“Well, but come sit. . . .”
He jerked his elbow out of my hand. “Leave me be, Epiphany!”
I stumbled back, a bad feeling gathering somewhere in the middle of me, seeping outward the way sludge creeps into a clean river, covering the water, leaving an ugly coating over things that were normal a minute before. J. Norm hadn’t talked to me like that since the two of us started being a team.
I was afraid he was going to tell me it was over—we were heading home. If the school and Deborah were on our tails, there was no telling how bad things might be. I wished I could’ve gotten hold of DeRon Lee right then, because I would’ve ripped his stupid head off. Sleaze. Liar. J. Norm was so right about him.
I left J. Norm alone and went back to the computer, figuring that if I let him be a minute or two, maybe things would turn normal again. I plugged the names
Luther William VanDraan Willie
into the browser bar again and waited for the results to come through. When the listings flashed up, it was a mishmash—over one million entries, everything from stuff about the Van Daans in
The Diary of Anne Frank
to stuff about art. Then I remembered to put quotes around the name, and I sent the search through again, and came up with just one page. Right there in the third line was an adoption/reunion registry, and Luther William VanDraan’s name was on it. A woman named Clara Culp was listed on
www.lookingforlost.com
, trying to find Luther William VanDraan. When I clicked on the link, there was the picture of the VanDraan family from the coffee table book, and a note Clara Culp’s daughter, Amy, had written.
My mother, shown here at four years old with her siblings, who were separated and given different names. She is seeking information about any or all of her blood relatives.
Beside that was a work e-mail address for Clara Culp’s daughter, and I didn’t even have to look up the company to know where it was. I could tell by the e-mail address. J. Norm’s niece, Amy Culp, worked for the Houston library system.
We were less than a hundred miles from Houston. There was a highway sign right outside of town that said so.
J. Norm’s sister could be only a couple hours’ drive away.
Just when I was about to tell him that, he turned away from the bookshelf, headed across the parlor toward his room, and said, “It’s time to go home, Epiphany.”
Chapter 21
J. Norman Alvord
We were on the lam again, rather than on the way home, and now that the decision had been made, I was secretly exhilarated, overflowing with anticipation, more alive than I had been in years. I once again felt like a young man in my prime, filled with power and vigor, traveling through my Camelot. Beside me, my copilot was quiet behind the wheel of the car. She seemed to have something on her mind as the air wafted through the window, stirring the dark curls over her shoulders.
“We’ve done it,” I remarked, wondering if she might be having regrets at this point, even though she was the one who had convinced me that we should send an e-mail to Clara and Amy Culp, and go on with our mission, rather than turn tail and drive back to Dallas. Perhaps, after sending the e-mail and hitting the road to Houston, Epiphany had stopped to consider the repercussions. I, on the other hand, had finally thrown caution to the wind. What could they do to me, really? I was an old man, practically at death’s door. I could hire legal help to assist me in any battle that might arise, but for Epiphany, the realities were different. Perhaps she was mulling that over as we left Groveland behind. Epiphany was a child, a minor, at the mercy of the school administration, her mother, possibly even the legal system. What if the welfare authorities were to step in or some such? “We can turn the other way,” I told her when we came to a highway intersection. Right toward Houston, left toward home.
She gaped at me as if I were daft. Apparently, she wasn’t having second thoughts about our fugitive life. “No way.”
“But
something
is wrong,” I pointed out. “I can see it in your face. Something is on your mind.”
She puffed air, letting me know I was bothering her. “I’ve got stuff to think about, that’s all.”
“About school, or your mother?”
She rolled her eyes. “No. Why would I be thinking about that?”
“But you
are
worried. Would you like to tell me what about? Grandfathers are old and wise and filled with sage advice, you know.”
She let her head fall against the headrest, her lips spreading into a reluctant smile. “Man, this whole grandpa thing’s gone to your head, seriously.”
I found myself laughing for no reason at all. Seeing my sister’s name on the computer screen had been an exhilarating experience. Knowing that before the end of the day I might meet her filled me with anticipation. Erin or Emma, one of the twins who had held dandelions under my chin to see if I liked butter.
Did she remember that day?
Perhaps, on the way, I would stop alongside the road and pick a bouquet of dandelions to remind her.
Did she have any recollection of me? Had she always been aware that she was one of five children? How long had her posting been on the Internet? Had she found any of the others yet? Gazing out the window, I considered the missing pieces of my life, let myself sink into my own thoughts, questions spooling in my mind. If— no—
when
we found Clara Culp, would she be able to fill in the blanks about our family secrets? Had she learned more than I had? Less? How had she discovered her identity? Had someone told her, or had she tracked down the details by investigation, as Epiphany and I had?
“J. Norm.” Epiphany’s voice broke into my thoughts. “I got money with me. Cash. We can use it to get gas and pay for the hotel tonight and stuff. That way Deborah can’t find out where we went by looking at the credit card charges.”
“You
have
money.” The grammatical correction was force of habit, and she sneered at it. “And where would you have come up with money?”
“I brought it from home. I’ve been saving up my pay from Deborah. I had it stashed in the house where Mama and Russ wouldn’t find it.”
A mild chill blew over my warm mood. “You brought money from home? Why? You know I can afford to pay for anything we need.”
“I . . . maybe wasn’t . . .
going
back home, okay?” She fluttered a hand up, then let it slap back to the steering wheel. “I’m not going to that school again, and I’m not going back to that stupid house, and nobody’ll care, anyway. They’ll like it better when I’m not around.”
“Epiphany . . .” I soothed.
“It’s true.” She swiped moisture from her eyes and sniffled, her lips trembling in a determined line that told me she’d given this decision some thought, probably quite a bit. “Mama doesn’t want me there. She can’t wait till I’m gone.”
