Page 129 of Gone Tonight
“And my daughter’s middle name is Ava.”
A sob wrenches free from my throat. Tears pour down my cheeks as Timmy wraps his arms around me, hugging me so tightly it’s hardto breathe. I’m hugging him back just as hard, feeling my brother’s body shake as he cries.
“I’m sorry, Timmy.… I’m so sorry…”
Then I hear a car door slam shut. My head jerks up and I look toward the parking lot.
A man has exited from the passenger side of Timmy’s minivan and is running toward us.
I am rooted to the ground as I stare at him in disbelief.
His once-broad shoulders are slightly slumped with age, and white is woven through his black hair. But when my father throws his arms around me, I can still smell his Old Spice.
“I told Dad I was coming to see you and I couldn’t keep him away,” Timmy says.
Time collapses. I’m a girl again, back with my family.
My father is whispering my name over and over, like he can’t believe it’s me.
“I love you,” I tell them, and they repeat those sweetest of words back to me.
My father finally leans back and studies me, like he’s engraving a picture of my face in his mind. I do the same.
New lines crease my dad’s skin, and he has a little scar on his chin now, but he is gazing at me as if I am still the daughter he loves. As if he never stopped loving me.
He reaches out and gently wipes the tears from my cheeks.
“I sent you prayers every single night,” my dad tells me.
I think of “Wild World” playing on the trucker’s radio, and the night cleaner at Target who concealed us, and the man who bought Catherine and me dinner on that cold December evening when we were so hungry.
I whisper, “They worked.”
EPILOGUE
RUTH
I will always be grateful to Rosie for protecting Timmy.
He told me that after I disappeared, she began to pick him up from school, taking him for ice cream or to the library to study until my father got home from work.
Sometimes I wonder if Rosie did it because she knew I’d helped protect her sister Marie.
For nearly twenty-five years, I’ve tried to avoid remembering what happened after James slammed the bat into Coach’s stomach.
But the memory has pushed back, asserting itself at odd times, like when I’ve skimmed past a TV channel airing a baseball game, or spotted a man wearing a Bruce Springsteen T-shirt.
Now that James is dead, I can no longer repress the truth about that long-ago night.
After Coach collapsed on the floor of his office, moaning but still conscious, James lifted the Louisville Slugger a second time, preparing to strike again.
But he didn’t.
Instead, James lowered the bat and held it out to me.
It was an offering. I had a choice.
Coach was still wearing the same clothes he’d had on when he’d molested me. I was standing in the same spot, too.
