The Sheriff's Daughter

“He left his number.”

“I take it you haven’t called.”

“I’ve been a little busy.”

SARA ALMOST CALLED Ryan Saturday night. Now that her father knew, hadn’t tried to deny that she’d ever been pregnant and given up her child or denied that he had a biological grandson, Ryan’s existence seemed all the more real.

She picked up the phone a couple of times, but always put it down again. She had no idea what she’d say. If he’d be at home on a Saturday night—or what he’d be doing if he was.

Did one leave a message for one’s child that one had given away? What did she call herself? This is your mother. Her mind played out various messages and rejected them.

Mrs. Mercedes was Ryan’s mother. Sara was Sara. Nothing more.

HER FATHER WAS BACK again on Sunday, seemingly undeterred by the seventy-five-minute drive from Maricopa to Columbus, to unpack her half of the tools in her garage. He’d brought along a Peg-Board and broom-holder bar to hang for her.

And when that was done, he came inside to help, moving boxes, putting together the new daybed in the room that was going to serve as her study and guest room. After which, he installed two new toilet seats in her bathrooms—Sara’s mother had always insisted new toilet seats were mandatory when moving.

Sitting on the edge of the tub, watching as he lay flat on his back on the tile floor, his head underneath the tank while he worked an ornery lug nut, Sara knew the time had come.

Ryan’s appearance in her life had prompted many changes. And because she was starting to obsess about some of the things he’d told her—the things left unsaid—she was going to have to do something.

“Tell me about that night.”

He didn’t miss a beat. “What night?” The words came out almost as a grunt as he gave the wrench a hard tug.

“The night I was raped.”

John Lindsay bumped his head on the bottom of the toilet tank. He didn’t swear. Barely acknowledged having done so. Just went back to the bolt. With one more tug, after ten minutes of struggling, it was free.

“I need to know, Daddy.”

“No, you don’t.”

Twenty years ago that would have been that. Hell, twenty days ago it might have been.

“I’m thirty-seven years old. Old enough to determine for myself what’s important to me.”

“You don’t know what you don’t know.”

She’d known this wasn’t going to be easy. Her insides were shaking. She’d always gotten knots in her stomach at the thought of standing up to him. But this time anxiety wasn’t going to stop her.

“I’m not going away on this one. I can’t anymore,” she said softly, as much for herself as anything else. “I’ve just spent the past twenty years of my life doing as you wanted, as Brent wanted, and look where it got me. Right back where I was at sixteen, trying to pick up the pieces of my life, with my father there taking care of everything for me. Except, this time, I also have the memory of an ex-husband so dissatisfied with me that he had no hesitation breaking our marriage vows.”

“He’s a fool—and a man. He’d have gotten over it.”

“I don’t think so.” And it wouldn’t matter if he had. The trust was gone.

The second bolt was loose with one twist and soon the new seat was securely in place.

“You sell yourself short,” he said, gathering up his tools. “You run a nationally recognized organization, one built almost entirely by your efforts. You have the respect of many of this country’s most important movers and shakers.”

That said, he left the room.

After unrolling the new purple-and-green bathroom rugs she’d bought to go with the shower curtain, towels and light purple paint that would soon be on the walls, Sara followed him. He was in the laundry room now, hooking up the washer.

“If you don’t tell me, I’ll ask someone else.”

She received a long under-the-arm glance for her efforts. But the usual look of steely determination that he used to perfection was not there.

Sara’s hands started to shake.

THEY ENDED UP in the kitchen with glasses of iced tea. Sara couldn’t remember a time when she and her parents had had any serious discussion any place other than the kitchen table. If you had to talk, that’s where you went. Period.

That’s where they’d discussed the results of the pregnancy test and, ultimately, the adoption. The college she’d attend. It had been over a Sunday steak dinner that she’d introduced them to Brent. And lasagna on a Friday night, when she and Brent announced their engagement.

It had been at the kitchen table, five years before, that her father had told her about the car accident that had killed her mother. She’d received a call at work, asking her to meet him at home. All the way from Columbus to Maricopa she’d imagined what she might find there. From her parents selling everything and retiring to Florida, to one of them finding out he was ill, she’d run the gamut. And come up horribly short.

“What do you want to know?” Her father’s question was brusque.

“Everything.”

Sitting up straight, his fingers tapping the sides of his glass, he frowned. “I don’t see how, after all these years—”

“You and Mom were still asleep that morning when the call came.”

“That’s right.”

“Who called?”

“Chris Watson.”

“I don’t know him.”

“Neither did I. He was a freshman at Wright State, new to town, and he came to the party with the rest of them.”

“How many people were there?”

He stared at her for a long time and Sara realized she shouldn’t have done this. Not because she didn’t need to know. She did—should’ve asked years ago. But she shouldn’t have done this to him.

Never once, in all these years, had she looked at that night and the months that followed through the eyes of a man who loved his only daughter. When she’d seen her father’s part in it all, it had been as her father, the enforcer, the sheriff. The big, strong man who always did the right thing and made damn sure those around him did, as well.

“Twenty-three for at least part of the evening,” he finally said. “Twenty-one of them male. I questioned everyone who’d been within half a mile of that lake, from the family who’d driven down to do some stargazing and left when they arrived to find a party in full swing, to the gas station attendant down the road who’d seen cars go by. And everyone who’d known about the party, as well, whether they attended or not. I’m certain there wasn’t a person in the vicinity I didn’t talk to.”

She’d known her father had worked exhaustively on the case. And she would have tried to find out more at the time if she’d been in any state to think for herself. In the months immediately following the rape, she’d been adamant about one thing. She was not going to have the abortion her parents were pressuring her to consider.

For everything else, she did as she was told. Ate the foods her doctor recommended, studied the lessons her mother prepared, visited with the two girlfriends her father encouraged her to see.

“In the end, the physical evidence did the work for us,” he said now, bending over his iced tea glass. There were lines around his eyes she’d never noticed before.