with little bombs all over them. On top, she wore a white t-shirt that was too small and too short, and Nick was uncomfortably aware that his sixteen-year-old daughter wasn’t much of a child anymore.
“Hi, Papa,” she said.
“Hi. What are you doing up?” he asked as he walked to the closet to hang up his topcoat. “It’s a school night, cara.”
“Can’t sleep. I was going to get something to drink. I want hot chocolate. Want some?”
“Sure.” He shrugged out of his suitcoat and draped it over the bannister to take up later, then followed his youngest daughter to the kitchen.
They made the hot chocolate together, talking about nothing but that, and sat side by each at the island. It lately seemed like he had all his quiet moments with his children either at this island or in their rooms, as if he had to catch them somewhere they’d keep still for a moment.
“How’s school going?” Nick asked as he watched Carina pour an absurd number of mini-marshmallows into her cup.
She rolled her eyes. “Ugh. That’s such a lame question. It’s school. It’s boring. But I’m not in mini jail or anything, if that’s what you mean.”
Mini jail is what Carina called in-school suspension, for which she had a long and ignominious record. The girl had been a troublemaker from the moment she’d rocked onto her hands and knees and crawled straight into mischief.
“Where you’re concerned, cara, I like school boring. It’s when it’s not that I worry.”
She poked at her marshmallows, watching them melt in the hot liquid. “Well, no worries, then. I’m a model student these days.”
“Why is that?” he asked, but he suspected he knew. “Because of Elisa?”
“I guess. I just … little shi—stuff—doesn’t make me mad like it used to. It doesn’t matter if a teacher is being a jerk about an answer I made on a test, or whatever. That’s all little stuff that doesn’t mean anything.”
Nick sipped at his hot chocolate. He’d forgone the marshmallows. “I understand. You know what real outrage is now.” For his part, he had a lifelong list of outrages, and yet he, too, had learned a new lesson in what real outrage was.
“Yeah.” Carina sighed and poked at her melting marshmallows. She hadn’t taken a drink yet.
“I’m sorry, cara.” Those weren’t words Nick said easily, and he wasn’t sure why he’d said them now. But they’d seemed necessary.
His little girl looked up at him with her mother’s blue eyes. God, she was so precious. Tough as she was, she was still a child. His little girl.
“Why?”
He thought about the answer. Why had he apologized? What did he regret?
Too many things. Almost more than he could bear.
“For failing to keep my world from yours.”
“That’s dumb, Papa.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah. Duh. I know you’re a big deal, but you’re not God. Did you think you’re God? Because you’re not. Sorry if that’s a shocker.”
Nick laughed. “You know, most men would bleed for saying something like that to me.”
Her grin was pure sass and the perfect smugness of a girl who knew she could get away with it. “Maybe, but I’m not a man.”
“No, you’re not.”
Finally, she sipped at her drink. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.” Carina’s questions often came with talons or explosives, so Nick girded himself.
“When Alex was here to pick up Lia earlier, he was in a crazy great mood. Like, I never saw him smile that big, and he was … I don’t know, like just happy as Christmas morn—” She blinked and backed away from that analogy. “He was happy. And Lia said she can go back to Brown. She’s happy, too. Did something good happen today?”
“Yes. It was a good day.”
“So, like, the thing that made people do that to us … that’s over?”
Nick set his hand over her forearm and squeezed. “It is, cara. You’re safe.”
“Until the next thing.”
Nick didn’t show it, but he felt the impact of those words right in his heart. His children should not have to live with his violent life looming over theirs. What had he and Beverly been thinking, having children?
He’d been thinking he could protect them. Beverly had trusted him to do so.
But of all his regrets, having children with Beverly was not among them. How could he regret such gifts?
“I hope what we did means there will be peace for years to come, like it was before the past few years. I did everything I could to make it so we can go back to the way things were.”