“That is so sweet of you.” Mimi smiled at her from her wheelchair. “I am sure the firefighters will appreciate your help.”
She didn’t care about the rest of the firefighters. She only wanted to spend more time getting to know her father.
“It shouldn’t take too long. Looks like they’re nearly done.”
“All right. I’ll see you at home.”
Ms. Clayton wheeled Mimi out of the fire station and Caitlin headed to where some of the firefighters were taking down the tables and chairs.
“Can I help with anything?” she asked Roy Little, a neighbor of theirs who was always nice to her and her friends.
“We’re just tearing stuff down now but we won’t say no to help.”
Chief Vance hadn’t appeared again by the time all the tables were down. She should probably just go home.
“Can I do anything else?” she asked.
“You mind taking these extra paper plates and cutlery into the mess hall? It’s just through there,” Roy said, pointing to the front area of the fire station.
“No problem.” She loaded her arms full with as much as she could carry and headed down the hall where he had indicated. The room was empty. Since she wasn’t sure where to put anything, she ended up just stacking it neatly on the counter.
She headed back out toward the large area where the breakfast had been and had made it a few steps down the hall when she heard voices. She recognized one of them. It was her father. Curious, she turned toward a half-open doorway she hadn’t seen before. That was when she found her father. He was inside, leaning against the desk.
And he wasn’t alone.
He was kissing Olivia.
She stared in shock, a sick feeling spreading in her stomach.
This couldn’t be happening. Her aunt and Chief Vance?
She didn’t think she made a sound but she must have gasped or squeaked or something. They both turned around and spotted her looking in through the slim crack in the door like some kind of weird pervert Peeping Tom.
“Caitlin! Oh. I... This isn’t... We were just...”
All her anger at her aunt, the hurt and betrayal she had nursed for months, seemed to come spilling through her, thick and fast.
Her aunt hated her and had hated her mother. She couldn’t seem to wrap her head around the fact that Chief Vance would be kissing her. It hadn’t seemed like a sexy rom-com kind of kiss, she realized, but something softer. More gentle. Somehow that seemed to make everything worse. Did they have feelings for each other?
“It’s fairly obvious what the two of you are doing.”
Horribly, stupidly, she wanted to cry. He was her dad and she hadn’t even had the chance to get to know him and now Olivia was going to ruin everything.
“Are you two having sex?”
Olivia’s jaw dropped at the question that Caitlin couldn’t believe had even come out of her mouth.
“None of your business,” she exclaimed. “What kind of question is that? You’re fifteen, not eight!”
She drew in a sharp breath, feeling exactly like she was eight again, like a child all by herself in a corner, watching all the other girls have Doughnuts with Dad at some stupid school thing and wondering why she didn’t have a dad to share her doughnut.
“You’re right,” she snapped, not thinking through the words at all, driven only by years of pain and loss and lack. “It’s none of my business. You’re an adult. You can sleep with my father if you want to.”
Again, she couldn’t believe the words had come out of her. This didn’t seem real. It was as if somebody else was here, spewing all this ugliness.
Chief Vance had recoiled at her words as if she’d slapped him with them, while Olivia just stared at her.
This wasn’t the way she wanted this to go. She had imagined it a hundred times since finding out those DNA results and never had she imagined Olivia there at all.
“With your what?” Chief Vance exclaimed.
“Nothing. Never mind.” She turned to go, needing only to get away from the shock and disbelief and, yeah, horror in his eyes. Those tears burned again, stupid and immature, and she could feel them spilling over down her cheeks.
“Hold on. What did you say?” Cooper demanded.
She drew in a breath and swiped at her eyes. At least she knew one thing now. Nobody could act that well.
“You didn’t know,” she stated. “I wondered if you didn’t or if you knew and just didn’t care.”