examine your motives. He hasn’t hurt me or anyone else in Port St. Mary.”
“He’s hiding something, Adri. Permit or not, no law-abiding citizen needs to be toting around a gun in his waistband.”
“He’s not going to hurt anyone.”
“You can’t possibly know that,” he says in a low growl.
“I can, because I know his heart.”
He gives me doleful shake of his head. “You think you love him, but real love is something that grows over time. You’re too young to know all the evil in people’s hearts.”
“They’re leaving, Dad,” I say, my chest collapsing into a sucking wound. “If you drop the charges, they’ll be gone and you won’t have to worry about Rob or any of them again.”
His eyebrows lift. “He told you that?”
I nod, swallowing tears I can’t show him.
“Where are they going?”
“I have no idea.”
“So, you and he . . . ?”
“Over.” The word is like a dull ice pick to my chest. I hold my breath a second until the pain subsides. “If you drop his charges, they’ll be gone. If you hold him here until trial, that will take months.”
“You won’t see him again?”
“No,” I answer.
He takes a deep breath and blows it out slowly. “Fine, I’ll drop the charges. But if he so much as looks your direction, I’ll have him back behind bars faster than he can blink.”
The cramp in my heart loosens and I can’t stop a tear from spilling onto my cheek. “Thank you.”
He looks at me a long heartbeat before taking the picture of Mom from my hand and disappearing up the hall into his room.
Chapter 32
Rob
Officer Dad dropped the charges. When the concealed weapons permit for my Glock turned out to be legit and Adri refused to go along with the kidnapping idea, he had nothing to hold me on. I should thank her, but the only thing that’s straight in my head right now is that I need to steer clear of her. To that end, Lee is taking Sherm to school, and Grant is picking him up on the Harley in the afternoons.
I’ve been shot, stabbed, punched, and hit in the leg with a dart, and nothing’s ever wrenched my gut quite like this. And the pain is sharper every time I relive our night on the road two weeks ago. I can’t eat, or think, or even breathe half the time. It’ll be a miracle if I survive it. Good thing I’ll never feel this way about anyone else.
Sherm only has a month left in the school year, so Lee talked me into letting him finish before asking the Feds to relocate us. Until then, we’re on high alert. But all this waiting gives me too much time to think.
I finally get that, even if we find a way to go home, the person I was in Chicago is dead. Out from under Pop, I’ve turned into the person I think Mom was hoping I’d become. I thumb the ring on my pinky and hope, wherever she is, she’s proud of us.
I pull my ring off and turn it in my fingers, reading the inscription inside, the same one as in all my brothers’ and sisters’ rings.
EVERYTHING IN BALANCE
With all this time to think, Adri’s draw over me has become clearer in my head. She and Mom both have a gift for bringing out the good in people. But the difference is, Mom knew there is always dark behind the light, and bad behind the good. Everything in balance. Adri only sees the light and the good, which makes her too easily deceived. Too easily destroyed. And where Adri wants to fix everything, Mom realized there are some things that need to be accepted just the way they are.
I lean back against the shingles of the widow’s walk and slip the ring onto my finger. I fist my hand until the nails cut into my palms, trying to hold on to the good in myself.
Like the Beast, I’ve banished myself to the tower, spending my days on the widow’s walk contemplating my sorry life and where we go from here. But when a white pickup rolls up the driveway a little after noon, I push off the rail and head down the stairs, grabbing two beers out of the fridge on my way to the door. I step onto the porch just as Chuck spills out of the truck.
I hand him a beer. “I don’t deserve it, but let me take the edge off before you beat