Page 44 of The Intruder

BEFORE

ELLA

Bettina is grudgingly impressed by how much food I put away.

Over the next half hour, I devour most of the contents of a platter that was left over from lunch. It’s mostly cold cuts and cheese, but everything tastes so good. None of it has a weird sour taste that I have to try to ignore. It’s all fresh and delicious.

“Gosh, you were hungry!” Bettina exclaims. “How do you keep yourself so tiny?”

I suck down the remainder of an apple juice box that doesn’t even taste like it’s turning into alcohol. “I missed lunch today,” I say, which is true.

Just as I’m chewing on another piece of ham, the sound of male voices floats down the hallway.

Bettina perks up. “Sounds like the meeting ended. I bet your daddy will be here in a second. I’ll let him know where you are.”

The cold cuts churn in my full belly. These are not the circumstances under which I wanted to meet my father. I don’t want him to think that I’m a liar. But I never exactly said that I was Brittany. I mean, that woman just assumed. I was only answering her questions. That’s not my fault.

“Your daughter is in the kitchen,” Bettina is telling my father, her voice distant. It’s not entirely a lie.

“Brittany?” He sounds stunned. “What’s she doing here?”

I have another couple of seconds before he gets to the kitchen. I swallow the ham in my mouth and take a second to smooth out my hair. I’m not as pretty as Brittany. I never will be. But that shouldn’t matter, should it?

The footsteps grow louder, and I straighten up in my chair. I have to look absolutely perfect so he’ll know I’m a good kid. After all, it’s clear that Brittany never visits her father at work, and here I am, taking the time out of my busy day to come see him. He’s got to appreciate that.

A few seconds later, a man appears in the doorway. I recognize him, probably from school events and maybe from around town. He is tall and distinguished looking, with brown hair that is turning gray at the temples and a well-groomed gray beard.

When he sees me, his eyes widen behind his spectacles, filled with recognition. I attempt my best smile, but it feels crooked.

“Hi,” I squeak.

“You.” His voice is hoarse and not at all kind. “What are you doing here?”

“I…” My palms feel very moist. I wipe them on my jeans, suddenly wishing I had thought to put on something nicer. “I wanted to talk to you.”

His jaw tightens. “Was that you sneaking around our house the other night? My wife heard the door open and then saw someone running through our backyard.”

Does Vanessa Carter know about me? That would make it easier, I guess. But if his whole family knows he has another daughter, it feels even more hurtful that he has failed to acknowledge me.

He shakes his head, his blue eyes dark. The same blue eyes that Brittany has, the same blue eyes that I have. “And telling Bettina you’re my daughter…”

I am your daughter, I want to say, but my mouth has gone dry.

“You need to leave my family alone,” he says in a firm voice. “Do you understand?”

My lower lip trembles. I don’t know what exactly I was expecting when I came to him, but it wasn’t this hostile reaction. I thought at least he would give me some sort of explanation as to why he didn’t want me to be part of his life. But instead he just seems angry and kind of embarrassed.

My father’s shoulders sag. “Come on. I’ll drive you home.”

I leave the platter of cold cuts behind, even though I’m tempted to take it all with me.

Instead, I follow my father out of the sociology building.

He’s tall enough that I barely come up to his shoulder, and he has really good posture.

He doesn’t talk to me, but he doesn’t walk ahead of me and force me to catch up with him.

Also, he smells nice. Like cologne or aftershave or whatever it is that grown men wear.

He’s parked in a lot behind the sociology building. He drives a blue Prius, and he opens the passenger side door so I can get in. I’m not actually tall enough, but my mom always lets me sit up front, and it seems like Dr. Carter doesn’t care either.

“What’s your address?” he asks me, his fingers hovering over the GPS display on his dashboard.

I thought he’d know where I lived. That he’d be keeping tabs on me. Guess not. I give him my address, feeling even more dejected.

“I’m not sure what you’re thinking,” he says as he navigates the streets from the university to my house in Medford. “But this can’t happen again.”

I pick at a hole on my T-shirt, making it large enough for my finger to fit through. “I…I’m sorry. I just wanted to talk.”

He glances at me as he comes to a halt at a red light. “About what?”

His voice is so sharp, it makes me flinch. Obviously, he doesn’t have anything to say to me. “I just…”

I want to ask him why he doesn’t want to have anything to do with me. I can understand not wanting to have anything to do with my mother. I mean, I don’t want to have anything to do with her sometimes. But I didn’t do anything to him. Would it be so awful if he had to admit that I was his daughter?

But I can’t get out any of those words. Because the second I start talking, I’m going to cry.

So instead, I just sit there in the passenger seat, clutching my backpack in my lap.

I can feel the reassuring outline of the knife in the pocket of my bag, and for a moment, I think about taking it out.

I wonder what he’d say if I had a knife in my hand.

I have a feeling he’d stop being such a jerk.

But I don’t take out the knife. In fact, we don’t say another word to each other as he drives me the rest of the way home.

He parks in front of the house, and I cringe when I realize he’s going to walk me inside.

My mom won’t be happy about that either.

But he gets out of the car and follows me to the door.

I fit the key in the lock, hoping that once I get the door open, my father might leave me alone. But he’s just standing there, waiting for me to go inside. This is so embarrassing.

But maybe it’s good. Maybe once he sees my house, he’ll understand what I’m going through. Maybe he’ll feel like he needs to rescue me. Maybe he’ll step up and be a real father to me.

I take it as a good sign when I manage to get the door almost all the way open without knocking into any bottles or other garbage. My mom is already home—I can hear the TV—and when she hears the door opening, she calls out, “Guess what, Ella? I ordered pizza!”

Great. On the one night I’m not even remotely hungry.

