Last Call Read Free Page B

upstairs to her bedroom and stuck her cell phone, the band photo and a change of clothes in a knapsack. Then she was back in the vestibule with Stacey, opening the front door, saying, “Come on. I’ll drop you off on the way.”
    * * *
    An hour south of Sudbury on Highway 69, Trish swerved into the passing lane and gunned it, leaving a slow-moving convoy of motor homes in her rearview. A few moments later a trucker in the oncoming lane blinked his headlights at her and Trish checked the speedometer—she was doing a hundred and forty kilometers an hour, fifty over the limit. She eased up on the gas pedal, realizing she’d had it glued to the mat. As she rounded the next bend, doing ninety now, she saw the nose of an O.P.P. cruiser poking out of a tree-lined side road. Cursing softly, she stared straight ahead and drove past, fists clamped to the wheel at ten and two, heart pounding. If he’d clocked her earlier he’d probably impound the car, and if that happened her father might die before she even got to him. The wholly insane notion of trying to outrun the cop entered her mind—Toronto was still three hours away—but repeated checks in her rearview revealed no pursuit.
    Signaling now, Trish pulled into a vacant rest stop and shut off the engine. She was wired way too tight. Her hands were cramped from gripping the steering wheel and the long muscles in her back felt like steel cables. She had to calm down. If the man Dean had found really was her dad—and some unshakeable instinct insisted that he was—she’d be no good to him wrapped around a power pole or cooling her heels in a jail cell on a reckless driving charge. Her volleyball coach always told her that the wisest action proceeded from clear, unhurried thought, and she made an effort now to heed that advice. She’d torn out of the house with an empty stomach, twenty dollars in her pocket and nothing on her mind but getting to Toronto as quickly as she could. She had no plan—and worse, hadn’t called her mother or left her a note—and no idea of how she’d even approach her father...if he survived his injuries.
    She opened her knapsack and took out the band photo, a faded black & white taken in a bar somewhere. In it a young Sally West posed in front of a microphone in skin-tight jeans, stage lights flaring through a frizzy afro; and next to her, a shirtless Jim Gamble, vintage hollow-body slung mean and low, the tattoo on his chest glistening with sweat against the pale of his skin. Trish had memorized every detail of his appearance, from the thick tumble of jet black hair and the unmistakable brightness of his smile—no question she’d inherited that trait from her dad—to his cute cleft chin and the lit cigarette tucked ember-up between the tuning keys of his guitar.
    Before finding this photo—and learning that her parents had been recording artists—she’d had only her imagination, and as a little girl she’d retreated to it often, watching her school friends rush into their fathers’ arms at day’s end and picturing herself doing the same, or sitting alone at her bedroom window, spying on the twins next door playing with their dad on the swing-n-slide and wishing she was one of them.
    Growing up, her fantasies had become more sophisticated, and Trish had often envisioned him appearing at her front door at the close of some lengthy and crucial endeavor—working undercover for the police, maybe, or fresh from some decades-long archeological expedition—full of sorrow for his prolonged absence from her life. Discovering he’d been a rock star had only enriched her fantasies.
    Sitting here now in the summer heat, Trish remembered the day she’d found the album—and her mother’s less than pleasant reaction to the discovery...
    * * *
    Smiling, excited, Trish came down from the attic with the album in her hand, saying, “Mom, you never told me you and dad were recording artists.”
    Not smiling, Sally said, “Where did you get that?”