crying now. Most of Alyson’s memories were of his crying. She swallowed her own misery, and stood up.
“This is why I left,” Alyson said, her voice soft and stern. “I couldn’t get over her dying while you spent every night sobbing into your pillow. Mom’s ghost is still in his house, and she never even saw the place. You brought it over here from that damned penthouse, carried in your suitcase like we needed to wear the funeral veil forever. She wouldn’t want that. It was bad enough that she was never here, and now, because she’s not at the office, you force her to be here, around you.
“Let her go,” Alyson said. “Fuck, let me go.”
“I’m not ready to be alone,” he said. “Why don’t you come home?”
“I can’t,” she responded “I can’t, and you know that I can’t. Even if I wanted to…”
“What is it?”
“Dad, I’ll go ahead and tell you; me breaking in and taking your work mobiles,” she said, pointing back at the desk, shaking her head, searching for the words. “That’s the least of my crimes.”
“Is it drugs?”
“Drugs,” she asked, irritated. “I’m a hell of a lot smarter than to get involved with drugs.”
“Well, I’d hope so. Then what are you doing?”
“You’re better off not knowing,” she said. “I need a mobile though. I need to be up and online by the end of the night, and I need to get out of your house. It’s not safe for me to be here, and I really don’t want to get you involved in this.”
He nodded. “I appreciate that, but you already did by breaking in. I could have you arrested for that.”
“Thanks for not calling the cops, dad. That’s pretty nice of you,” she said. Sarcasm dripped from her voice. “I’m going to go over there and I’m going to put that mobile together, and I’m going to run like hell.”
“Why don’t you stay here tonight, and we figure out what you should do over breakfast.”
“How is it that you’re so fucking dense?” she trailed off into silence. “There are people out to either arrest me or kill me.” She fished the SCH drive from her previous mobile from her pocket. “The last two days have been terrible, and it’s all because I picked the wrong part to play. I need another mobile, so that I can look at what’s on this drive, and actually figure out what to do next. From there, I still need a new mobile, so that I can keep moving, and stay ahead of the people who are out to do whatever it is that they want to do to me.”
“And you don’t think that you’d be safe here?”
“They charged at me with machine guns in a five star hotel last night. I don’t think that I’m safe here.”
He was crestfallen, shaking his head in dismay. “I guess I understand. You’ve done something wrong, and you don’t want to drag anyone down with you. I just wish you could tell me what you did.”
“Well, I’m not going to tell you anything. I know that you have a missing persons report filed for me. I tried to change it once, and all that happened was that it was back to normal a few days later. It’s like you send the paperwork for it just to remind the police that I age.”
“I just wanted you to come home,” he said. “That wasn’t a lot to ask.”
“I’m twenty-four years old, dad. Don’t you think it’s time I should have a place of my own?”
“Do you?”
“Hell no,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not ready to go home yet,” she said. “I haven’t known what home was supposed to be for a long time.”
“Are you going to blame me for that? You seem to think that everything else is my fault.”
“No, dad,” she broke her gaze from him. “That’s not your fault.”
She paused, and scratched her fingers with her thumb. “I need time,” she said, looking back at him. “I have always needed time. I finally accepted what happened to Mom, but because I kept moving, I grew up way too fast, and that didn’t mean what I wanted it to mean when I was a kid. Of course it’s not your fault that I don’t have my life together. You already said it; you tried to make life good for me. I’m not mad at you for trying, and I’m sure as hell not mad at you for being sad about Mom dying. I can’t blame you. I didn’t do this to piss you off. I left because I needed to.”
Alyson sat down next to her father, and took his hand. “I’m going to leave here tonight, and I want you to know that I’m okay. I want you to pack everything up, and get out of this apartment. It’ll be okay. You can even send me a message on my old mobile, and I’ll try to keep in touch when it’s safe to do so. But I have to keep moving for now.”
“Okay…” he whispered. “But I hope you’ll follow your own advice someday. You can’t run forever.”
“I know,” she said. “Believe me; I’ve heard it enough for one day.”
He took her in his arms. Alyson pushed him away.
“I’m not ready,” she said. “I’m just not.”
He nodded, still sad. Alyson was glad that he’d stopped crying.
Patrick wiped the moisture from around his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Stop being sorry,” she said. “No point in getting upset about this anymore.”
“No,” he said. He pointed into the den.
A tall, firm looking gentleman in a distressed suit stepped into the kitchen, his hands stuffed in his pocket. He pulled the tail of his jacket aside, revealing a pistol, badge and handcuffs. He placed the binders in front of Alyson, and nodded at Patrick.
“Sorry I had to eavesdrop on your conversation. If you guys need a minute to wrap things up, I understand,” he said. He looked at Alyson.
“When you’re ready, put those on. We’re going to take a ride.”
He walked out of the house, and thanked Patrick as he left. Alyson stared at the metal bracers, and felt all of reality split around her.
William Hill has practiced his craft in the depths of space, in decaying cities, and just outside of the realm of the living. He studied at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and has since worked on several projects, including a space opera series. You can find him in coffee shops and on the internet. In addition to his fiction work, he writes about video games and film at the PS Vitalog.
Altwriter.bigcartel.com
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