“It doesn’t matter, I’m here to find someone.”
“Who?”
“His name is Blake. Blake Morrison.”
“Blake? Whaddaya want with that bag of bones?” The man laughed.
“Ah, shut the hell up, John,” said a voice that sent a shockwave down my spine. A man emerged from the shadows; he looked almost exactly as he had in my grandfather’s memory. He had a beard, blond like his hair, but I could see it was beginning to grey. His eyes were still blue, and his face was still long. His eyes were tired; just by looking at them I had a feeling he didn’t smile a lot.
“What do you want?” he asked me. He was wearing a leather jacket and had a chain around his neck.
“Are…are you—”
“Yeah, I’m Blake. What the hell do you want, little girl? What did you say your name was, Anna?”
I composed myself. “Yes. Anna. My name is Anna. I, uh…I’m—” My throat was starting to clog up. Why was I doing this? Why couldn’t I just let it go? What the hell was wrong with me?
“Spit it out, little girl.”
“I’m not a little girl,” I growled at him. I’m a lot of things, but I’m not a little girl. He didn’t get to minimize me. Not then. Not ever.
“Then what do you want?”
Was this really him? I knew the answer. But as soon as he approached me I regretted coming to this shady bar, with its gross men. But I was here now, and I knew I had to see it through.
“I’m…I’m Jayla Brooks’s daughter.”
Everything about his body language changed when he heard that. He went from being edgy, suspicious, and rude to having his shoulders relax, his jaw fall wide open, and his eyes light up. “You’re what?”
“I’m, um, your daughter.” I stepped back slowly, unsure of what his reaction was going to be.
“What’s going on here, Blake?” the man named John asked, looking up from his beer.
“What? Holy shit.” Blake shook his head, staring at me. “No you’re not.”
“Yes I am.”
“Then prove it.”
“My grandfather is Rudy Brooks, my grandmother is Tanya. Her maiden name is Grant. My grandfather left you stranded at your RV seventeen years ago after he found you drunk at a bar on the waterfront. My mom was in there.”
“Holy shit.” Blake put his hands on his head. He was breathing heavily, like he couldn’t catch his breath. I thought about how I had drawn him earlier that day in my journal. It turned out I didn’t share any of his features—not his hair, chin, eyes, or nose. But the way he was trying to chase his breath, that was me. So that’s where I got it from.
He waved me over when he finally regained his composure. “Come here, sit down.”
I walked over, and past everyone on the deck. All eyes were looking at us in a “what the hell?” way, but I tried to ignore it. I was where I needed to be to find answers.
“This way.” Blake sat down and pulled a seat out for me at the other end of the deck. “So you’re Jayla’s daughter. My daughter,” he said. I just stayed quiet while he had his moment. “Holy. I thought I would never meet you.”
I put my bag down and sat in the chair. This whole encounter felt uncomfortable, but I knew this was probably one of the only shots I would ever have to meet my father.
“Can I give you a hug?” He got up without waiting for an answer and made his way towards me.
“No.” I paused him with my hand. “I don’t think I’m into hugs.”
“Okay.” He sat down. “That’s reasonable. I get it. It’s not every day something like this happens.”
“No. It isn’t,” I agreed. If only he knew what my return home had been like.
“So, why did you come?” he asked me. “Last I heard, you and Jayla took off somewhere. What brought you back to these parts?”
“My grandfather, Rudy. He passed away.”
Blake slumped when those words came out of my mouth. “Rudy…,” he murmured. “Oh, oh no.” He put his head in his hands. “I’m sorry, Anna,” he said sincerely. “I know he meant a lot to a lot of people.”
I couldn’t believe he was showing sympathy towards the man he beat up in his own driveway. He had hated Grampy. He had tried to steal his truck, along with a bunch of valuables from the house I grew up in.
“Rudy was a good man,” Blake continued. “I loved him, very much.”
I cringed. That’s not how it went down in the journal, and that’s definitely not what Mom told me.
I decided to call him out. “Don’t pretend to grieve him. You hated him. And I know what you did.”
Blake’s tone changed quickly. “Hated him? You should have seen how he treated me! That man was nasty to me. Awful.”
“Just like how you were ‘nasty’ to my mom? And just like how it was ‘awful’ of you to break into their house and try to steal everything they had?”
Blake gave me a long stare. It was like he was looking through me.
“They fed you that lie, huh? I can assure you, that’s not how it went down. People can change, y’know.”
“It wasn’t a lie,” I said. “Even Jonathan told me about you.”
“Jonathan Evans? Ha, that fucking narcissist. What’s he up to nowadays? Still showing people the football trophies he won in high school?”
“He’s clearly doing more than you.”
“Don’t talk to me like that, girl. You might not know me but I’m still your—”
“You’re still my what?” I challenged. “You’re still my father? That role was taken a long time ago by a man named Rudy Brooks.”
Blake tensed up, resentment forming in his eyes. He didn’t like that, not at all. But that was the kind of response he’d earned. I wasn’t going to pretend this loser in front of me was my father. How did he go from wanting to start his own business to being a regular at some shady bar just north of Yarmouth?
