My dad was real friendly to customers, but not to us, his family. We knew his friendliness was just for show. A mask. To us, he was always Sir. That Sir set the tone. Kept us in line.
But we didn’t appreciate it. My brother moved out his senior year of high school. (He’s been dead for two years now. Cirrhosis of the liver.) My sister got married as soon as she graduated. And I joined the service when I was eighteen.
Back then, I thought my dad was the bad guy, the way he bossed us around. He didn’t hesitate to whip off his belt at the first sign of back talk or even a certain look. Now I see that he just had high standards.
I spent over twenty years working stateside in the auto pool. Thanks to my dad, I could fix anything. I understood cars in a way I’d never understood people. I tried dating, but it never went the way I wanted. Every woman would ultimately reveal who she was. A whore. A feminazi. A yapper who wanted to tell me what she thought about things.
Two years ago, a lift failed and an engine block crushed my dad’s chest. My mom said he had died the way he would have wanted to. And then she asked me to come home and run this place.
I left the service and stepped into my dad’s boots. Literally. It was strange to realize that I was now the same size as him. And I found out that it was good to be your own boss. You could set your own hours. Make your own rules. And if people didn’t like them, so what?
Just as she had with my dad, my mom took care of me. She wasn’t like women now, who didn’t understand that a man was king of his castle. Women who wanted you to pay for dinner but didn’t think they owed you anything afterward.
I checked out dating websites, but my mom was quick to figure out what was wrong with each potential date: hardened, trampy, mouthy, too old, raising another man’s brats.
She said I needed someone like her. My dad had started dating her when he was in his twenties and she was still in middle school. He had shaped her into the woman she was. She didn’t see that wasn’t exactly possible nowadays, especially when you were forty-two.
But then last year, Mom died. She was not a complainer. By the time she finally went to the doctor, it was too late. The cancer was everywhere. She passed in the hospital less than two weeks after her diagnosis.
I missed her, of course. But she had also been a brake on me. I had started thinking about a way to get what I wanted. What I needed. What I deserved. But I hadn’t been sure my mother would agree with my plans. Once she was gone, it was time to come into my own.
Driving a variety of cars I coaxed back to life, I started searching, keeping my eyes open for the right girl. The girl I had always dreamed of. Slender, pale skin, long dark hair, something vulnerable in her expression.
Once I found the right one, I planned to control everything about her. She would dress in the clothes I gave her. She would be demure and feminine. She would address me only as Sir, and she would never talk back.
I would create the perfect girl.
If Jenny had stayed pretty, maybe she could have been the one. Even so, I had learned a lot from her. It wasn’t totally her fault that things had gone so wrong, but at the same time, you had to know when to cut your losses.
Then I spotted Savannah. I had first seen her when she came in with her mom and stepdad, dragged along while he picked up some parts for his 1968 Camaro. The whole time I had been talking to him, she had her face in her phone. Looking at her sulky expression, I thought how disrespectful she was being, not even bothering to hide her boredom.
She needed to be taught a lesson. And I was just the person to do it.
Since I had her address, it hadn’t been hard to find her again. I followed her as she walked to her kung fu school, cutting away and then back a couple of times in case she turned around. But she never did.
That night I parked down the street and picked up my binoculars. Sitting in the darkness, I watched her through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Even though Savannah was the youngest in the class, she held her own.
I came back night after night, figuring out her schedule. Figuring out the best place to take her. I wanted a girl with a little more spunk than Jenny. A spark. Who wouldn’t just hang her head and say yes sir, no sir. Someone who was more of a challenge. Taming Jenny had been like taming a dog. She was already hardwired to be loyal.
But this girl, this Savannah, she was a fighter. That was why I had picked her. But didn’t they say the thing that drew you to someone would ultimately be the thing that pushed you away? Like if you were attracted to a person who was always the life of the party, by the time the relationship ended, you would be sick of their partying ways.
So I had picked a fighter, and that was exactly what I had gotten. Savannah had fought me in the parking lot. She had jumped out of the van when it was moving. And though she was injured now, as soon as she healed up, she would probably be plotting my demise.
This morning, looking down at her, wondering if she was really as unconscious as Jenny claimed, I realized that I’d made a huge mistake.
I just had to figure out how to fix it. Without making too much of a mess. Sewing up Jenny’s face had been disgusting. Trying to kill two girls who did not want to die would surely be even more difficult and bloody.
Now as Rex barked and ran in circles around me, I crawled underneath the RV and found the white drain plug for the fresh water tank. It had no valve. It was easy to undo.
And then all the water poured out onto the ground. I didn’t even mind when it soaked the knees of my pants. Sometimes you had to do things that you didn’t want to. That were a little bit unpleasant. That might even seem, from an outsider’s perspective, wrong.
In four or five days, the girls would be past causing anyone any trouble. Past doing anything at all.
And I already had the RV I had originally prepared for Savannah.
Just waiting for a new girl.
DANIEL DIAZ
“Diaz,” my dad barked, even though with caller ID he must have seen it was me. He hadn’t answered the first time I called, just sent it to voice mail. So I’d hung up and called back.
“Hey, Dad, sorry to bother you.” My hand was sweating so much that it was hard to hold my phone. My other hand still held Savannah’s beanie.
“Daniel, remember, I have Shop with a Cop today.” His faux-patient tone sounded like it came through gritted teeth. Shop with a Cop gave kids from underprivileged backgrounds gift cards and assigned them a cop buddy so they could Christmas shop for themselves and their families.
I’d never been Christmas shopping with my dad.
“I know, and I’m sorry,” I said. “Only I’m at the dojo, and I just found Savannah’s hat in the upper parking lot.”
His tone changed. “Tell me more.” After I explained, he said, “I’ll be there in twenty.”
Waiting in the parking lot, shivering in the chilly air, I felt hollowed out. The hat was proof that Savannah hadn’t run away. That something bad must have happened to her here, with no one around to help her. With all the businesses closed and me pedaling away.
I kicked a pebble. When it landed, something black and round above it caught my eye. It was attached to the overhang sheltering the entrances of the four businesses that shared the lot.
A surveillance camera.
If I could see it, it could see me.
And if it could see me, had it seen Savannah?