Brooklyn Secrets by Triss Stein Read Free Book Online Page A

vanilla-fudge I will come.” She winked at me. “Told you there might be ice cream. Come again if you can. I like having company.”
    Behind her back, the nurse whispered to me, “It’s good for her. She hasn’t been at all well.”
    Later that night, there was a phone call. A frail, sad voice with no name. She said, “I was just a little girl. What did I know about his life outside the house? Maybe I turned him into a hero myself.”

Chapter Six
    Two days later, there was still no additional news about Savanna. I was sure about that, because I was listening to the radio or TV all the time. I wanted to know those nasty young men were locked up, to hear that young Savanna was on the mend, to see her mother at another news conference talking about how relieved she was. None of that happened.
    I already knew I would have to go back to Brownsville. My photos were only barely acceptable so I had borrowed a good camera. My ladies at the nursing home had given me some more locations I wanted to see and perhaps photograph. They were many years younger than Maurice Cohen and their hangouts were different. He wrote about meeting girls in the park in the thirties. They told me where they were when the war ended.
    I had organized my cameras, notebooks, keys. I did not expect my dad to show up at my door.
    Dad and I have a difficult relationship. It’s getting better, partly due to Chris’ desire to have him in our lives, but it’s still touchy. I don’t know what irritates me most, his desire to protect me and take care of me, long after I needed anything like that, or my lingering distrust, stemming from the woman who took over his life after Mom died. She dragged him off to Arizona when I really did need him, and then dumped him.
    I didn’t talk to him for a time, but Chris did. And then he came back home, to the little house in East Flatbush where I grew up. And then he tried to work his way back into my life. Sometimes I even let him.
    There he was, ringing my doorbell.
    â€œDad? What’s up? I was just on my way out.”
    â€œOff to school?”
    â€œAh, no. Um, off to another part of Brooklyn. It’s, um, job research.”
    â€œHow’d you like a driver? I’ve got no special chores today. Come on, I’ll take you out to breakfast. Which way are you heading? I know how to find pancakes in any neighborhood.”
    He did, too. He’d worked as a cab driver until his retirement. He knew how to find anything, anywhere in the city. Sometimes it was eerie. And that healthy yogurt I’d eaten at seven a.m. seemed very long ago.
    â€œOkay. But there’s a deal.”
    â€œOh?”
    â€œIf I tell you where I am going, no comments. None. Promise?”
    â€œWhat exactly are you up to?”
    I shook my head. “Promise.”
    â€œDeal. I’ll drive. Just point me in the right direction.”
    â€œOut Eastern Parkway.”
    â€œWhere are we going?”
    When I told him, his expression changed.
    â€œYou promised, Dad. Not one word.”
    â€œWhat? What did I say? Nothing. But we’ll stop for breakfast before we get there.”
    And so we did, at a diner he knew about. He always knows about a diner.
    Over bacon and eggs I told him about my project, the chapter on crime for my dissertation, the photos, my visit to the nursing home. I left out my scary encounter. Not by accident either.
    When he started to ask me why I had not asked him to go with me, I gave him a look, the one Chris gives me. “Because I am a grown woman? I don’t need my dad to hold my hand?”
    He didn’t seem convinced, but he was smart enough not to say so. In the car, fully caffeinated and fed and then some, I gave him some specific locations courtesy of Ruby and Lillian. “This is how we’ll do it. You stop and I’ll hop out, take a few photos, and jump back in. Got it?”
    He nodded without a word. After a few blocks