Page 63 of The Intruder

“You really don’t remember?” She is still chuckling. “When you were in fourth grade, you pushed that pretty little daughter of his off the top of the jungle gym and she broke her arm. It was a whole big thing, and we had all these meetings about it.” She shakes her head. “And then you were all upset because she didn’t invite you to her birthday party, as if she would invite you after you broke her arm! Why would anyone want you there?”

Now that she’s saying it, I do kind of remember all that. It didn’t seem like that big a deal to me, although I guess I wasn’t the one in a cast.

“And you thought he was your father!” she snickers. “Boy, you’re delusional.”

I hate that she is laughing about this. I almost wish she were angry instead. The fact that she’s not angry is getting me angry. So angry that my hands have balled into tight little fists, and I almost want to hit her. But of course, I’d never do that. “So who is my real father then? Who is the other John Carter?”

My mother stops laughing. She folds her arms across her chest. “Fine. You’re thirteen now. Old enough to know the truth.”

My heart speeds up. This is what I’ve been waiting for. Except now that she’s about to tell me, I realize I’m not sure I want to know.

“Your father was in prison,” she says. “He got sent there when you were two months old.”

“In prison?” I breathe. “For what?”

“The idiot got into a fight in a bar and beat a guy unconscious.” Her face darkens. “Is that what you do when you have a girlfriend and a baby at home counting on you? What a jackass. No impulse control—just like you. Anyway, Johnny got sent away on assault charges, and then when he got out, he didn’t want to have anything to do with us. Didn’t even try to contact us, and I can’t say I know where he is.”

Over the course of the day, I went from thinking my dad is a professor of sociology to realizing he’s a convict. No wonder my mom can’t stop laughing.

“Can…?” I swallow the lump in my throat. “Can I see a photo of him?”

She narrows her eyes at me. “What do you want to see a photo of that loser for?”

“I…I just do. He’s my father.”

“Well, I tore them all up.” When she sees the stunned look on my face, she shrugs. “He’s never going to be part of our lives. It’s better this way.”

“He’s my father!” Tears spring to my eyes. “You had no right to do that!”

“You’re welcome to go searching for him,” she retorts. “But I wouldn’t expect him to want to have anything to do with you. And I couldn’t even blame him. Who would want to be stuck with a kid like you?”

It’s all too much for me now. Finding out that Dr. Carter isn’t actually my father, my real father is an ex-con, and my mother finding it somehow hilarious. But I don’t want to cry in front of her, so I push past her and run up the stairs as quickly as I can without slipping on all the stupid papers she’s got on them. I don’t stop until I get to my room, where I throw myself down on my bed and sob into my pillow until I pass out.

45

NOW

CASEY

I’ve got to get out of these restraints.

Whatever Eleanor is doing in the bedroom, she is taking her sweet time. It’s been about ten minutes, and I am still sitting here, waiting for her to come out and dismember me with her switchblade. My heart is beating so violently, it almost hurts my chest. I might have a heart attack before she comes back out here.

Duct tape is possible to cut through. If I could locate something in my kitchen that is sharp that I could rub against, I could get my hands free. And once my hands are free, I’ll be able to get my legs free too.

Except how am I supposed to do that when I can’t even move?

I push my feet against the ground, testing to see if I could slide across the kitchen, but instead, the chair just tips backward. I quit pushing, scared that if I fall over, I could break my wrists.

I remember when I was a kid, my dad was repairing our sofa—with duct tape, of course. He loved the stuff. If I had gotten married, he would’ve made my wedding dress out of duct tape. (Or at the very least, if it had torn, he would’ve repaired it with tape.)

While he was taping together the sofa, he said to me, Do you want me to show you what to do if somebody ever binds your hands together with duct tape?

It’s not the sort of thing that most fathers would have spoken to their daughters about, but it was exactly the sort of thing my father would say to me.

I sat in a chair in our living room, and my father taped my wrists together tightly. He took a step back. Okay, try to get free.

I did try. I struggled with it for five minutes while he watched. By the end, I was sure that I was going to peel my skin off before I got myself loose. When he saw me getting frustrated, he stopped me.