Page 13 of Hidden Justice
“No can do. I’m late.”
“Your father’s here.”
Shit. Shit. Shit.“Don’t call him that.”
I hang up and a moment later drive through the school’s main gate and down the long winding road that leads to Southie—the parking lot where people who don’t have campus clearance wait to get approval or for someone inside the school to come out. Usually, teen boys waiting on teen girls.
After parking my car, I nod to Guadalupe, then walk past the flagpole whose metal clipclang,clangs against it.
I see him right away. Cooper Ramsey. A drug-addicted narcissist with a poor work history. Hard to believe he’s related to me.
He is. Proved by a paternity test two years ago. Not that I needed a test to see myself in his eyes, the hue of his skin, the pin-straight black hair. He was once a handsome, proud man. A man my mom hadn’t been able to resist. Or maybe she hadn’t been able to resist what he offered her, a life with him, far from her own demented mother, my grandmother.
I walk over to him. “Cooper.”
His dull eyes blink and his sleepy mouth rolls into a smile. “Hey, kiddo.”
Kiddo? I push up my sunglasses and run my eyes down his worn gray pants splattered with paint.
He shifts, not just his eyes, but his whole body and even his smile. Shifty.
I know the easiest way to get rid of my father: ask him to be direct. “Are you ever going to tell me who gave you the money to come here?”
He distributes his weight from side to side, rocking like a child, and shakes his head. The line of his mouth tightens. Genuine fear blankets his eyes.
It’s always the same.
Two years ago, Cooper had been living in California. Out of the blue, he’d boarded a plane for Pennsylvania. He landed, gotten into a cab, and came straight here. The day before he’d boarded that plane, he’d had fourteen dollars in his bank account. I know, because I checked. I also know he had no credits card and no credit. Someone gave him cash and told him to come here.
Momma swears it wasn’t her. I’ve investigated the hell out of it, but still haven’t turned up anything.
I wave Cooper off. “Go home, Coop. I have no idea why you keep coming here.”
He flinches as if my tone is as solid as a missile, and I repress the feeling of sympathy. He doesn’t deserve it. He left me, left Hope, with my grandmother, that madwoman, so he could do drugs to drown out the pain of Mom’s death. Even now, his brown eyes carry that tell-tale misty gleam. Yep. Drugs are still his refuge.
Blinking, he pulls a medallion from around his neck and holds it out to me.
No way am I touching that thing. I shake my head adamantly.
Confusion gathers in the earthy skin of his broad brow. “Your birthday’s coming up.”
“What?” The hair on my neck stands on end. “My birthday isn’t for weeks.”
He frowns. His slacker shoulders droop further. He opens the medallion. A locket? “I wanted you to have it.”
He keeps holding it at me, and I swallow a chunk of irritation. Curious, I take it. The metal is warm against my palm as I stare at two small, faded photos. One of my mom at twenty-five or so, right before she’d died. God, she was so beautiful. A blue-eyed, blonde-haired woman who looked nothing like me but everything like… Hope.
The other photo is of Hope and me, arms over each other’s shoulders. I repress the sound of grief. It’s been so long. I have no other photos. I hunch over the locket and a lump forms in my throat. Tears threaten.
“Happy birthday, Justice. Love you.”
That snaps me upright and into the past. I’m a child clinging to Cooper’s legs, begging him, “Please take us. Please. Daddy! Don’t leave us here. Please!”
He shook me off the way you shake off dust.
My heart stiffens in my chest. I’ll keep the locket. He owes me that much. More. But he gets nothing in return. None of the absolution he is seeking by coming here.
Before I turn and walk away forever, I look him in the eyes and say, “Stop coming here.”