Father and Daughter

My hearing was completely shot--like two hands were rapidly covering and uncovering them--as I attempted to open my eyes. I groaned as I fought the sickening rotation of my brain. “Mina!” the voice called again. A piercing light flashed from one of my eyes to the other like some annoying fairy from a video game that was begging for my attention. When my eyes had fully opened, the light disappeared and in its place was Dan’s silhouette.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

I sat up and rose to my feet with Dan’s support. “I’m okay,” I said. “Sorry. I have no idea why I passed out. I just... freaked out, I guess.” He led me to the couch and shut off the TV after helping me sit.

“Don’t apologize for that,” Dan said, taking a seat across from me. “You have every right to be frightened, but there’s no need to be.”

“He’s out there, though, Dan...” I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered. “He knows I’m from Montana.”

“How did he find out?”

My head lowered as I realized that I had put myself into trouble. “I told him... He asked me if I was from California.” I looked up and expected Dan to be angry but his expression hadn’t changed. He appeared content and deep in thought. He wasn’t looking at me, but past me--off into an endless distance.

“Dan?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

He jolted slightly in his seat and said, “Yes, sorry. I was just thinking about how I could keep you safe... I honestly doubt he’ll search the entire state for you, but we have to take some precautions.” He stood up and paced into the kitchen. The calender pinned to the pantry door was pulled into his grip as he opened the calender to the next month--September.

“If he doesn’t show up within a week, then he’s not showing up at all.”

“How do you know?” I asked, entering the kitchen.

Dan lowered his hand from the calender and looked down at me. “Men like him... killers like him are determined. They don’t like to wait. They won’t sleep either.” He stepped past me, giving me a reassuring touch on the shoulder. “And in case he does show up...” He opened the closet behind the dining table and stooped down, reaching for something.

When he stepped back, I gasped. Dan wielded a shotgun with two hands--by its handle and by the barrel. “To be honest,” Dan said, turning the gun in his hands. “I’ve never fired this thing in my entire life. It was my father’s and he only used it once--when someone tried breaking into our house. I see this all as a sign to let this gun have its second chance.”

He saw the abashed expression on my face and immediately turned to put the gun away, shutting the closet door. He approached me and took my hands in his like they were fragile treasures. “Listen, Mina,” he said. “I will protect you if it’s the last thing I do... okay?”

“I know you will.”



“Mr. Conway?”

“Yes, Mina?” He turned from the whiteboard and capped the marker in his hand. The rest of the class disappeared into the hallway with their belongings. This time, I didn’t ask Andrea to wait up for me. I knew this conversation was going to make me late to my next class and it wasn’t one I wanted anyone else to hear. Luckily, Mr. Conway didn’t have a class for second period.

“I finished reading it.”

“Oh, you did?” he asked. He looked down at the leather journal I placed on his desk. He picked it up and flipped through the pages, stopping at the last quarter. “You know, I didn’t think I’d be so inspired to write something like this... And I’m glad I finally got a chance to share it with someone.”

“It’s really good... Did I really inspire all of that?”

Mr. Conway’s angelic, staggering eyes met mine. “Of course you did.” He came around to the other side of his desk and sat back against it, only inches from where I was standing. “Honestly, I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, but I still had some hope.” His eyes dropped to the tile floor. “After years passed, I thought you had moved far away from here. Turns out you were just up the interstate... How did you end up staying in the orphanage for so long?”

I shrugged. “I guess no one wanted to adopt me.”

“If I had known you were still there after all these years, I would have adopted you myself. But I’m not exactly father material yet...” He chuckled and crossed his arms.

“I never got to thank you,” I said, “for what you did for me on that day.”

“There’s no need to thank me at all.”

“But most of the people that day just watched from a distance,” I added. “Yet you stepped in and saved me from the worst trauma I could have experienced in my entire life... So, thank you.”

The sound of the tardy bell slithered through the hallway and echoed into the room. “You should get to class, you’re late,” Mr. Conway said, standing upright. “Do you want me to write you a note?”

“No, it’s fine,” I said. “Thank you.”

I paced out of the room with brisk footsteps and nearly stumbled when I reached the heart of the hallway. I continued down without looking back, despite how much I yearned to. My next class was at the opposite end of the hall and the trip lasted for an eternity.

The only thing I could think about Mr. Conway’s handwritten novella about a little girl that lost everything. He had began writing it when he was twenty years old and a sophomore at his university. It took him three years of occasional work to complete it, but it never found the eyes of anyone else. As a writer, it was that one piece of work that he kept secret until the time was right.

I had been the inspiration for his novella. I was the only person, other than his family, that knew that. He and I had only met once before and that would be the last time until ten years had passed.

I still remembered the day we met like it was only a few days ago. I had fallen off the tire swing after that loud bang--completely oblivious to the fact that it was a gunshot. I had been laying in the grass, sobbing with snot and tears running down my face, when Mr. Conway had found me clutching my arm. Back then, he had only been going by Mitchell and was just nineteen years old.

