Any help can make a difference.
I understand now he was preparing me for the inevitable. For after he wasn’t here to protect me anymore.
The look in his eyes.
The pain behind his smile.
I heard the things people said about him the last year he was around, and the years since, how he became obsessed, how he started losing it, but he was just as sane as any other time in my life.
I don’t know what made me think about it then, or maybe I just wanted to change the subject of my unavoidable abduction, but the next words out of my mouth made him laugh.
“Dad, if I ever killed someone, would you help me hide a body?”
“What?” he stopped, laughed, and looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. “Why?”
“Just curious, I saw this true crime thing where the parents turned them in.”
“Always keep your whimsy.” He laughed again.
“What?”
“Don’t let yourself become jaded.” He looked at me, becoming serious now. “Keep seeing the good in people. No matter what.”
I remember thinking whether I should be concerned about his tone.
“What?” I asked again, only this time I could feel the panic rising inside me.
“This world’s gonna try to break you. Promise you’ll do whatever you can so it doesn’t.” His eyes searched mine, making sure I understood.
“Dad, I…” but I wasn’t sure what to say.
I still don’t.
“You’re better than I ever was.” He smiled at me, pulled me in, hugging me. “No matter what you do, where you go, who you become, I’ll always be proud of you.”
“You say that now.”
He pulled back, looked right into my eyes, and shook his head. “Always. You’ll always make me proud. Just like your brothers have always made me proud.”
“But…” I stopped, looking at him confused. He hasn’t spoken to Zeke in well over a year.
“The 3 of you are the most important thing I’ve ever done in my life.”
I looked at him. Knowing the significance of that. He turns to look back at the car as he continues to put the trunk back together.
“You never answered my question.”
He stopped, shook his head, and looked back at me.
“No, he wouldn’t.” Mom’s voice echoed off the walls as she walked into the garage.
Dad stood, turned around, leaned against the car, and watched her, curiosity lining his face, as she continued to walk toward us.
“One part is, if you had to kill someone, then he feels like he wouldn’t have done his job right. Because he should have doneit for you.” She glanced over at him, to him nodding his head. “But if something happened, and you killed someone yourself, he wouldn’t want you to know where the body was, or how he got rid of it. Plausible deniability.”
He nodded his head. “I’d do it for you.”
“No questions asked?”
