“You don’t have to do this,” I mutter to my uncle.
“Do what?” Dan plays dumb.
“I get why you brought me out here. You specialize in messed-up kids going through shit. But you’re not going to find the magic words to make me feel better, so you don’t have to bother. I’m fine.”
“You are?”
“Perfectly fine.”
“Great. Then it shouldn’t be a problem to take a walk on your old property.”
He’s backed me into a corner. I grit my teeth and nod. “Sounds fun.”
Dan parks on the gravel driveway outside the main house. I stare at those angry red words.ROT IN HELL.Whoever painted that graffiti got their wish, it appears.
For a moment, I feel the past pressing down on me. The windows are dark and lifeless, the paint peeling off the porch railing. It’s as if time itself gave up on this place the moment my mother died.
And now my father is dead too.
The man who haunted my nightmares, the man who ruined everything—gone. And yet there’s no sense of relief, no real closure. Only emptiness. Like a hole that keeps getting bigger the more I try to ignore it.
“Don’t be mad at me, kid,” Dan says, cutting the engine. His tone is careful, as if he knows that one wrong word might break me. “I thought it might help. You know, for closure. I’ve done this with some of the kids from the home, taking them back to places that hold bad memories and helping them work through it.”
I nod again, not trusting my voice. I appreciate what he’s trying to do, but closure feels like a distant dream. What’s closure supposed to look like when your father was a murderer? When you’ve just found out he killed the mother of the boy you’ve been dating?
I can’t stop thinking about Everett. About Nikki. JP. Abouteverything their family suffered because of my father. It’s unbearable.
We step out of the truck, and I follow him toward the clearing behind the house. We walk in silence for a while, the only sound the crunch of leaves under our boots and the occasional rustle of wind through the branches. Dan doesn’t rush me, doesn’t try to fill the silence with meaningless chatter. He simply walks beside me, his presence solid and comforting, like it always is.
“I mean…fine,” I say, as if picking up a conversation we never started. “I might be a little sad about my dad. Because he was my dad. I know I shouldn’t be, because he was a monster. But he also did nice things for me. Only me, apparently. But you know…”
Dan doesn’t say a word, and I realize I’ve already confessed more than I wanted to. There’s something about him. He’s gentle, and kind, and he doesn’t push. He’s got to be the best counselor the Anders Home has.
When we encounter the first few birdhouses, I point at one that’s painted pink and covered with white stars. Or at least it used to be. The paint is so faded, you can barely tell what the hues are. But I remember. I painted it.
“See that one? That was one of my favorites. He climbed super high to hang it. I remember being so scared he was going to fall.”
Dan looks up at it and smiles. “You hung a lot of them?”
“Dozens. We even drew a little map so that we could track them. Dad was so concerned the birds wouldn’t have food, so he left seeds too. Everywhere. Like a trail of breadcrumbs. So whenpeople call him the scum of the earth for killing those women, for going to the grave without saying where they are, I always think of that. The man I knew wasn’t all bad.”
“People rarely are.”
I look over at him. “You’reall good.”
“Nah.”
“What do you mean? You’re like a saint to your family. To this town.”
Dan is quiet for a moment, gazing at the birdhouses all around us.
“When I was twenty, I got into an accident,” he tells me. “A DUI. I was really stupid back then. Drinking like a fish, blacking out when I had too much. I wanted to marry your aunt, but your grandmother was dead against it. She thought I was a waste.”
That doesn’t surprise me. Gran was a tough old broad. She wouldn’t have taken kindly to her daughter cavorting around with a man who blacked out when he was drunk.
“But your aunt was stubborn. She ran away from home and never looked back.” Dan takes a breath and releases it slowly. “That’s why she and your grandmother never talked. Why she and your mom stopped talking. Sometimes I think that if I hadn’t been such a screwup as a kid, I’d have been more welcome in the family. As it was, I took Maggie away from it. And I can’t help wondering if I hadn’t, if I’d been present, things with your mom and your father might’ve been different.”
I stare at him. I never knew any of this. But he can’t truly believe he’s to blame for what happened to my parents. “It’s not your fault that you were isolated from Maggie’s side of the family.”
