Page 75 of Ordinary Girl

“Youthink?”

I tell Freja what I know. What we all know. I tell her how I’m slowly trying to put the pieces together. “I don’t know if I’m right, I could be overthinking everything, I could be way off here, but I don’t think I am. I don’t think I am, and if I’m right, then we don’t know what could happen. We don’t know what this man’s end game is, but it has to include Ana. Why else would he be here?”

“It makes sense,” Freja says as she leans back against the counter and takes her phone out of her pocket. “I’ll try calling her again.”

“Don’t tell anyone what I’ve told you, Freja, especially Skip.”

She just looks at me, her priority is Ana. She should be mine, too.

“She’s still not picking up.” Freja lays her phone down on the counter. “You need to act, Joel. Whatever gut feeling you have, you need to act. Now.”

I head back outside, and within seconds I’m on my way to the cemetery, even though I know she won’t be there. But there might be clues, something that tells me what might have happened. Anything, just a sign.

Reaching the spot where Sofia is buried, I leave the bike and head toward her grave, and that’s when I see them, the bunch of daisies lying on the ground. They’re not on Sofia’s grave, they’re a little way away from it, like they’ve been dropped. Ana told me she was going to take some daisies. She told me they were Sofia’s favorite flower, and I feel my stomach lurch. Somethinghappened here, and it isn’t good. Ana’s gone, but this time I’m fucking certain it wasn’t her choice.

Thirty-One

Ana

Idon’t know this man. He says he’s my father, but I barely remember that man. I was five years old when he left Mama and I, and she never kept any photos of him, she wanted him wiped from our lives. But he has photos of me, and Mama. He has photos of us all together, looking for all the world to see like a normal, happy family. And maybe we were, for a time, but something happened to change that.

“You only have your mama’s side of the story, Ana. Remember that.”

It’s weird, being back in this house. Everything is just as it was when I was last here. All of Mama’s things, all the furniture, it’s my home. Except, it isn’t. Not anymore.

“Ana? Will you look at me. Please.”

I don’t want to look at him. I don’t want any of this. It’s cruel, bringing me back here. “What do you want?”

I hear him sigh. I’m not acting the way he assumed I would, and that’s frustrating him.

“I want you to listen to me. I want you to hear my side of the story.”

I look at him now. I’m tired of his voice, tired of this situation, I want out of here, even though I spent so long wanting to come back to this house. I thought doing that would make me feel better, feel closer to Mama, but it isn’t doing that. It’s doing the opposite, because it doesn’t feel like home anymore.Everything about the house is just the way it was the last time I was here, but the people inhabiting it now, they’re making it feel like a strange and alien place. The once light, bright atmosphere is now dark, it’s wrong. All of this is wrong.

“I don’t need to hear your side of the story. It doesn’t matter. All I know is that you left my mama with a string of debt: shit she didn’t need to deal with.”

“I had no choice.”

“Really?”

He stares at me, but I feel nothing. “You’re my daughter, Ana. And I care about you.”

“Too late.”

“I couldn’t come home. Believe me, if I had been able to do that…” He bows his head, rubs the back of his neck with one hand, the other in his pocket as he paces the living room floor. “There were things going on, things I couldn’t tell your mama about, it would have been too dangerous.”

“Excuses, that’s all they are. You left us, you just walked out, leaving my mama alone with a small child and a life that had changed beyond all recognition. And she kept me shielded from it all, do you know that? She kept it all hidden from me. She made sure I had a normal childhood, a good life, and yet, all the while she was constantly trying to keep our heads above water. And the first I knew about that was just a few months ago. Just before she died.”

His eyes lock on mine, and there’s a darkness in there that I’m all too familiar with now. A look I’ve seen in the eyes of the men I’ve been forced to live with, because of him. “She would still be alive if she hadn’t gotten involved with that club.”

“She had no fucking choice! What you did, you drove her to that decision.”

He drops his gaze again, his shoulders sagging. “I just need you to listen to me, Ana. Please.”

He’s almost pleading with me, but it’s making no difference.

“I don’t know what you want from me.”

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