He had cradled me into his arms and asked me what happened. I told him that I fell off the swing and that Daddy must have dropped something in the house. He had me sit upright and wait for him while he checked on my dad. After a couple of minutes, I began to walk into the house, but he had already been at the front door, preventing me from going inside.

“Why can’t I go inside?” I had asked him. “Why can’t I go see Daddy?”

Mitchell Conway lifted me into his arms, telling me that my dad wasn’t home and had gone somewhere. He carried me away from the house, all the way down the street, where he asked his mother to call an ambulance as my neighbors looked on with pity.

Mr. Conway and I owed so much to each other.



“So, what did you talk to Conway about?” Andrea asked as we took our seats in the cafeteria. She bit into her Granny Smith apple, waiting for me to talk. I attempted to form the appropriate lie in my head as quickly as possible, but she urged me. “... Mina? You okay?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I was just talking to him about the play... about The Merchant of Venice.”

She took another crunching bite. “What’d you ask him?”

“I was just kind of confused about the reason why the citizens are so racist against Shylock. I thought antisemitism didn’t exist until Hitler’s days.”

“People have been prejudice ever since the caveman days, babe,” Andrea said, leaning back in her seat across from me. “They always will be. I mean, shit, you can’t even wear what you want or be interested in the same gender without people talking about you. People have grown to love judging others when, in the beginning, it wasn’t even their right to.”

I unwrapped the brown paper bag I had brought with me this morning and dumped out my food. “Are you referring to Christianity?”

Andrea fingered the tiny crucifix attached to her choker. “I am...” She sat up and rested her elbows on the table. “What, did you think I was an atheist or some kind of devil worshiper?” She grinned as I stared at her with wide eyes.

“No, I didn’t,” I stuttered.

Andrea laughed. “Liar.” She sat back in her chair and shook her head, picking at her shiny, black nails. “You know, I don’t blame you for assuming that. A lot of people think I’m an atheist because of how I dress. But I’m a Christian. I go to church every Saturday morning.”

“Well, you’re doing better than me when it comes to going to heaven,” I chuckled and took a sip of my water. “Dan isn’t church-going. I think he’s agnostic.”

“... I’ve heard otherwise.”

I set down my water bottle and frowned. “What do you mean?”

Andrea looked around at the spaced out groups seated along the infinite table. “I shouldn’t have said anything, I’m sorry.” She began packing up her bag and rose to her feet.

“Andrea.”

She stopped and looked back at me as she turned to leave. “Fine,” she sighed, sitting back down. “You know how the people in this town are obsessed with gossip, right?” She crossed her arms. “Well, a few weeks ago, I heard them talk about how Dan was...”

“What?”

“To sum it up, they pretty much said he was a Satan-loving pedophile.”

“Who said that?” I demanded.

“Those old hags that hang out at the diner all the time... Why?”

“No reason,” I replied. “Just wanted to know.”

Under the table, my hands balled into fists.



The Aether Falls library was breathtaking. Though, at night, it was a bit eerie, to say the least. I must have been out of my mind to agree to coming there. I had lied to Dan. I told him that I was going over to Andrea’s house to have dinner and watch a movie from her vast horror collection.

“Don’t give yourself nightmares,” Dan had said with a smile as I stepped out of his car. "I'll see you in a couple of hours."

Andrea had been standing on her porch, knowing exactly what was going on. When I had told her what I planned on really doing, she seemed uneasy about it and asked me if I was sure. The curiosity within me held my decision at a stable point.

I hadn’t completely lied to Dan. I did end up having dinner with Andrea and her mother, but was leaving after that. “Please be careful,” Andrea whispered in my ear as I hugged her goodbye. “And don’t do anything stupid. Remember what you’re there for.” She’d watched me walk away until I was at the far end of her street and I gave her a distant wave.

The library was a short, two-minute walk from Andrea’s home. The back door was left open for me and I wandered inside the dark building with slow, cautious movements. A vibrant, orange light exuded from the center of the library. One of the desk lamps must have been on.

As I approached the desk covered in books and various writing utensils, I looked around for the occupant. The chair had been pulled out, but no one was sitting in it. A book was at the edge of the desk with a sticky note attached to the open page. I lifted the note between two of my fingers and smiled as I read it.



I picked up The Merchant of Venice and began to read aloud, pacing around the illuminated table.

“‘I pray you, tarry: pause a day or two
Before you hazard; for, in choosing wrong,
I lose your company: therefore forbear awhile.
There's something tells me, but it is not love,
I would not lose you; and you know yourself,
Hate counsels not in such a quality.
But lest you should not understand--’”

My shrill scream echoed throughout the structure when the book in my hands collided with a figure I hadn’t seen standing there. The spine of the book slapped onto the linoleum flooring as I lifted my chin. The musk of subtle cologne flooded into my nose.

“This isn’t a good idea...” I whispered.

“Of course it is,” Mr. Conway replied.