One Cold Night

abortion, he thought, then hated himself for thinking that because it was Lisa they were discussing — Lisa — and he had come to care deeply about her as her brother-in-law... no, her stepfather. What was he to this girl? What was she to him? What had happened tonight in Lisa’s mind when she had received this same news? Dave’s imagination saw her now, the look of shock on her face, the bristle of her movements as she raced out of the loft. He could imagine the chaos of her thoughts as she walked the streets of Dumbo and painted the yellow line, then stopped painting the yellow line. If it hadn’t been for the man’s footprint, Dave would have walked out of this office right now and called off the budding investigation. But the footprint altered the story; their story had been one thing — a triad of love and trust and secrets — but something else had happened next.
    Susan reached out to take Dave’s hand, and he lether. Her skin felt warm and dry, comforting; he felt the longing of his love for her and the coolness of his confusion.
    “Please try to understand,” she said. “I was very young when Lisa was born. Mommy and Daddy and I made a decision together that I should go on with my schooling and growing up and they would raise Lisa. You can’t possibly know how life was in small-town Texas fourteen years ago. A teenage mother? A single mother? It never, ever could have happened, not in our little enclave.”
    She had grown up Christian, Dave knew that, and he understood the historical and cultural context of the decision she was describing to him. He understood all that — in his head. But in his heart?
    “What about the father?” he asked.
    “Lisa’s father?”
    He stared at her; obviously that was what he had meant.
    “Peter Adkins.” Her voice sounded vaporous but her eyes were direct, pinned on Dave’s face as she let the story out. “We were high school sweethearts but he was two years older than me. We dated less than a year. I got pregnant. Lisa was born. End of story.” She paused, then added, “I told Peter I had an abortion.”
    “He never knew about Lisa?” Dave angled forward, incredulous.
    “When I told him I was pregnant, he kind of... reacted in a way I never really expected. It was like he suddenly owned me. He assumed we’d get married. I told him I wasn’t sure and he got so angry. He scared me. So I told him I’d already had an abortion and he... he said he hated me. He said I should have done the right thing and married him. Then he slappedmy face, very hard.” She lifted her hand to her face as if she could still feel the sting.
    “He hit you?” Dave’s surging emotions were mixed and powerful: his desire to protect her, even against past slights, and the sense that he was only now finding out who she really was.
    “If I had never gotten pregnant,” she said, “he would have been my teenage boyfriend; that’s all. But now—”
    “Lisa’s biological father is Peter Adkins,” Dave said, tasting the name, rolling it around his tongue. “Peter Adkins. Does he still live in Texas?”
    “I don’t know where he is now.”
    “Do you have any pictures of him?”
    “Pictures?”
    “For the investigation. It might help; you never know.”
    “You don’t really think—”
    “Everything needs to be looked at, Susan, without hesitation.”
    It was that word — hesitation — that clearly stung her most. But didn’t hesitation always come at a cost? He wished she had told him all this sooner, hours ago, years ago; it was something he had always needed to know.
    “I don’t have any pictures of Peter anymore,” she said. “I threw them all away a long time ago.”
    “What does he look like?”
    “Dave—”
    “No, Susan, that’s not it.” He felt no jealousy, just anger and betrayal and confusion and love and coldness and nausea. If Lisa hadn’t been missing, he would have preferred never knowing what Peter Adkins looked like or what he had felt like or what hehad thought or what it had been like to have fathered Susan’s baby. “Just give me the facts, please.”
    “Blond, blue eyes, about five foot nine. Lisa resembles him.”
    Dave filed the information into the cop part of his brain: Description matches that of a suspicious-person report in the area just two days ago.
    “Is there anything else I should know?” Dave asked, taking a single step away from her.
    “Are you leaving?” she asked, and something unintentional sizzled between