black and white world, he was right. But the way Katie had acted this morning? The way she’d tried to laugh off her stress, and act like everything was fine? It just made me more convinced that my decision had been the right one all these years.
If she needed someone to talk to, or needed a place to go, I had to be there for her. And this morning had been too close a call.
What if she’d opened my bedroom door? Or what if someone else had seen Connor and me together this past week? It could have been my parents, could have been my boss, could have been anyone on an island this small.
I’d been so self-centered, so desperate and grasping and afraid of letting Connor leave, that I’d let that crowd out the rest of my priorities. I wasn’t just lying to Katie and my parents. I was lying to myself.
There was nothing I could do to get Connor to stay that didn’t jeopardize everything else in my life. And there were some things I just couldn’t risk.
I still hadn’t heard from Connor when I got home from work, so I had no idea when he was coming over to pick Roxie up. Not that I was really looking forward to it. But watching the clock tick later into the evening, my dread only grew. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard a knock on my front door at 8:00 o’clock that night.
Swallowing against the nerves that crowded my stomach, I walked to the front of the house and opened the door, trying to convince myself that I was ready to face Connor.
It was my dad.
“We need to talk about your sister.”
He said it without preamble, and with the same volume he’d use to pronounce something from his pulpit. Then he pushed his way into my front hall.
A tremor ran through me. No greeting, no acknowledgement that he was dropping by without warning—something I’d explicitly asked him not to do. And he was mad.
I mean, my dad was always mad. A low-level rage simmered in his psyche at all times. But I’d spent years studying the minute shifts in his tone and body language that served as barometers for how likely he was to erupt, and his eyebrows, his nostrils, the set of his shoulders—everything told me he was right on the edge.
And this was only the beginning of the conversation.
God, I wanted to disappear. Either sink into the floor, or run out to the porch and down the street. Anything to put distance between him and me.
Except he was here to talk about Katie. Which meant I needed to stay and find out what the problem was. I couldn’t help her if I didn’t know.
I swallowed, and shut the door behind him.
I hated the way my house felt with him in it. It had been a refuge when I’d found it. A place that was all mine, with no painful memories haunting the halls.
I could count on one hand the number of times my dad had set foot in my house, and each time, I worried about his anger leaching into the floorboards, staining the place even after he’d left.
My dad turned into the living room. He didn’t sit, just walked over to the fireplace and glared at the mantel. I rubbed my arms, feeling cold.
I wasn’t going to sit if he didn’t. I didn’t want to give him that extra bit of power in the conversation, having to literally look up to him. Plus, long years of calculating the odds of danger whispered that it would be harder to get away from him if I was seated.
My dad gave me a hard look.
“What do you know about it?”
I frowned. “What do I know about what?”
“About your sister. I know something’s wrong, and I know she confides in you. I need you to tell me so that I know how to handle it.”
A welter of emotions rose up in me.
Incredulity, that my dad thought that was a reasonable request. Anger, that he assumed I’d comply with it. And a sickening, gut-level fear of what would happen if I didn’t give him the answer he wanted. All these years and I still hadn’t quite rooted that reaction out of myself. I made myself take a breath before answering.
“I can’t do that.”
“You most certainly can.” My dad crossed the room, placing himself in front of me. Did he even realize he was trying to loom, or