Chapter 78

“He’s gone.”

“Gone?” I say the word loudly enough that it echoes.

“He’s been moved. Sorry, Miss.” The guard shifts uncomfortably. “And, can you keep it down,” he asks in a quiet tone.

“I - I don’t understand.”

He leans toward me and says, quieter still. “Maximum security.”

My head is spinning.

That doesn’t make any sense.

“But that’s for, like, hardened criminals. Violent - “ My voice rises again, and the guard shushes me, putting a finger up to his lips.

“My father doesn’t belong there,” I say.

He shrugs. “I don’t know. That was the orders. That’s all I can tell you.”

“But he’s sick,” I say, feeling the tears build. “He’s sick and he needs help.”

“They have doctors,” the guard says.

I look around at the filthy building and take in the damp air. How good can medical care be, if this is the state of things?

“Can I visit him? Somehow? Please.”

He just keeps shaking his head at me. “No,” he says. “No visitors where he’s being housed, and I couldn’t sneak you in if I tried, so don’t ask.”

I close my mouth. Then I open it again. “Can you give him a message?”

“I’ll try to get it through, but no guarantees.”

“Just tell him that I - that his daughter loves him.”

I vomit in the bushes outside. I’m wracked with guilt about not trying to come back sooner to see him, and that I didn’t do more to get him out. I should crawl back to Ansel on my hands and knees. I could set up more artificial insemination and fulfill the contract. Just get Dad out of there.

When I get back to Joy’s, she embraces me with a worried look on her face.

“What’s wrong, Karin?”

Joy has been nothing short of wonderful. Cooking for me, telling me all about her and Doc, turning on her favorite soapy shows and filling me in on all the melodrama. As if I don’t have enough in my own life.

But as it turns out, it’s a welcome distraction. My emotions are out of whack since I severed Ada. At first, I felt good. The angry and sad parts of me seemed to vanish with my wolf, but those kinds of emotions flicker back at times. When they do, they hit like a freight train.

Other things are different, too. Although they’re more expected, it’s nonetheless hard. My hearing and sense of smell are dampened down to human levels. It feels like the world has switched from color to black and white. Taste is less vivid. I’m not able to as easily discern who, where, and what things are. The effect is discombobulating.

I open up to Joy about what I learned from the guard.

“What do you think I should do,” I ask.

It’s the millionth time I’ve asked her something like this in the short time I’ve been here. Sometimes, I’m indecisive to the point that I don’t know what I want at all, or even who I am. It’s as though all my intuition, any gut instinct or deeper knowledge I ever had, is gone. At least, inaccessible.

Joy bites her lip. She’s stirring the soup that’s cooking on the stove.

“Okay,” she says, giving the soup another stir, and then tapping the spoon, before setting it down and covering the pot. She takes my hands.

“What if you don’t do anything?”

I shake my head. “What do you mean?”

“What if there’s nothing you can do?”

I pull my hands away. “But I could go back to Ansel and try to make this pregnancy thing happen.”

“Or not,” Joy says. “You said you weren’t happy with him, Karin.”

“I don’t know,” I say. I put my hand against my forehead.

“You seemed sure when you got here,” Joy says.

“It all seems petty when I think about it now,” I say. “I don’t exactly remember it, anyway. It’s all kind of like a daydream.”

A lot of things are now, but especially the dearest memories of the things that are most important to me - of my dad, memories of dancing, and yes, of Ansel. Ada seemed to take those with her. I can sort of touch them, but not quite. A fog covers them.

“I remember it well enough,” Joy says. “And here’s the other thing - you don’t know what’s going to happen, you know? You may never get pregnant, Karin, or it may not happen before the six months is up on your contract, or in time before your father…”

Thankfully, she doesn’t finish the sentence. I pace through the kitchen.

“It’s called a fertility crisis for a reason,” Joy says. “You might have to prepare yourself for a hard reality.” Joy turns off the burner and opens the lid to stir the soup again.

She pulls two bowls out of a cabinet.

“But if you want to go back to him, do what you want to do. I’ve been a sex worker for a long time now, and sometimes it was great, or at least just fine… but things sure do feel different now with Doc.”

She opens the silverware drawer to take out the spoons.

“I just want you to give yourself permission to…” She looks at me, but she can’t say it out loud. Her face is sad.

“Let my father go,” I finish for her.

“Accept that it’s out of your control - no matter what you decide. And know that, if he was a good parent at all, he’d want you to be happy, and not destroy your own life to save his.”

I sit down at the table. I put my head in my arms. When Joy talks me through it, it makes sense. Dad wouldn’t want me to sacrifice myself - or any child I may bring into the world.

Joy serves us the soup and some bread she’s made. After dinner, we flip on the TV. Ansel’s face is on the screen. Joy changes it quickly.

“Wait,” I say. “Go back.”

Hesitantly, she does. We listen to all the new accusations being made about Ansel. Joy looks uncomfortable. After a few minutes, she turns off the TV altogether.

We sit in silence.

“You know what’s ironic, Joy?” I squirm in my seat. “I pretty well accused him of those things the day I left.”

“You said some of that to me, too,” says Joy.

“None of it was true,” I say. “It all felt emotionally true, but not literally, or legally, if that makes any kind of sense.”

“You mean, you felt stuck there, and you blamed Ethan’s death on him, but -”

“But Ethan’s death was more of a domino effect. Ansel wasn’t there. I don’t believe he ordered his men to kill Ethan, and he definitely didn’t create some kind of plot to make it look like an accident. It was all just a chaotic mess.”

The fog thickens and I have to think hard through it.

“I actually yelled at him that he was holding me captive. He wasn’t. I felt trapped sometimes because I had nowhere else to go, no other way out, but I willingly agreed to stay. It was an arrangement we both agreed to.”

Joy taps the remote against her leg. “You think it’s weird that the things you said that day made it into the news? With some extra distortion applied, but still?”

But I can’t see much of anything right now. “Maybe,” I say.

I wrap up with one of Joy’s purple blankets and pull on the tassels. “What do you think’s going to happen with Ansel?”

“God, I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s going to be good.” Then she grimaces. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s okay,” I say. I’m feeling emotionally flattened again. I stare at the wall.

“You know,” Joy says. “I saw those beautiful shoes in your bag.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Those are the ones Ethan gave to me.”

“It may sound silly, but I've never seen you do ballet. Maybe you’ll show me sometime?”

“Sure,” I say. I could now, but I feel lethargic. “It’s crummy, Joy.”

“What is?”

“I could get them on now and do a little, but I don’t want to. Not at all.”

“Well, that’s okay!”

“I know, but I mean, I feel less connected to it. When I left, I meant to refocus - rededicate my life to my craft, but I feel totally blocked. Just blah.”

“You’ve had a lot going on.”

“Yeah.” My whole being feels hollow.

That night, I fall into another dreamless sleep. It feels like death.