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"I think it was his way of keeping complete control of you. Yes, he paid a woman to have his baby, but he kept in contact with Miss Odenkirk. And he made sure she lived a good, comfortable life." He pulled his briefcase off the chair. "I'm sure this is a lot for you to absorb, Nash. I'll leave you alone. I'll see you tomorrow at the funeral."
I walked along with him to the front door. My steps felt heavy with the new information weighing down my thoughts. A lot to absorb was an understatement.
I saw James out and then headed up to Dad's room. As a kid I was never allowed inside his room on my own, and I was certainly never allowed to crawl into his vast bed with him on a stormy night or after a bad dream.
The whole house seemed eerily quiet. I stepped inside the room. The medical equipment and leftover medicine had been taken out and the room looked back to normal, except it wasn't. I'd never see him standing in the room looking imperious or angry or deep in thought again.
I walked over to the bed and sat on the edge of it. His reading glasses were sitting on the nightstand. I picked them up and slipped them on, blurring my own vision with the prescription lenses. I opened the nightstand drawer. He had aspirin and notepads and pens tucked inside. I shuffled past the notepads and pulled out a stack of pictures. I pulled off the glasses.
My ten-year-old face stared back at me. They were my school pictures, one for each year. Dad had written my full name and the date on the back of each one. I shuffled through and found the picture with his parents in front of their van. The last picture was of a woman, a pretty woman with green eyes standing in a summer dress and floppy straw hat. Her smile was gracious, and she looked like she had a good sense of humor. I turned the picture over and ran my thumb over my dad's writing. Just as he had done on my school pictures, he had written down the name and date for the woman in the picture. Lydia Odenkirk, 2003. It was taken when I was thirteen years old.
I was looking at a picture of my mom.
25
I twisted the throttle and wound through traffic on the highway. I was still digesting the possibility that my dad had a thread of decency running through his otherwise icy soul. But then, how decent was a man who kept the identity of a kid's mother hidden, even though the woman was still part of his life?
As I turned my motorcycle toward the off-ramp, I saw Shay's car heading toward the highway. She was heading out again on her usual errand. Our sessions had been put on hold since the news of my dad's death. She had kept herself busy with online job applications and books while I tended to my dad's final requests and instructions. He had left instructions with Sheffield to send out notices to a handful of people about the graveside service. And in the evening, when there was nothing more to do but relax, Shay and I sat together watching movies and talking. Shay was a great listener. I felt like I could tell her anything and never get an ounce of unwanted opinion or judgment.
I turned the motorcycle up the road, but curiosity got the best of me. Or maybe it was a major case of jealousy, something I seemed to be grappling with a lot lately. I circled around and rode fast down the street to catch up to her car. My helmet and visor were tinted black. I was sure Shay would never recognize me. Her car was turtle slow and seriously out of alignment, I noted, as I pulled into the lane behind her. Twice, as we passed an exit, I told myself just to pull off. What she did in her spare time was none of my business and she'd be gone soon, out of my life for good, it seemed. Finding out the truth might be worse than not knowing at all, I reminded myself at the third exit. But I kept the motorcycle moving forward. Sometimes I was my own worst enemy. I almost wondered if it would be a relief to know that she was seeing someone. It would quickly and sharply sever the emotional attachment I was feeling toward her. I could get on with life, never having to think about her again.
Who the fuck was I kidding?
Somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered a conversation with Rocky, the owner of Fantasm. He'd mentioned that he thought Shay was supporting someone besides herself. It would explain how a woman who made three or four hundred dollars in tips on the dance floor each night would somehow end up living in her car. But if she was seeing someone, even the same creep who she'd referred to as a big mistake, why the hell was she homeless?
Shay's car had a hard time on the curvy roads leading out of the canyon to the interstate highway. If this was the trip she was taking every other day, it was a wonder her car had survived. It was definitely a long, arduous journey for an old car.
The farther we went, the more I convinced myself that she would only take a big drive like this for someone important, someone she badly wanted to see. Now my mind grappled with how I'd react if I found out she'd been disappearing for a few hours every other day to meet a man, her man.
