Page 38 of One Kill

When I get home, I follow my normal routine before my school run. Eat, tidy up the kitchen, laundry. It’s insane the number of clothes Hallie wears in just a couple of days’ time.

Stepping into her bathroom to grab the hamper, I roll my eyes at the sight in front of me. Shit is everywhere. Hair shit, makeup shit, towels on the floor, clothes hanging from the hamper like they’re trying to save themselves from the doom of the washer.

It feels like negotiations are in order…movies IF you clean your room.

I read somewhere that the carrot is better than the stick. I’ve never laid a single hand on Hallie, never had to if I’m honest, so the carrot has been good to me for the past thirteen years.

The same book said that children and teens are two completely different children, so who the fuck knows? The only thing I can count on is that I love that kid more than life itself and I make sure she knows it every day. Anything beyond that is just fingers crossed.

As I’m putting the dirty clothes in the washer, I see Jordyn’s note from a few days ago. I smile at the memory. It’d felt like a small victory, her writing to me—explaining, promising.

There’s no denying that there are times our entire relationship is a give on my part and then… nothing. She doesn’t necessarily take but she doesn’t give much either. I don’t know about the life she’s been living these past thirteen years but I can’t forget that her sixteen-year-old self was not spared from tragedy. It’s impossible to imagine how she even survived that kind of trauma.

But this note was a step and I’m hanging on to that hope because it’s the only thing I’ve got.

“I need a couple of days to sort shit out. I’ll give you a call as soon as I get a new phone. Thanks, Murph.”

This is her showing me she’s trying to be with us, trying to include us in her decision making. Hell, I can practically see a little heart drawn right next to my name.

Shaking my head, I return to reality. The day she draws a heart on a note is the day I need to see a doctor for dementia.

Once my chores are done, I head over to my home office and click on the program that allows us to keep up with all of our vehicles at the garage. I need to know if this was her bike instead of making assumptions based on pure coincidence. The way I’ve set this up, every car is divided into make and model with a separate spreadsheet for bikes. For the last six months, we’ve also been working on scooters and electric bikes so they get their own spreadsheet as well.

The mechanics are supposed to keep track of the vehicles they work on and make sure they fill out this spreadsheet in due time so I can work my accounting magic in the background.

But when I pull up the bikes, there are no new entries. Nothing more recent than six days ago, which was a dirt bike that needed legit work for a competition upstate.

Logging out, I let my mind work on piecing what little information I have into something that makes an iota of sense. It could just be Petey, his head is in the clouds more often than a fighter pilot’s.

Punching out of the system, I’m practically fuming with frustration, knowing every single fucking person around me is keeping shit from me. Normally, it’s what I want when it comes to the garage. The less I know, the better. But this time it has to do with the safety of my daughter and I’m not okay with that.

What’s pissing me off the most is that, as of this very second, I can’t do a fucking thing about it. I’ve got no way of reaching J, and talking to Riley about it would only make things worse. If I were to bring up the bike, he’d get suspicious since I never ask questions when it comes to his side of the business. Not to mention, I have no fucking clue if all of this is even an issue. There are a million bikes in the tri-state area. Petey could have been talking about any number of them. Regardless, no one—not a single fucking soul—wants to see Riley suspicious or worse… angry.

It’s almost three when I grab my keys from the counter and head out. Hallie’s going to be excited about going to the movies and will probably need the three hours to get ready for the evening.

Just as I slide into my truck, the buzzing in my back pocket reminds me to slide my phone out so I don’t crush it under my weight. Glancing at the screen, I see it’s a text from an unknown number. I usually ignore these things when I’m in the car, but I can’t help the feeling it’s important.

As I unlock the screen with my thumbprint, the smile on my face pops the corners of my mouth up. I can’t help it. It’s her and, true to her word, she’s giving me the means to contact her again.

This thing between us can work, I know it. We just need to communicate and hopefully her barriers will drop. Mine? Well, they’ve never really been up with her. Not ever. No matter how devastated I was when she disappeared, I knew in my heart and soul that if she were to show up at my doorstep, I’d forgive her in a heartbeat… no questions asked.

Turns out, I’m the one who found her, but she doesn’t know that. It was a complete coincidence and, to be honest, I wasn’t even sure it was her at first. As I sat in the corner booth at that mom-and-pop diner, I practiced all the things I wanted to say to her, watched her eat alone, sipping on coffee all day long just staring out the window like she was contemplating the meaning of life, wondered what she was saying in the letter it took her two hours to write and who she was writing it to. At first, I was pissed… livid, even. How dare she have the luxury of time to sit all fucking day while I was playing mom and dad at home to our daughter? The only reason I was even there was because my parents had taken Hallie to Florida on her eleventh birthday for a weekend in Orlando doing all the Disney things.

The next year, I went back to that diner, thinking… no, hoping… I’d been wrong. Rationalizing to myself that I’d hallucinated the whole thing. No way did I see Jordyn fucking O’Neill in some random diner looking like a badass dream.

Turns out, I wasn’t wrong. My Jordyn came to this diner every year, like a parenthesis to her life. With hindsight, it’s safe to say she was probably thinking about Hallie. Punishing herself for the mistakes she made as a teenager.

That’s when my anger melted away and empathy grew instead.

That’s why I told Hallie the minute she asked me if I knew.

It was time we all moved on from the punishment, time to heal from the past.

It’s me. Here’s my number.

Instinct makes me add her to my contacts under the name “Mama”, as in baby-mama, but if anyone were to grab my phone or see it ring, they’d think it’s my mother.

Me: We need to talk, and soon.

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