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But he hadn’t. He’d packed up everything, leaving not a thing for me to remember him by besides the memories. He’d left, and I remembered standing on the front porch, watching him go, begging him to stay. It was right after the funeral, and he didn’t seem to care that I was hurting, too.
Honestly, there were a million and one reasons why I shouldn’t call him. Another million and one reasons why he might not be the one to answer the call. So many possibilities, and yet I had to try.
I had no one else. No one else besides a few people that probably wouldn’t be in my life after college graduation. And, frankly, the last thing I wanted to do was return to that house, even if all of the stuff I needed for my classes was in my room.
So, even though I might come to regret it, I unlocked my phone screen and went to the keypad, manually putting in the number I’d memorized when I was a child. Once the number was fully typed in, I hit the call button, slow to bring the phone to my ear.
It rang, meaning the number wasn’t disconnected. That was a good sign, right? It could mean someone else might answer, but at least the number was still good. I’d never written the number down, because he’d told me not to. Dad would’ve found it, and he would’ve used it to track him down and demand his share of the money.
When my stepmom died, she’d left everything to him, not to Dad, and that had infuriated him to no end. Maybe that was when he’d changed, when he’d become more hateful towards me. Like I was the failure instead of him, someone else he could blame for his misfortune.
I didn’t know how many times it rang, but it felt like more times than it should’ve, like it was a landline with no answering machine attached and it took no messages. The more it rang, the more I felt sick. Nervous, I guess.
Desperation drove people to do crazy things, and this… this was perhaps the craziest thing I’d ever done. Well, besides cutting up my hand like that.
An eternity passed, and as my hope began to dwindle, someone finally picked up the phone and answered it: “Black Wolf speaking. Who is this?” The voice was low and masculine, the words perfectly enunciated.
Black Wolf. At the mention of the words, my mind flashed back.
I was running up the steps, eager to show my stepmom something. I made it to my parents’ bedroom, and the door was cracked. I thought it was okay to run in, so I did. I didn’t think I’d catch her changing into her pajamas.
I should’ve covered my eyes, but I couldn’t, because when I ran in I saw her back, and what I saw on her back was a giant tattoo of a wolf. Not photo-realistic, but simplistic in its design. Tribal and all black.
“You have a tattoo?” I squealed, forgetting what I’d come in there for.
She turned toward me, tugging her loose silk shirt down over her head and covering up that cool tattoo. She gave me a gentle smile as she nodded. “I do,” she said. “But you have to keep it a secret.” Then she lifted a finger to her mouth and winked at me.
“Does daddy know?” I asked.
“He does, and so does your brother.” She knelt in front of me, sinking down to my level. She tugged at my clothes, fixing the wrinkles in my shirt. “And now you do. Maybe if you help me keep it a secret from everyone else, I’ll let you get a tattoo when you’re older.”
I was seven at the time. That memory was clear in my head, even now. I remembered being so excited to see that big tattoo on her back. I’d known she was my stepmom before that, but that was the day that I started calling her mom.
And then she died, and everything fell apart, and he left, so I’d started calling her my stepmom once again. It was funny how quickly everything could change.
I didn’t say anything right away, my heart constricting in my chest for a whole new reason. The man on the line didn’t hang up, he simply waited for me to speak. What words could I say? That voice might be deeper than I remembered it, but it was him.
It was him.
It had to be him.
“It’s me,” I whispered, a lump in my throat I couldn’t deny. I hid my bloodied hand back in my hoodie pocket, as if he was before me and not on the other line, as if he could see my injury and I didn’t want him to.
Those two words were the only ones I could say, which was stupid. It’d been ten years; I didn’t know if he’d remember me. Maybe all of the memories in my head of him, of us together, had been painted with rose-colored glasses because I’d been a child.
And, besides, how would he know it was me, after all this time? How would he know it was me and not some other random girl?
But, like he could see me, like he was psychic, he knew: “Taylor.”
The way he said my name was like a rush of adrenaline had been pumped straight into my heart, and all of the air flowed out of my lungs in one whoosh. I didn’t remember my name sounding like that on his tongue; so low, so gravelly, so husky.
It took everything in me to only say, “I need you.” Not spilling my guts to him was the hardest thing ever, mostly because I wanted to tell him everything. Absolutely everything. What I’d been up to these last ten years, how awful things with my dad had gotten, how many nights I’d spent missing him and wishing he didn’t leave me.
The fear that he would turn me away was smashed when he rattled off an address and asked, “Can you meet me there, or do you need me to come get you?” Willing to go out of his way for me, even after all this time. It made me smile.
“Can you say it again?” I brought the phone away from my ear, hitting the speaker and typing the address in as he repeated it. It wasn’t too far from where I was; further downtown. A fifteen-minute walk from here. “I can meet you there,” I said, once again bringing the phone to my ear.
“All right. I’ll see you soon.”