“I think you’re mistaking your mother’s intentions. Parents don’t always . . .”
know how to show their feelings.
“They think they’re doing the right things, providing, protecting, guiding, but then they find out that it wasn’t right. It wasn’t enough.”
Your children grow up and you discover that while focusing on the work of parenthood, you’ve left all the important ties unbound.
“She’s embarrassed of me, okay! Her whole family is right up on Greenville Avenue. They own Tuscany Restaurant—the big Italian place with the guys in suits out front. They don’t talk to my mama because of
me
. She hates me for ruining her life. Her family has a high-dollar restaurant, and we couldn’t even afford to go in there for dinner. Because she got with my daddy. Because she had me. Who wants some little toffee baby in the family, right? It’s better to keep it a secret.”
What was I to say to that? I had no idea how Epiphany’s mother or her family felt. I could remember the days when something like this, a relationship between the races, a child, would have been a scandal to be hidden away, swept under the rug, kept quiet. Such things were only whispered about behind fingers cupped to contain the spread of sound.
But here in my car sat Epiphany—strong, clever, beautiful, bold. What family wouldn’t be proud of her? What old man wouldn’t want to hear the word “grandpa” aimed his way? “Have you ever confronted your mother with the question? Asked her about it? Listened to her explanation?”
She regarded me with the look that Deborah and Roy had employed when I complained that their teenage music sounded like a bad construction job performed by a pack of screaming hyenas. “Uhhh, no. She doesn’t want to talk about it, J. Norm. She never wants to talk about anything. She just wants me to stay out of her way, to quit costing her money and stop taking up space in her house.” Epiphany gesticulated along with the words, and the car drifted onto the shoulder, then back, careening along with the emotions of a sixteen-year-old girl.
“I doubt she feels that way,” I said, though I wasn’t so certain. What sort of woman moved off with a man and left her child behind to be raised by some teacher from school? I pointed ahead. “Pull off in that roadside park a moment. Let’s stretch our legs and collect our—”
“I can drive. I’m okay.”
“Let’s stop anyway. I think I see bluebonnets growing there. Bluebonnets were Annalee’s favorite.”
For once, Epiphany did as she was told. We pulled off and sat in the car, the scent of bluebonnets wafting in through the window. Her head fell back against the seat and she closed her eyes, her long lashes squeezing tight, pressing out a tear. It trailed slowly down her cheek and dripped onto her T-shirt. “Look, I just want to find my daddy’s family, see what they’re like, okay? You got the chance to come look for your people. Why can’t I?”
“But I am not a teenager. You can’t go off into the world alone, Epiphany. You can’t blindly take off on a whim, hoping to find them.” The idea was unsettling in so many ways, and I realized that were she to decide to, she could disappear at any moment. I wouldn’t be able to stop her. She was young and nimble, and I was old and slow. She could be gone in the blink of an eye.
What if, by giving her a way out of Dallas, I’d set something in motion that I couldn’t control?
“I had
you
with me. I wasn’t alone,” I reminded her, speaking gently, as you might to a skittish horse that was prone to bolting. “We’re a team, remember? A partnership. One of us can’t just . . . make random decisions and set off without consulting the other.”
Another tear dripped from beneath her dark lashes and trailed along the velvet skin of her cheek. Letting out a sardonic hiss, she wiped the moisture with a clumsy swipe of her palm. “Since when?”
“Well, since . . .” When, exactly? When had an
arrangement
, an unsteady truce based on blackmail and necessity, become something deeper—a friendship, a kinship? At this point in my life, I hadn’t thought myself capable of such a rapid metamorphosis of feeling. I’d imagined myself old and stale, with the stiffness of weathered leather. Stuck in my ways. Not pliable. Yet this child had plied me without even intending to, just by listening to my stories, just by being herself.
If such a thing were possible with a stranger, with a young woman I’d met such a short time ago, what might be possible with Deborah, my own daughter?
The question was quickly opened and just as quickly closed. My daughter, who was trying to put me out of my house and warehouse me in some facility for the criminally old and intractable.
“When we’ve finished in Houston, after we’ve gone home and straightened out this mess involving DeRon and the school, then we’ll find your father’s family.” I offered the option like a hostage negotiator trying to talk a jumper off a cliff. “We’ll go on the lam again, if we have to, but I want you to promise me, Epiphany, that no matter what, you won’t run away by yourself. It’s a dangerous world for a young girl.” I recalled the day of her altercation with DeRon—pictured her scraped, bruised, shaken, her clothes torn. It could have been so much worse. The terrible possibilities in the wider world caused me to shudder. “Promise me, Epiphany.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
“Promise, or we’re going home now. Right now.” I’d sacrifice the quest to find my family this minute before I would allow myself to become a danger to Epiphany. “We’ll turn the car around, and we’ll go back to Dallas.”
Her head swiveling in my direction, she wiped her eyes and studied me. “You’re gonna quit when your sister’s, like, eighty miles away? You’re just gonna turn around and go home?” Her chin dipped in punctuation, her hair clinging to the headrest.
“If it’s a risk to your safety.” I met her gaze, paused because I wanted her to fully focus. “You come first, Epiphany. You. Whether we find my family or not.”
Her eyes took on light, the realization seeming to dawn slowly. “Grandfather” wasn’t just a camouflage, a pretend mask any longer. It was a word with meaning, a title that carried responsibility and commitment.
Sighing, she sat up and put her hands on the steering wheel again. “Well, geez, I don’t want that on my head. I’ll be good.”
“So you promise, then? I have your word?” If I’d learned anything about Epiphany, it was that she could talk her way through a marble maze and back. “You promise that you will not run away?”