The Stranger

“Your daughter?”

Those were the last words I heard her say to me before she shut the door of her cabin.

Now I was sure she was not going to talk to me. So I made plans to leave. There was no reason to stay around the small town of Cosby. In my mind, I made plans to drive my rented car back to the airport, get on a plane, and return home.

Hours before, without thinking before deciding what to do, I had left Cincinnati on an early American Airlines flight and arrived two hours late at McGhee Tyson Airport outside Knoxville and rented a compact Nissan Versa from Enterprise. Already the trip had cost me almost $400 to go someplace I had never been to see someone I had never met.

I drove north on Highway 129, then east on 141. Green hills were on both sides of me and in front of me and behind me, and I would have felt very lost without the map on the touch screen on the dashboard. Less than an hour later, I was in Sevierville, a quaint and historic town that had seemed to have surrendered to a street full of tourists. A billboard advertised Dollywood to the south of there. I continued to drive. Cosby was only 20 miles away, what my GPS stated was another 35 minutes, yet it seemed much farther to me. The trip was not what I had expected. Instead, I was driving too fast and felt that I was riding on a twisting and turning and thrilling rollercoaster through millions of trees in these forested hills and rising toward the hazy mountains ahead. All of this was new to me. I had never traveled to Tennessee before today.

Her cabin was in a valley on the other side of the town, just a few miles from the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains. At the end of a dusty road, it seemed secluded in the trees from other houses. To me, it was like a picture. A steep green tin roof covered the small log cabin. There was a stone chimney at the side. Stairs led to the long front porch and a pair of old-fashioned rocking chairs. A child’s swing hung on rusty chains from the limb of a giant oak tree near where I parked my car.

“What took you so long?” she asked after she opened the door.

“I had to come a long way.”

“You aren’t with DoorDash, are you?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Then who are you?” she wanted to know.

“You,” I had to pause, “don’t know me.”

“I know I don’t know you. Who are you and what do you want?”

“I’m Alex McCarver,” I answered.

“If you’re trying to sell me something, I’m not interested.”

She began to close the door.

“Wait!” I said, not wanting it to sound like a command.

She left the door open a few inches.

“You see ...” I could not remember the speech I had prepared for this time. I could not think of anything to say.

She started to close the door again.

“Was your mother Sarah Elrod?” I unexpectedly asked.

She did not answer right away. She just looked at me suspiciously.

I had not needed to ask that question. I could already tell by her hair and eyes, her nose and lips that her mother was Sarah. She looked very much like her when she was thirty.

“You’re wasting my time. I’m busy and don’t have time to talk.”

I hated myself that I had to wait so long to meet her. Many years in prison had made it impossible. As soon as I got out, with the help of a laptop and Google, I had tried to find out where she lived. I could not stop admiring her brown eyes. Her mother had often looked at me with eyes just like those.

“Are you going to leave?” she asked, becoming impatient because I was staring at her and not saying much.

“I know you don’t know me,” I said. “But I kind of know you.” What was I supposed to tell her now? That I could remember when she was born and I was there until she turned two years old? That the last time I saw her I was being taken away in handcuffs? That I had been thinking of her for the past 28 years?

All of that was true because I had been addicted to drugs way back then and in my haste to make enough money to buy more drugs, I had come into contact with an undercover cop. I did not know that for the next several weeks he was watching me. He waited until he knew I had drugs in my car to arrest me. That last morning I saw her, I was leaving our house and going to my car to deal drugs when the handcuffs were suddenly snapped around my wrists. She and Sarah were standing at the front door as that happened. I glanced back at them for the last time.

I am 50 now, and she is 30. Her birthday was last month, but I did not send a card or call her, of course. I wondered, did Sarah even tell her about me? I knew she divorced me while I was in prison, and I was almost certain she had remarried. So the only father she knew was another man. She had grown up and, at some time, moved away from where she had lived with her mother. How she came to Cosby, I did not know. But this was where Google had led me. I was sure I had found her.

I turned away for a moment so she could not see the tears in my eyes. I quickly looked again at my rented car and the dusty road I had driven on to get here and the child’s swing by the driveway. I did not doubt that there was someone else in the cabin.

“You don’t know me,” she said with certainty while my back was still looking away. I wiped my eyes and turned around. I wondered, what I am supposed to say?

“Are you married? Do you have children?” I had spoken too hastily and wished that instead I had said nothing at all.

“I’m about to call the sheriff,” she said.

Immediately I stepped back. If she did, and a background check was made, I would be in a lot of trouble. I was supposed to have permission from my probation officer before I could leave Ohio. I took another step back and almost fell down the stairs.

I had spent almost a day getting here and I was going to have to leave. In my mind, I made plans to drive my rented car back to the airport and fly home. But it would be too late to get a flight back tonight, so I quickly thought about what I could do. I remembered there were a lot of motels in Sevierville, just a half-hour away. I would stay at one of them and fly back in the morning.

There was one more chance to say something to her. I had to say it. I could not leave here without telling it to her. I did not think I would ever be welcomed back if I did not say it. But I could not do it. The words would not come out of my mouth.

All that I could think of to say was, “You’re my daughter.”

I realized I had frightened her.

“Your daughter?” she asked in disbelief. I looked into her eyes and recognized she was scared. I was not someone in her life, and I never would be. That was the end of our conversation. I heard somebody else in her cabin say something to her. Maybe it was her husband.

And she shut the door.