Ashley Cooper's Arc

Chapter 29 of 37

The smoke reached the Cooper house before Ashley did. Sirens screamed across town. She stood in the yard with soot on her sleeves, and headlights swept the street. Two police cars stopped at the curb. An officer stepped out and said her name. Someone had seen a girl leave the mansion. They put cuffs on her bone wrist and drove her to the jail. They locked Ashley in a small cell. A guard sat at a desk down the hall. She pressed her forehead to the cold bars and thought her life was over. No trial, no future, no girl who would ever want her. Just concrete and one small window. Morning came. Then her father arrived. Danny Cooper walked in fast, his glasses fogged, the pens still crowding his shirt pocket. He gripped the bars and stared at Ashley like she might disappear again. His round face crumpled. "I'm getting you out," Danny said. "I don't care how." Ashley shook her head. "They saw me leave the fire, Dad. There's no lawyer for that." Danny looked down the hall at the guard. The man was young, bored, spinning a set of keys. Danny straightened his collar. He wet his fingers and pushed back his hair. Ashley had never seen her boring father do anything so strange. "Dad, what are you doing?" "Something I learned about myself," Danny said. He walked to the desk. Ashley watched through the bars. Her father leaned close to the guard and spoke low. The guard laughed, then stopped laughing. Danny put a soft hand on the man's arm. He said something about lonely nights and the way the man's shoulders filled his uniform. The guard's ears turned red. Ashley could not believe it. Her father, the most boring man in town, was flirting with a jailer. The guard glanced at the empty hall. He glanced at Ashley. Then he leaned in and kissed Danny over the desk. Danny kissed him back like he meant it. The keys clinked when the guard set them down. When they broke apart, the guard cleared his throat. "The camera's been broken for a week," he said. "Nobody would know if she walked out the side door." He unlocked the cell. Ashley stepped out, stunned. Danny pulled her under his arm and hurried her down the hall. The guard held the side door and did not look at them. Outside, the morning air was gray with smoke. Danny walked Ashley to his car and started the engine. "You didn't have to do that," Ashley said. "Yes I did," Danny said. "You're my daughter." Ashley leaned back and breathed. She was free. But she was also a girl the police were now hunting, wanted for a death, hiding in her father's car. She had escaped one cage into a bigger one. And she still had no one who loved her the way she wanted. Finding that person just got much harder.