Yesterday's Gone: Season One

it wouldn’t hurt to keep an eye out for helicopters.
     

     
    After a long silence, Teagan stirred from a nap in the passenger seat, “What’s her name?”
     
    “Who?”
     
    “You said you had ... have a daughter. What’s her name?”
     
    “Jade. She’s a little older than you, lives with a roommate in Georgia. Goes to college for art. A good kid.”
     
    “Do you know if she’s okay?”
     
    “No,” Ed said, “I tried calling her a few times. But the lines are dead. Were dead at the hotel too. So, I’m gonna drive out after I bring you home.”
     
    “Were you close?”
     
    Ed glanced at Teagan, thought again how much she looked like his own daughter, and felt as if some ghost of Jade were asking questions, rather than this stranger he’d just met. A doppelganger who would transmit his answers to Jade, wherever she was. For a moment, he wondered if he hadn’t died in the car crash and he was in purgatory working through his issues with his demons, represented by the person he’d done the most damage to.
     
    “Not as close as I would have liked,” he said, in a rare candid response, rather than the vague phrasing he usually used when discussing his daughter.
     
    “Why not?”
     
    “Were you close with your parents?” Ed asked, turning the tables and dodging the question.
     
    “Not since this,” she said, rubbing her tummy. “They’re strict. My dad is super religious, old-school religious, if you know what I mean.”
     
    Ed nodded.
     
    “He called me a harlot, and actually brought me to the pastor, begging him to see if I’d been infected by Satan.”
     
    “Jesus.”
     
    “Yeah, good times. My mom isn’t quite as bad, but she’s afraid of him. And never really rocks the boat. I think she was even sort of happy I was pregnant, in some weird way. Like a baby in the house might bring some joy back into their otherwise miserable lives.”
     
    “And the father of your baby?” Ed asked.
     
    “He doesn’t know. This kid, Jesse Gold, that I liked, but dad wouldn’t let me go out with him because he’s Jewish. Dad asked me who the father was, but I wouldn’t tell him. I don’t know what he’d do if he knew the baby was Jesse’s.”
     
    “You think he’d hurt him?”
     
    “There’s no telling. He might have even made me get an abortion, even though he doesn’t believe in them and talks all the time about how abortionists are the devil’s workers. I had an older sister, Becky, who got pregnant when she was 17 from this black guy she was dating. Dad made her get an abortion.”
     
    “What a fucking hypocrite,” Ed said, shaking his head. “Wait a second ... what do you mean, had an older sister?”
     
    “Becky killed herself last year,” Teagan said, eyes wet again, but refusing to close them or wipe the tears. She just stared out the window.
     
    “I’m sorry,” Ed said, “Do you know why?”
     
    “She left a note in my room which just said, ‘I’m sorry,’ with no explanation. It was about six months after her abortion. Her boyfriend got really mad that she went through with it, that she didn’t ask him, that she let our father have so much control over her life, over their child. She was devastated.”
     
    “That’s so awful,” Ed said, not knowing what else to say.  
     
    They drove in silence for a full five minutes, until he spoke.
     
    “Jade and I weren’t close because I was a horrible father,” he said.  
     
    Teagan turned to him as he continued his confession.
     
    “I was never there for her. I told myself it had to be that way. I had a dangerous job and made enemies. I couldn’t risk my family, so I had to leave. And it’s all true. I was a threat to them. I needed to disappear. But it wasn’t always like that. I could have quit the job before I got in so deep.”
     
    “So you left for her?”
     
    “I tell myself that. But truth is, I left because I was addicted to the job, the danger, and...”
     
    “What?” Teagan asked.
     
    “Nothing. Some thoughts you shouldn’t let out of their cage.”
     

     
    **
     

     
    They drove for five hours and only had to turn off the highway a couple of times due to congestion, but each time they found their way back without incident. Though the storm clouds seemed distant, they drove into buckets as soon as they hit Beckley , West Virginia. The dark sky just opened up and dumped its deluge on them.
     
    The rain was so bad, Ed could barely see out the window. He got off at