He’d given her the all-clear nearly two years ago. She’d delayed returning for—well, she wasn’t sure why. That was something between her and the imaginary therapist that lived in her head with the colors, calendars and clocks.
Had the situation changed?
Shee packed up the drone and left the dock with the tracker still in her hand. She knew she needed to toss the GPS, but instead, carried it almost all the way back to her car.
Maybe I want to be found.
As she opened her trunk, a motion in the underbrush caught her eye. She spotted the familiar outline of a gopher tortoise, munching away at a patch of grass with its trademark grumpy mug. Every gopher tortoise looked like a ninety-year-old man who’d just been told to eat his creamed carrots.
“Hey you, come here...”
She jogged toward the tortoise. The creature noticed her approach and scrambled away as if it had remembered it was late for a meeting.
“Fast little bugger.”
She caught it easily enough and stuck the sticky tracker to its shell. It wouldn’t hurt the tortoise. It would probably scrape off the next time the critter crawled into its hole, but the idea of her father tracking a turtle made her laugh.
“As you were.”
She released the gopher and it sprinted toward its hole to disappear inside.
Shee headed to her car, chuckling, trying hard to keep her mind on the tortoise.
&&&
Chapter Six
Thirty-seven years ago
Shee’s mind drifted to syrup as her father fussed with her dress.
Blueberry syrup.
“I want pancakes.”
Mick rolled his eyes. “It’s four o’clock in the afternoon.”
“I don’t care—Ow!” A bobby pin pinched in her father’s clumsy fingers scratched across her scalp. She thought she’d like wearing a wig, but it felt as if there were chimps hanging from her hair, yanking as they clambered around her skull.
Her father grimaced and held out a photo for them both to study. “Sorry. I think I have it. What do you think?”
Shee looked at the photo, then in the motel mirror, and back again. The girl in the photo had blonde hair, long and curly. Shee’s own hair, dark and short, sat hidden somewhere beneath her blonde wig. Admiring herself, she tilted her head to one side. She enjoyed the length of the soft curls, but decided she didn’t like being blonde. Blonde made her look like an angel.
I’m not an angel.
I’m a tracker.
Her gaze tripped over a dot on the photo.
“The freckle,” she said, pointing.
“What?”
“She has a freckle.”
“No, she doesn’t.”
“Yes, she does. There, above her eyebrow.”
Mick plucked the photo from her hand and squinted at it.
“Sonuva—”
Shee pointed at him. “You owe me a cursing quarter.”
“No, I don’t. I didn’t finish saying it.”
“But my mind did and that’s what counts.”
Mick laughed and lifted her in the air by her armpits. “Sounds like your mind owes me a quarter.”
He dangled her in front of him, his massive biceps bulging. She could barely contain her joy. Nothing made her happier than making her father laugh.
“Put me down.” She said the words but she didn’t mean them. Her father picked her up less and less as she grew. It was a treat to have her feet hovering three feet off the floor. His attention beamed like the sun on her face.
Mick sat her on the bed and fished his pockets for change. “I’m short on change. How about twelve and a half cents? We’ll split the difference.”
“Deal.”
A dime and two pennies sat in his palm but as she reached for them, he closed his fist and held it to his chest. “Whoa. You can’t give in that fast. You need to counter with another option.”
“Like what?”
“Like twenty cents. See?” He pulled another dime from his pocket, the jingle of more change alerting her to the depth of his deception.
“You said you didn’t have enough.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Do people always tell the truth?”
“No.”
Mick opened his palm again and added the second dime to the collection. “This is my counteroffer.”
Shee counted the money and took a moment to process. “Somewhere between what you owe me and what you tried the first time?”
“Right. A counteroffer.”
“Oh wait, wait.” Shee waved her hand in front of her as if she were erasing the last few minutes. “I have an idea. Put all your change on the bed.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see.”
Mick retrieved the rest of the coins from his pocket and dropped them in a pile on the bed. “There.”
Seventy-three cents. The number flashed in her head as soon as she saw the different shapes on the faded floral bedcover.
Shee scooped up the money and held it behind her back, staring at him, silent.
“So what’s your idea?” he asked.
“The idea was I get all the money in your pockets.”
Mick laughed again. Shee fought to remain straight-faced and smug.
“You think you’re so smart, smarty-pants.” Mick pinched the top of her knee until she squealed with laughter and struggled to get away.
“Stop!”
“Okay, sorry, sorry. Careful, you’re going to mess your costume. Come here.”
With breathy laughter Shee rolled off the bed to her feet and returned to the spotty floor-length mirror. Her father searched through the black box that once served as his shoeshine kit. He called it Prestidigitation Pete’s Box of Pranks and Ploys.
She hadn’t found a dictionary to look up prestidigitation yet. She wished motels put dictionaries in the drawers instead of bibles. They were more useful in the short-term.
Mick pulled a stick of brown eyeliner from the box and used it to add the freckle above her eyebrow.
“There. Perfect. Anything else?” he asked.
Shee compared herself in the mirror to the photo again.
“Dead ringer,” she said, smirking.
