Lukas ignored her. “Come on, Kennedy. You have a photographic memory. There must be something.”
Elle slammed her glass on the table. “Her father ditched her when she was five years old. He never even sent her a birthday card. He’s an asshole.” Her voice rose. “That’s what she remembers.”
Heat spread through my cheeks. “Shut up, Elle.”
Jared’s his hand tightened around mine under the table. I stared out at the rain running down the windows. Anything to avoid the pity and questions I’d see in his eyes.
“I’m sorry.” Lukas sounded sympathetic and uncomfortable at the same time, the way my friends had when they found out my mother was dead.
My embarrassment quickly turned to anger. I hadn’t seen my dad in twelve years. He didn’t even show up to claim me when my mom died. Yet he still had the power to hurt me. “You want to know what I remember about my dad?”
“Kennedy, it’s okay—” Jared began.
I held up a hand, silencing him. “My dad smelled like Marlboros and mint toothpaste. More mint or Marlboros, depending on how well he’d covered up the smell of cigarette smoke. He liked his bacon crispy and his coffee black. He didn’t shave every day, so his face was either perfectly smooth or covered in stubble, and he had the greenest eyes I’ve ever seen. 100 Grand was his favorite candy bar, and he’d let me eat them before dinner even though it drove my mom crazy. He loved Johnny Walker, Pink Floyd, and Edgar Alan Poe. He hated musicals, collared shirts, and magicians.”
I stood up. “And he said he loved me more than the moon and the stars and everything in between. But he lied.”
Everyone fell silent, as I headed for the dirty glass doors at the front of the restaurant.
“Kennedy?” Jared called after me.
“Give her a minute,” I heard Elle say as the doors swung closed behind me.
I leaned against the building under the awning, next to the truckers trying to take one last drag of their cigarettes before they went inside.
Jared’s green army jacket flashed in my peripheral vision. He grabbed my hand and pulled it behind him, drawing me close. “When you told me about your dad, I didn’t realize it was that bad. Why didn’t you say anything?”
Because I can still see my dad climbing into his car, and the note, and my mother’s tear-streaked face. Because I didn’t want you to know that my own father didn’t want me. Because I didn’t want you to look at me the way you are right now.
“There’s nothing to tell. He wasn’t around. It doesn’t matter.” I started to turn away, but Jared kept my arm locked behind him and my body against his.
He lifted my chin. “Is that the reason you think everyone is going to hurt you?”
The familiar numbness spread through me that I felt whenever I thought about my dad for too long. “Jared, I don’t… I can’t talk about this. Please.”
“Okay.”
We stood side by side in silence, watching the trucks pull in and out of the parking lot. I didn’t want to talk about my dad and relive the pain that never seemed to go away. But my memories were the only possible clues we had left, and if Andras was responsible for the crimes on my dorm room walls, he had killed dozens of people already.
By the time I slid back into the booth a few minutes later, I was ready. “What else do you need to know?”
Alara turned the sugar dispenser upside down, emptying what looked like half the contents into her coffee cup. “You don’t have to talk about this, Kennedy. We can figure out another way to find her.”
“We don’t have time.” I pulled my shoulders back and took a deep breath. “Ask me whatever you want.”
Priest fidgeted with his headphones. “Did your father ever talk about his childhood?”
“Not really. I know he grew up in DC, but my grandparents moved to Massachusetts before I was born. I don’t really remember them.”
Priest and Alara exchanged a look.
“Anything else? A special place you went together?” Lukas asked.
I started to say no, when an image flickered in my mind. The photo I’d found tucked into my mirror while I was packing up the house, after my mom died. Me sitting on my dad’s shoulders, in front of a white weather-beaten house. “There was this picture of us.…”
I closed my eyes and focused on the details in the photo, things I’d never paid attention to before, scanning them one by one.
A broken gutter on the side of the house.
The half-mowed lawn behind us.
My missing front tooth.
Pink flowers on a dogwood tree.
My dad’s silver wedding band.
The quarter-sized hole in the knee of my jeans.
Untied, blue Keds.
A green sticker on my Wonder Woman T-shirt.
I zeroed in on the sticker. Blurry letters circled the outside, but the white writing in the center read I VISITED THE WORLD’S LARGEST BOTTLE CAP.
“There’s this old picture of my dad and I, in front of a house. I have no idea where it was taken, but there’s one of those stickers on my shirt that you get when you visit a cheesy landmark or museum.”
“Do you remember going anywhere like that with him?” Priest looked hopeful.
“No. But the sticker says, ‘I visited the world’s largest bottle cap.’ ”
“It’s better than nothing. Who’s up for a road trip?” Lukas asked, just as Alara took a sip of her sugar-laced coffee. She swallowed too fast and ended up in a coughing fit. Elle tried to pat her back, but Alara swatted her hand away.