Chapter Four

CHAPTER FOUR

Defy the Desert

Bryony gave her father a kiss on his withered cheek.

“I can’t live here anymore, daddy. The desert is calling out for my bones. Do you understand that?”

Of course Stop Adams understood it. He’d known it for years, ever since she was a baby, practically. His wife had tried to tell him since the day Bryony was born, but he never listened. Finally she had packed up.

“I can’t stand here waiting for my little girl to die, Stop. I can’t take it one more minute. One more second. I will always love you, and her.” She kissed them both on the cheek, just as Bryony kissed him now.

They both said the same words.

“I can’t live here anymore.”

“I understand, baby girl,” Stop said.

His heart quietly broke in half, but he knew that he would shuffle home and sew it back together again. Old men break and break and break into smaller pieces, going on until there is nothing left. He always had something left, as long as he had his daughter. He knew that on the day she died, he would disappear, as well, and they would rejoice together wherever it was they would rejoice. But until then, he stayed. He didn’t mind it a bit.

“Sergio across the street will send his daughter to make dinner every night. I know you’ll get by for lunch. And I’ll call at least twice a week. Just so you know.”

Just so he knew.

Just so he knew that she was alive, still breathing, still gasping in great big breaths of beautiful, fragrant air. His lovely girl.

“Where are you planning to go, sweetheart?” he asked her. Wherever it was, he wouldn’t follow. The desert was his home, the wild animals prowling around inside his skin. The sun had baked itself right into his psyche, and if he walked too far past its borders, he would collapse into sand that filled his shoes. He knew that Bryony would come home, one way or another. She would either visit or be shipped home in bits and parts. The desert would have her when all was said and done, but not yet. Not quite yet.

“I’m not sure yet, Daddy. I was thinking that maybe I’d like to see cornfields.”

“All of the old horror movies revolve around cornfields.”

“Or New York City.”

“You’ll be murdered in no time, that be true.”

“How about . . . the Northwest?”

“Ah, honey, serial killers spawn there. I don’t think you’d last a day, dear heart.”

Bryony shook her head. Her hair fell in golden waves down to her waist, pulled back by a headband, the way that a good girl wears her hair. Red Riding hood wore headbands, as did Alice in Wonderland. Both were in peril. Both suffered. This fact was not lost on her father.

“Daddy, I want to see things. I want to be somewhere that I have never been before. I hate the desert, and want to be somewhere different.”

Stop pulled himself up from the lawn chair. He hugged his girl.

“Don’t be letting me stop you, Bryony. You go and be what you need to be. Do what you need to do. You know that I’ll always be here, yes? Go be free, sweetheart. Live a good life.”

Bryony skipped inside, much lighter after this conversation with her father. Stop sat himself back down on the chair in the tender way that he had picked up over the last eighteen years. She was a good girl, a sweet soul. Somehow she took whatever was in her hands and threw it across the sky like diamonds. This was what she needed to do, and the world needed her as much as she needed to see what life was like outside of a town built on death.

But he was sure going to miss her.

Stop stayed up very late that night, staring out at the desert. He learned long ago not to turn on the lights, to let the darkness creep closer. He didn’t want to know what was staring back. Staring at him, and staring at his little girl.