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Chapter 8 - Alex

"It's a trick question," said Alex.

She rapped the eraser-end of her pencil against the kitchen table. In her fourth year at Saint Sebastian's Academy, she wore a plaid-skirted uniform and swept her Mary Janes in amplified arcs beneath her chair. Before her, she had transformed graph paper into a logic system of Xs—facts—and Os—the not-quite-sures. Elias March had The Advocate open, a nip of whiskey riding the bottom of his glass.

"Why?"

"The clues say nothing about a fish. It's implied because the only other animals are a dog, a cat, a horse, and a bird. Maybe the German in the green house who likes coffee owns a ferret."

The newspaper's top corner bent to reveal her father's watery gray eyes behind his reading glasses. His cheeks rounded, giving his dark frames a boost. "Einstein's humor, I suppose."

"Does that make us part of the two percent who can solve the riddle?"

He snatched her nose with his first two fingers, a trick that wasn't really a trick once she figured out her nose was really his bent thumb. Still, he always stole it when she impressed him.

"Alexandra, it makes you part of the two percent who can accomplish anything in life so long as you think through challenges."

That same year, she had puzzled through his truck taillights disappearing in an autumn fog. Turned out, she wasn't in the two percent on that one.

Inside her childhood home, Freesia rattled the empty spaces, her every movement like a curator at a museum. Her composed manner, her talent for gathering every thought before speaking, drove Alex to teeth gnashing and dark fantasies about her wandering out late at night and never coming back. Freesia was undeniably Elias's child in those composed moments. In many ways, his attention to life was what Alex had loved most about him, but where had his concern for details been during those sixteen lost days?

Alex snuggled beneath the sheepskin blanket in the backyard. Fire pit flames had long given way to blackened remains. She wanted to add a log and stay on the Adirondack until the light turned off behind Charlotte's old curtains, but Freesia haunted the house well past midnight. Sleeplessness something else they shared, apart from being the daughter of a dead man.

Applying the logic system of Xs—facts—and Os—the not-quite-sures, Alex had come to three conclusions. Elias March's seven hundred and twenty-seven mile journey to the Georgia coast would have carved four travel days from the sixteen, given his old truck's propensity for overheating. He had never mentioned a passing interest in Georgia—or the east coast, for that matter—so meandering travels likely subtracted even more days from the twelve he had left with Freesia's mother—Camilla Day—though Alex felt like she'd swallowed embers each time the woman's name surfaced in her mind. And her father's balm of choice and latent demon—whiskey—was present in his decision to betray his family.

The answers were less than perfect, but they were something.

Her blinks grew long, heavy. She must have dozed because her awareness that the fire had been stacked came slowly. Robust flames pushed back against the night's low ceiling. The blanket was tucked around her like a cocoon.

Jonah filled the adjacent chair. He manned the fire pit like they were in Siberia and he was singularly responsible for them making it out alive. Mostly, she guessed life and death was easier to think about than what had passed between them.

"Hey," said Alex.

"Always did like sleeping out under the stars."

Memories flushed her cheeks. "As I recall, there never was much sleeping."