Unfortunately, my father decides to follow me into the house.

He sucks in a breath when he sees the state of our living room.

He looks like he’s practically going to be sick, or maybe that’s just from the smell.

My mom is sitting on the mattress smoking a cigarette, but she jumps off the sofa and puts it out when she sees my father come into the house.

“Ella!” she cries. “I didn’t know you were bringing company! You should have told me!”

My father stiffens. “Desiree, I need to talk to you about your daughter.”

Your daughter. Not a good sign.

My mother is making adjustments to her dirty work uniform, as if that’s the problem. It’s not like tucking in her shirt is going to change the fact that our house is a disaster.

“I am so sorry, John.” She glares at me. “What did she do this time?”

“She was creeping around the back of my house two nights ago.” My father’s jaw tightens. “And then today, she came to my office and pretended to be Brittany. As you can imagine, it was very upsetting.”

“Of course! I am so sorry!” My mother wipes her hands on her tan work slacks. “Ella, what on earth got into you?”

I am so sick of this. I am so sick of the lies and pretending. Now that everyone is here, in one room, I refuse to lie anymore. I’m going to force them to come clean. One way or another, we’re going to be one big happy family.

Even if I have to take out my knife to make it happen.

“I know that Dr. Carter is my father,” I say.

All the color drains out of his face. “What?”

“Ella,” Mom snaps at me, “where on earth did you get a ridiculous idea like that?”

I lift my chin. “I found my birth certificate you were hiding from me.”

“Jesus Christ,” my father says, running a hand through his hair.

I look between the two of them. My parents—together in one room like I always dreamed. Except my mother looks furious and my father looks… Well, I’m not even sure. He looks a little dazed.

“Ella,” my mother says. “Dr. Carter is not your father. My God, how could you think that?”

She says it with such authority. If I didn’t see my birth certificate, I would think she was telling the truth. “You’re lying. I saw it. My father is named John Carter.”

“Right,” she says, seemingly giving up and relighting her cigarette. “He is. Your father is named John Carter, but this isn’t him. It’s another guy with the same name.”

Her words are like a slap in the face. Could it be true? I was so sure this man had to be my father when I saw the birth certificate, but John and Carter are both pretty common names, I guess. It didn’t even occur to me that it could be another John Carter.

Except so many things don’t make sense. How does Dr. Carter know who I am then? Why is he acting so weird around me?

“I am so sorry, John,” my mom says to Dr. Carter, who apparently is not my father. Lucky him.

She walks him to the door, and he looks like he can’t wait to get out of here.

When I brought him home, I had this idea in my head that maybe he was going to save me, but that is not going to happen.

He doesn’t want to have anything to do with me, which I guess is fair if he’s not related to me at all.

As soon as Dr. Carter is gone and the door is closed behind him, my mother turns on me. I brace myself for her to start screaming at me and maybe throw me into the closet. She might even hit me. But instead, she bursts out laughing.

“Oh, Lord!” she cries, gasping for air. “Ella, did you really think that man was your father? Do you think if you had a father like that, you would be so dumb?”

My face burns. “I don’t understand. How come he knew who I was? And who you are?”

“You really don’t remember?” She is still chuckling.

“When you were in fourth grade, you pushed that pretty little daughter of his off the top of the jungle gym and she broke her arm. It was a whole big thing, and we had all these meetings about it.” She shakes her head.

“And then you were all upset because she didn’t invite you to her birthday party, as if she would invite you after you broke her arm! Why would anyone want you there?”

Now that she’s saying it, I do kind of remember all that. It didn’t seem like that big a deal to me, although I guess I wasn’t the one in a cast.

“And you thought he was your father!” she snickers. “Boy, you’re delusional.”

I hate that she is laughing about this. I almost wish she were angry instead.

The fact that she’s not angry is getting me angry.

So angry that my hands have balled into tight little fists, and I almost want to hit her.

But of course, I’d never do that. “So who is my real father then? Who is the other John Carter?”

My mother stops laughing. She folds her arms across her chest. “Fine. You’re thirteen now. Old enough to know the truth.”

My heart speeds up. This is what I’ve been waiting for. Except now that she’s about to tell me, I realize I’m not sure I want to know.

“Your father was in prison,” she says. “He got sent there when you were two months old.”

“In prison?” I breathe. “For what?”

“The idiot got into a fight in a bar and beat a guy unconscious.” Her face darkens.

“Is that what you do when you have a girlfriend and a baby at home counting on you? What a jackass. No impulse control—just like you. Anyway, Johnny got sent away on assault charges, and then when he got out, he didn’t want to have anything to do with us.

Didn’t even try to contact us, and I can’t say I know where he is. ”

Over the course of the day, I went from thinking my dad is a professor of sociology to realizing he’s a convict. No wonder my mom can’t stop laughing.

“Can…?” I swallow the lump in my throat. “Can I see a photo of him?”

She narrows her eyes at me. “What do you want to see a photo of that loser for?”

“I…I just do. He’s my father.”

“Well, I tore them all up.” When she sees the stunned look on my face, she shrugs. “He’s never going to be part of our lives. It’s better this way.”

“He’s my father!” Tears spring to my eyes. “You had no right to do that!”

“You’re welcome to go searching for him,” she retorts. “But I wouldn’t expect him to want to have anything to do with you. And I couldn’t even blame him. Who would want to be stuck with a kid like you?”

It’s all too much for me now. Finding out that Dr. Carter isn’t actually my father, my real father is an ex-con, and my mother finding it somehow hilarious.

But I don’t want to cry in front of her, so I push past her and run up the stairs as quickly as I can without slipping on all the stupid papers she’s got on them.

I don’t stop until I get to my room, where I throw myself down on my bed and sob into my pillow until I pass out.