Chapter 10 - Where We Slept in the City
The parking lot was cold after the warm lights inside. I could feel it through my damp shirt the second Dad pushed the side door open and the air hit us.
He didn't start the car. He just stood with us beside it, his tux jacket already off and around my sister's shoulders. The fabric hung past her hands. She held the sleeves bunched in her fists and didn't look up.
"You’re shivering," he said to me.
I nodded. My hair was still wet against my neck. I could hear the highway past the church lot and a bus braking somewhere down the block.
Dad unlocked his phone and turned it so we could see it. Claire's messages were still open on the screen. He didn't read them out loud again. He just held it low, between us, like he didn't want anyone else driving by to see.
"I need to know where you've been sleeping," he said. "Not Portugal. Here."
My sister glanced at me first. That was how it had worked for six months. She checked with me before she answered grown-ups.
I nodded at her, just a little.
"The gray apartments," she said. Her voice was quiet but clear. "Behind the bus stop. The ones with the blue doors."
Dad crouched down so his eyes were level with hers. "What bus?"
"The fourteen," she said. "Claire said to take the fourteen if we missed pickup. She wrote the number on my backpack tag."
I remembered the tag. The ink had bled from rain. I hadn't told anyone that.
Dad looked at me. "Is that right? You've been here? In the city?"
"Yes," I said. My throat felt tight. "We never flew anywhere."
He breathed out through his nose and didn't speak for a second. His hand was tight on the phone.
"We never left," I said again, because I wanted it to be plain. "We didn't go to Portugal. We didn't get on a plane."
My sister pulled the jacket tighter. "We stand in the pickup line at school," she said. "By the fence. Claire or the lady picks us up. Room twelve is my class. Sophie waits by the office."
Dad closed his eyes for half a second. When he opened them, he was looking past us toward the street, like he was mapping it.
"School pickup line," he repeated. "Bus fourteen. Gray apartments with blue doors behind the bus stop."
"Building C," my sister said. "Our number is on the mailbox. I know it because I got the key once when Claire was late."
Dad's jaw moved. He didn't get angry loud. He got still.
"Six months," he said, more to himself than to us. "She told me you were in Portugal. She told you I'd sold the house and didn't want you. All that time you were three miles from the church."
I didn't know how far it was, but when he said three miles my stomach dropped. I had thought Portugal was far because Claire said plane and ocean and papers. I had pictured water. In truth we'd been hearing the same sirens and the same buses.
"We thought you knew," I said. "She showed us your messages."
"I know, baby," he said quickly. "I know. You believed what she showed you."
A car pulled through the lot, headlights sweeping over us. Dad stood and shifted so we were behind him until it passed. He put one hand lightly on my back. His palm was warm.
My sister sneezed. Dad immediately opened the back door of our car and started the engine to get the heat going.
"Get in," he said. "Both of you. Seatbelts."
We climbed in. The seats were cold at first, then the air turned warm and smelled like old coffee and Dad's aftershave. My sister tucked her wet feet under her. I tried to stop my teeth from chattering.
Dad didn't get in yet. He leaned in the open door, phone still in his hand.
"Tell me the street," he said gently. "If you remember it."
My sister looked at me again. I said it because I was older and I had read the mail.
"Harlow," I said. "Harlow Street. The apartments on Harlow."
Dad typed it with his thumb, slow, so we could see he was saving it and not deleting anything.
"Okay," he said. "Good. That's good telling me."
He looked back toward the church doors, then back at us. The light from the dashboard lit his face.
"We're not going there tonight to knock on doors," he said. "It's late and you're wet and cold. But after we get you warm and dry, we're going to drive by Harlow. Just drive by. So I know. So we all know Portugal wasn't real."
My sister whispered, "We never had passports."
I felt something loosen and hurt at the same time when she said that. That was the proof, plain and small. No plane. No Portugal. Just the fourteen bus and the pickup line by the fence and Building C.
Dad nodded. He rested his hand on the roof of the car for a moment.
"Portugal was a cover," he said. "So she could keep you close and keep me far."
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He didn't say Claire's name like she was his bride anymore. He said it like a fact we had to get around.
Then he shut the back door softly and walked around to the driver's side to get us out of the cold.
