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She moved to the chair by her window.
“Honey, we need to talk.”
“About?” she asked, trying to sound as indignant as possible. Her mother had been indignant with him, especially after his late nights at the car lot.
“It’s about your ma
She raised an eyebrow and studied the floor. She hated people’s eyes, they made her anxious. She didn’t like what she saw in them. Judgment, indifference, hate, ignorance. She couldn’t even bear to look into her own father’s eyes most times. He was as ignorant as all of them.
Her words were an angry hiss. “Excuse me?”
He glanced at her nightstand and saw the wine bottle, but when he spoke next, he said nothing about the alcohol. Instead of being relieved, it infuriated her more.
“You were very rude to Pamela tonight. I don’t—”
“She’s still here, isn’t she?” Erica interrupted. It was already ten o’clock. There was no reason for that strange woman to still be in the house.
“Well, yeah. Pamela’s still here. And she’ll be here a while. She’s. . . staying over.” He pointed to the candles on the windowsill. “You need to be careful with those. Make sure to blow them out before you go to—”
“Sleeping over? Where? Where will she sleep?”
“Erica, how many times do we need to—”
Her head was spi
“I’m a grown man, honey. If Pamela—”
“You’re still married!” Erica shouted. Tears swelled behind her eyes and she turned so that he couldn’t see her face. She was disappointed that she’d raised her voice. He’d mistake it for her caring, and she didn’t.
The muscles in her stomach knotted when she thought of her father sleeping with another woman. She wasn’t sure why. She knew her mother would never return to him or Grand Trespass. So it shouldn’t even matter.
Often she’d fantasize about sneaking into her father’s bedroom in the middle of the night and ending both him and the whore he was laid up with. That would show him. It would be so easy. But she had too much to lose. Namely, her mother.
The voice behind her softened. “Your mother hasn’t contacted us in ten years. I looked very, very hard for her. We all did. We couldn’t find her, honey. I’m not sure what happened. . . or why she hasn’t tried to get in touch with you, kiddo. I know she loves you.”
Erica remained silent, not wanting to believe him. She wanted to believe that her mother had contacted her father, and had tried to get in touch with her, but her father had in some way come between them. Her mother was perfect, something her father definitely wasn’t.
“Erica, I don’t understand why you have to make things so difficult. I try. I really do.”
He tried? She hadn’t seen him try. Did he think that the last several years of courting loose women and working late most evenings at the dealership was trying? How about giving her a rickety decade-old Ford F-150 that broke down twice a month, or caring nothing about her life? Was that trying?
Her father stood. “I’m sorry you feel this way. I really am. But I have a life, too. And I’m going to live it, honey.”
He walked to her bedroom door, then turned. “You’ll like Pamela. She’s a great lady. She’s different than the others. You’ll see.”
With that, he closed the door.
Now alone, the tears skidded down her cheeks. She wanted to scream at the door and say things that would hurt him. She wanted to hurl the wine bottle. She hated him. He was the reason her mother left her.
Chapter 10
LUKE’S DINER WAS never empty. Someone was always sitting at a table or lingering at the counter between the hours of six o’clock in the morning and eleven o’clock at night. Sometimes it was the attendant from the gas station across the street who hung out there to avoid her husband. Other times, it was some lonely widower, blue-collar worker or weary person or family passing through town.
Lazy-eyed Chris Robicheaux owned Luke’s and black & white photographs of his family and Grand Trespass adorned the walls. Among them was a nearly life-sized photo of his late daughter, Luke A
Haley found something eerie about the little girl’s gaze. Every time she saw the photograph, she was forced to turn her eyes away. Maybe it was the fact that the girl had died so young. She just looked too wise in the photo, too knowing. Her image made Haley wonder if the dead knew more than the living.
Chris was in his mid-twenties, but didn’t seem old enough to have a child. Especially a dead one. Usually when folks had kids, they had a haggard look about them. As though they were simply aging faster or had grown up in a way that was impossible for those who were childless. Chris didn’t.
Haley had stopped at Tiffany’s house before her shift that morning to find the usually well put-together Mrs. Perron naked of her usual face spackle and in her robe, clutching their poodle, Lucky, so tightly that he had yelped. Seeing Mrs. Perron, incoherent and with dark circles beneath her swollen eyes, she had a flashback of her own mother in the hospital the night of her father’s accident.
Haley took two food orders and passed the slips through the window to the kitchen trailer out back. Standing in front of the coffee urns, she massaged her temples. There was an excruciating pain behind her eyes, the pressure she always suffered when she’d had too little sleep or was under too much stress. She’d managed to get only an hour of sleep the night before. The Nyquil she kept at the side of her bed for the insomnia no longer did the job.
Her fitful sleep had been shattered with nightmares. A macabre series of troubling puzzle pieces. Someone banging at the front door. Her opening it to find a brittle, elderly woman on roller skates clutching Tiffany’s disembodied head by her once-beautiful, but now matted strawberry-blonde hair. . . Opening her mother’s bedroom door only to find it barren of everything but a dark cloud of love bugs. . . Ru
She stroked the heart-shaped pendant that hung around her neck, the replica of Tiffany’s, and whispered: “Where are you, Tiffany?”
“You say something?” Austin asked, setting the food order on the counter. “You look like you’ve left the state of Louisiana.” The diner’s main cook looked at her curiously.
Haley jolted. “Oh, sorry. Didn’t realize you were there. Was just talking to myself, I guess.”
He flashed her a crooked grin. “I wouldn’t let that get too out of hand. We’ll have to start worrying about you.”
He studied her and the sparkle in his blue eyes faded. “You okay?”
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
It was a lie. She was far from fine. Two nights had come and gone since anyone had seen or heard from Tiffany. Several men were now at city hall with the Perrons. At nine o’clock, a search party would begin scouting the woods.
“You sure you’re okay?” Austin asked. “You don’t look so good.”
“I’m sure.”
He grabbed a newspaper from the counter, fished out the crossword puzzle and folded it in half. Before returning to the kitchen trailer out back, he rested his hand on the trailer door. “If you need anything, just holler. You know where I’ll be.”
She nodded.
The cowbells dangling from the front door of the diner rang out and the owner, Chris, appeared. He was dressed nicely in a crisp navy button-down shirt and black slacks. His face was, as always, fresh-shaven and even in the distance, his strong cologne cut through the usually-comforting aromas of brewing coffee and frying bacon.
Chris was always well dressed, more so than the rest of them. Maybe it was to take some emphasis off of his lazy eye which was so out of harmony with the other eye it was difficult to tell exactly what he was looking at.