Page 49 of Good and Gone

He shrugs. "Maybe. I don't get cable."

What he means is he has his own way of finding things out. "These people. She thinks they're still after her."

"They probably are."

"I don't know what to do..."

"You know, son, I've always told you. Fighting is never the answer. Unless the trouble comes to you, and then you do what you've gotta do."

"I—"

"Look," he says, sitting down on the edge of a small couch. There's a beer can on the table in front of him. He grabs it and takes a sip. He offers it to me, but I shake my head. "Sit down," he says, and he moves a pile of newspapers from the couch to the kitchen table.

"I'm fine," I tell him, but take the seat anyway.

"You know about your own mother, right?"

"Not really." I shake my head. "It was a long time ago."

"She got pretty involved with a cult. Back then, it was pretty simple. They didn't have any fancy names like they do today. They weren't just spiritual. They were fucking witches."

"I don't see what this has to do with me," I say, realizing what he's about to tell me.

"You will," he says. "I mean it, Tyler. They weren't just hippy-dippy, love-all-mankind witch-hippies, either. These were real fucking witches. Maybe they still are. After a while, I stopped caring. I just wanted nothing to do with it. I told your mother that, too. But she was pretty taken with it all. It led her down the path of drinking and drugs, and I just couldn't handle it anymore."

"Mom was a drug addict?" I ask.

"Pretty much, after they were done with her, yeah. That's exactly what she was."

"Still, I don't see what this has to do with me—or with Hailey."

"There are bad people out there, Tyler. Things you can't imagine."

"Do you not know anything about my life for the past few months?"

"That's why I've been trying to reach you," he says. "To help you figure this thing out. You need to protect your family. You’re going to have to step up." He sighs and looks down at the beer. He puts it back on the table and leans forward. "Tyler," he says. "These people. They're not going to stop. Not until they have your soul."

This sounds exactly like what I expected my father to say. Two months ago I would have chalked it up to his usual paranoid ex-military talk. Now I’m not so sure. “I know.”

He glances toward the front porch and then back at me. "You ever heard the term shoot, shovel, shut up?"

"Probably from you."

"Well, that's exactly what I suggest you do."

“Okay,” I say. “But how?”

“Come back tomorrow, I’ll show you.”

35

Hailey

Tyler shows up at the hospital the day after I am admitted, and it’s like he’s a different person. Maybe it's because I am on the psych floor. Maybe everything looks different from here.

He is there, seated beside my bed, scrolling on his phone. “Hey,” I say, taking him in. His eyes are set in dark circles, and he hasn't shaved in days. His clothes are wrinkled and dirty, stained with the dark, dry soil of the forest. He picks at a hole in his denim jeans and takes a drink of his water.

“Hey,” he says, and then he flashes something I haven’t seen since before I was abducted: a bright smile.

---