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We hit the road an hour later.
Kael
Okay, so this may not have been one of my better ideas. There have been some doozies in my life time, but the more I think about it, this definitely isn’t one of them.
I pull the Chevy over to the side of the road, so preoccupied with what I’m about to do that I misjudge it completely, and the wheels scrape hard against the curb.
Killing the engine, I turn to look at Sienna in the passenger seat. She dozed off a while ago, but now she’s sitting up slowly, taking in her new surroundings.
She yawns widely, rubs her neck and blinks the sleep from her eyes.
“You know, I could have done three lines of coke and been blown by a hooker by now.” I shake my head, tutting my tongue behind my teeth. “Some sobriety companion you are.”
“When did I fall asleep?”
“About twenty minutes ago, so maybe there wasn’t enough time for the hooker, but—”
“Where are we?” she asks, and it makes me chuckle when she doesn’t even consider taking me seriously. “My neck hurts.”
Taking one hand off the steering wheel, I reach across, rubbing the offending muscles for her with my fingertips, trying to get them to unlock. “You alright?”
She opens her mouth to say something, but nothing comes out other than a low moan, and I’m guessing by the way she just melted against my hand, she’s enjoying the way I’m able to cajole her muscles back into some semblance of order.
She lets me have my way with her for a good five minutes before she looks out the window again, and it finally registers in that pretty little head of hers that Dorothy and Toto aren’t in Kansas anymore.
“Kael, where the hell are we?”
Dropping my hand, I turn to stare out the window at the single story, craftsman style-cottage. The house is on the opposite side of the narrow road from where we’re parked. There’s a two-car garage on one side of the house and rows of low bushes planted in straight lines on the other.
A porch swing and potted plants fill the small patio. The yard is neat and tidy, the lawn freshly mowed.
Something catches my eye, and I narrow my gaze when I notice there’s a basketball hoop attached to the wall at the driveway end of the garage. There’s also a kid’s bicycle lying discarded on the grass in the middle of the yard.
“This is my father’s house.”
Sienna’s face instantly falls. She looks like she’s seen a ghost. She isn’t even trying to hide her shock. She looks nervous, and she’s swallowing hard like her throat’s really dry. Her eyes seem to be taking in everything at once. “Kael, what if, uh… I mean… your father might have moved?”
I nod. Yes, I thought of that, too. But it was worth a shot on the off chance that he might still live here.
The sound of a car approaching distracts me, and I turn back around to look at the house again, just as a white station wagon pulls up into the driveway.
“We should go, Kael,” says Sienna, tugging on the sleeve of my shirt. “Please, let’s just go.”
“I just want to see what he looks like.”
“It might not even be him.”
My gaze holds the man climbing out of the station wagon. He’s decked out in some kind of dark uniform. It looks like a security guard uniform. A parking officer maybe?
As he crosses the front lawn toward the house, I notice he’s holding a sack of groceries in one arm, and he has a cell phone in the other hand that’s pressed tightly to his ear. He’s in the middle of a conversation. He pauses as he steps up onto the small porch, continuing with his conversation before heading inside.
From this angle, I don’t instantly recognize him as my father. He’s tall, yeah, and he’s got wide shoulders, but other than that, this man could be just any other man. I don’t have any kind of reaction to him, until the moment he turns around fully, his face captured in the afternoon sun, and I get a proper look at his features.
“That’s him,” I half-whisper.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, that’s him alright.” His features are darker, his eyes sunken slightly. He has salt and pepper hair that’s longer than before and more wrinkles than I remember. But it’s definitely him.
