …

“I haven’t heard of it. What is it?”

“What about a Witchwalker?”

Again, he stares at me. Those tears still falling. “You really look like her. Miracle, I guess, you lookin’ more like her than me. She was so beautiful.”

Except I don’t think he’s right. But it doesn’t matter. I swallow, make myself sit up straighter.

“I need some answers,” I say, “or we’re gonna have to go. We’re looking for something, and it’s important.”

“Well, I don’t know what that stuff is. I try to keep my head down in here. Go to services. I’ve got a lot to atone for, and I’m just … tryin’.”

I feel the earth moving beneath me and the whole of the sky pressing in. As I once again ask my father the question that’s cursed me my whole life. The question that’s eclipsed everything. Every accomplishment, every fear and want and hurt. The only question.

“Why did you do it?” I ask again. The words come out softer, more hoarse than I mean for them to.

Pain flickers in his eyes. Instantaneous. He doesn’t pretend not to know what I’m asking.

But he shakes his head slowly, the tears falling.

“I need to know why,” I say. “Was it just because we were leaving?”

The man in front of me tries to pull himself together, but he can’t. “I’m sorry,” he says.