The Name on the Broadcast novel · Chapter 14 of 24
Chapter 14: My Father
"Stay inside," Frances said.
"He's my father."
"That's why I said it."
I went out anyway, barefoot on the cold porch boards, with Annie's quilt still around my shoulders.
Ben came out behind me.
He stopped at the top of the steps and stayed there, where my father could see him.
My father rolled the truck window down.
He looked terrible.
His face was gray and wet, and his hands were wrapped around the wheel so tight his knuckles had gone yellow.
There was no smell of whiskey in the cab.
I'd never once been close to him without it.
"How did you find this house?" I said.
He let go of the wheel with one hand.
He took out his wallet and pulled a square of paper from behind his license.
It was soft as cloth, folded so many times the creases had gone white.
He held it out through the window.
A missing flyer. Annie's face, smiling. A phone number. An address, at the bottom, in Frances's tent-shaped capitals.
"Truck stop on the interstate," he said. "Twenty-six years ago, the month she came. I took it off the board so nobody else would see it."
"And you kept it."
"I couldn't throw it out."
Behind me I heard the screen door open.
Frances had come out onto the porch.
She looked at the flyer in my hand.
She looked at the man in the truck.
"Is that him?" she said.
"Yes."
My father got out of the truck.
He stood on the sidewalk in front of Annie's mother with his hands hanging at his sides.
He didn't come up the walk.
"Ma'am," he said.
Frances came down the steps, one at a time, holding the rail.
She stopped close enough to touch him.
She was a foot shorter than he was.
She looked up at him the way she'd looked at my face in the diner. Reading.
"You bought her," she said.
"Yes, ma'am."
"For three thousand dollars."
He shut his eyes.
"Yes, ma'am."
"I've heard your voice," Frances said. "Eleven minutes and forty seconds. I listened to it nine times this morning, in my car, in the driveway, so my son wouldn't hear me."
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