After dinner, we stared at the files some more. Tossed out multiple theories as to how everything was connected. Argued about them. Argued about if this was all just a waste of time. Argued about what we should do instead. Then Robert got tired of arguing and suggested we call it a night, following Denise into the bedroom before I had a chance to argue with him about that, too.
It was just after midnight when Maggie came out of her room and joined me by the front door. I wasn’t nearly as tired as the night before, so I felt safe pulling a kitchen chair over to the front window where I could look out and prop my foot up on the sill during my watch. My phone was charging on the counter. It needed a break, and so did I. Erica was asleep on the couch. Fitting, since she’d practically become a piece of furniture since we’d gotten here, melting into the background while Robert and I argued, and eating her dinner by the front door instead of at the table with us.
Maggie pulled a matching chair over, an ugly, garish thing that looked like it belonged in the break room of a post office from the 1970s. Irene’s decorating tastes had been . . . unique.
“Hey, Peanut,” I said. “What are you doing up?”
“Can’t sleep,” she said, spinning the chair around backward and straddling it. She was wearing blue fleece pajama pants with little sheep printed on them, and a plain white sweatshirt. Same outfit she had worn the night before. The little country store didn’t have a women’s clothing section, apparently.
“You could try counting your pants,” I said.
“What?” she said, giving me a quizzical look. I pointed at the cartoon sheep on her legs, and she groaned. I laughed quietly. She rolled her eyes. “You always had the worst dad jokes.”
“The worst dad jokes are the best dad jokes,” I corrected.
She smiled and it lit up her whole face, just like when she was little. “I miss them.”
My own smile faded and I turned back to the window. “Me too.”
“Why did you leave?”
The smile was gone and her face was older, nearly adult, reminding me just how much of her life I had missed. “Maggie, I don’t know that now is the best time to have this conversation.”
“Well, now isn’t the best time to do anything, is it? Given that we’re hiding in an abandoned house waiting for someone to come kill us. But we have to pass the time somehow, so it might as well be doing this.”
“I can’t imagine what this must be like for you,” I said, dodging the subject at hand.
“Yes you can. It sucks. But I try my best not to think about it so I don’t lose my mind and I go on. I’ll be fine.”
I smiled. “You always were my tough one. How’s Ethan doing? I feel like he’s been a ghost.”
“He’s better. Just scared. We all are.”
“I bet. You’re such a good big sis—”
“Why did you leave?”
“Maggie—”
“Why?”
I sighed. “Your mother doesn’t want me talking to you. I don’t want to make things worse than—”
“Dad, stop. I’m not five anymore. No bullshit. Why did you leave us?”
She wasn’t going to let this go. I glanced over her shoulder to make sure Denise and Robert’s door was still shut, then I said, “We needed money.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means the economy crashed and nobody was hiring anybody, let alone paying someone like me to find people for them to hire. Your mom had just started working at the school and wasn’t making much. When my income dried up, we burned through what little savings we had. I tried finding part-time work, even applied to be a greeter at Walmart, but there just weren't any jobs. Your grandparents gave us what they could but it wasn’t a lot. Then we stopped paying bills. Then people started calling who didn’t like that we stopped paying bills and threatened to take away things like our cars and our house.”
“But Dad, they didn’t take anything away. We kept our house, we kept our cars. I even remember taking a vacation to Niagara Falls the year you left.”
I nodded. “That’s because I did what I had to do.”
“What did you do?”
I looked away, out the window, trying to figure out how much to tell her.
“Dad,” she pressed, “what did you do?”
I turned and saw her mother staring back at me. It was still just the two of us in the room, but Denise was all over her face. She really had turned into a mini version of her, minus the freckles. “I did my job, but not for my company.”
“For who, then?”
“Bad people, Maggie.”
“What kind of bad people?”
“The kind that paid me a lot of money to find other bad people to help them do bad things. And when those bad things started piling up, I realized that you and Mom and Ethan weren’t safe anymore. So I left. To protect you.”
I saw her face start to crumple, saw her try to swallow back the lump in her throat. When she was a toddler she cried openly and freely, but the older she got the more she fought it. Like her mother. When she realized she would lose this battle she turned her head and wiped her eyes angrily with the palm of her hand.
“We would have been fine,” she said, sniffing. “Even if we had to move and never go on a vacation again.” Fresh tears replaced the ones she wiped away, and when her face broke this time, she didn’t try to stop it. “I missed you, Daddy,” she said. And then she wept. I got off my seat and knelt in front of her, wrapping her in my arms. She hugged me back and squeezed, sobbing into my ear.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered into hers. “I’m so sorry, Peanut. And not just for leaving. For everything.”
We held each other for a long time. On the couch, Erica slept, or at least pretended to. If we woke her, she gave us the courtesy of not letting on. When at last we let go, both of our faces were wet. I dried mine with the sleeve of my shirt, then smiled and laid my hand against Maggie’s cheek.
