Page 81 of Wild Idol

“No!” Ivy said. “Where are you?”

“I’m at home.”

“In Los Angeles?”

“That’s where I live,“ she sang in a smug voice.

“You don’t have to be such a bitch.”

Anna balked. “You don’t have to be a lot of things, but you choose to be them anyway.”

“Look, I can see this was a mistake to call.”

“Oh, no. You can’t just call, get me all riled up about dad, tell me some fantastical story, then hang up and walk away like you always do!”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I don’t know what to believe with you.”

“I’m telling you the truth.”

“So all of a sudden, you’re a born-again, normal person? All of a sudden, you care about dad?” Anna scoffed again. “I call bullshit. You never cared about him.”

Ivy was in tears by this point. “How could I? He did terrible things. He was a horrible person.”

“No, he wasn’t. You just chose to believe everything Mom told you.”

Ivy looked confused.

“Mom was no saint,” Anna said. “I’ve tried to tell you this a hundred times, but you never listened. Mom was the one that was having the affair. She left dad. She told me to say bad things about him so she could get custody. I was old enough to say no. But you weren’t. You started saying whatever Mom wanted you to say.”

“That’s not true.”

“Yes, it is.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“I do!”

That hung there for a moment as Ivy tried to process everything, thinking back to when she was a child. She looked trapped in a hazy fog.

After a long moment of silence, Anna asked in a soft voice, “Do you think dad’s really in trouble?“

“Yes! He’s really in trouble.”

Anna took a moment to process it. “I won’t be able to get to Coconut Key until tomorrow.”

“I’m with two county deputies now.”

“Are you under arrest?” Anna snarked.

“No! I am not under arrest,” Ivy said, growing frustrated again.

I told Ivy I would call the sheriff and have him send a patrol unit to do a wellness check on her father.

She relayed the information to her sister, then I called the sheriff.

“I’ll send Erickson and Faulkner,” he said after I told him the story. “When are you two nimrods getting back in town?”