Father and Daughter

Agent Bentley glared at me from across the dull, metal table that sat between us. I could feel the other people staring at me through the two-way mirror behind him. The room was agonizingly chilly and it made me miss the hooded jacket that I wore every day. The one that Dan had bought me that one time...

“Are you listening?”

I blinked several times before I realized that the policeman had been speaking to me. The question he wanted me to answer had slipped my mind and I couldn’t run after it for the life of me. I rubbed my hands over the gooseflesh on my arms and shook my head. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

Bentley sighed and twirled the pen in his hand out of impatience. “How long did you know about your adoptive father being a serial killer before today?”

I stared at the pen in Bentley’s hand, swirling in circular motions in between his fingers. Eventually, I spoke.

“Two weeks.”

“Did it ever occur to you that you could be sentenced to a juvenile detention center for hiding information like that?”

My stare became blank. All I could think about was Dan. “Yes,” I replied.

The pen stopped moving and was set down on the table. Bentley’s hands came to the notepad in front of him and flipped through a couple of pages. “How did you feel when you first found out that Dan Kaufmann was a murderer?”

This time, I was the one who shot a glare into Agent Bentley’s eyes. “Listen,” I said. “Nothing you ask or say will ever get me to change my mind about Dan. No matter what, he is my father... Take note of that.”