you okay, cookie?” Dad looked down at her with a notch between his eyebrows.
“She’s hungover,” Becca stated.
Sloane shot her sister a look.
“Also her boyfriend just dumped her.”
“Becca!”
“Boyfriend?” Dad frowned.
“You didn’t tell them either?”
Sloane sighed. If she was going to tell anyone anything, it would be Becca long before it would be Dad and Viv.
“We’ve only been seeing each other a few weeks,” she said. “It was no big deal.”
Becca coughed around the word “bullshit”.
“He broke up with you?” Viv asked, concern creasing her forehead. “Are you okay, Sloane honey?”
The motherly tone and the endearment had Sloane’s eyes stinging. She opened her mouth to say she was fine, but no words could get through her clogged throat. She blinked and swallowed.
“You’re not okay.” Viv moved toward her and wrapped her arms around her. “What happened? Come sit down.”
The hug and the concern only churned up Sloane’s emotions even more. Tears slid down her cheeks as Viv led her to the couch in the living room. She sat and looked up to see her dad and siblings watching her with shocked confusion. Again, she started to tell them she was okay, but couldn’t do it.
She wasn’t okay. She was a mess. A melting-down, tear-stained mess. An embarrassing sobby noise escaped her throat.
Viv hugged her again, rocking her gently, and she let her head rest on Viv’s shoulder as the tears flowed. Finally she sucked in a long shaky breath and lifted her head. She wiped her cheeks with her palms, glad she hadn’t bothered with mascara. “I’m sorry,” she said thickly. “This isn’t what we came here for.”
“No,” Viv said softly. “I think this is exactly what you came here for. To be with people who love you when you’re hurting. That’s why we’re all here.”
Sloane looked at Viv. She didn’t deserve such kindness from Viv, who she’d been at best guardedly friendly to all these years. Viv’s warmth and generosity made her feel even more regret.
“Do you want to talk about this man?” Viv asked, her eyes soft.
“I don’t think I can,” Sloane choked out. “Right now.”
“That’s okay.” Viv rubbed her back. “I understand. Art, why don’t you tell them what you’ve learned from the police over the last few days.”
“Uh. Sure.”
Now Dad, Becca and Eric all took seats, and Dad filled them in on the information Mom had revealed to the police in California, more details about her life and the lies she’d been living. They were having a psychiatric evaluation done. She had a court-appointed attorney but was likely facing some kind of prison sentence for trafficking.
“Sometimes it feels like we’re talking about someone else’s life,” Dad said a while later. “This can’t be our life. That can’t be your mother.”
“I know, right?” Becca nodded. “Maybe I’m weird, but I almost don’t feel anything.”
Eric shrugged. “I gave up on her a long time ago.”
Sloane mostly listened. It was hard to sort out all her tangled emotions. But finally she confessed, “I always hoped she’d come back.”
She started talking, about how hard it had been, how much she’d missed her mother, how painful it had been when she’d been declared dead. How angry she was. How much it hurt that her mother had walked out and never come back, knowing she left three children behind, abandoning them. She talked about how she understood with her head about mental illness but her heart still hurt.
Dad talked too. He told them more about how angry and scared he’d been when he’d been a person of interest. Everyone knew that the husband was going to be the first suspect in a case when a wife went missing. Especially when she’d disappeared for no apparent reason. He’d known he hadn’t done anything, but even so, it had been a nightmare.
“I know I wasn’t much of a dad after that,” he admitted, his voice low. “I checked out of almost everything. I was lucky I didn’t lose my job. I felt guilty about how much we’d lost and I couldn’t face that either. I wondered if it was my fault that Cyn left. I was letting everyone down and I just wanted to hide.”
Sloane nodded, her face hurting, her heart aching.
“Sloane,” he said. “You were so strong. You were so brave and strong. I was scared for you, because I knew you had to be hurting so much. I let you take on way too much of the burden. I’m sorry.”
She stared at her father. “Oh, Dad.” Her throat thickened again. “We did what we