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Knowing Dad thought that, I couldn’t hack it.
I fell into him.
He wrapped his arms around me and shoved his face in my neck, so I did the same to his.
“Two days,” he whispered.
My body bucked as the tears came, and his arms got tighter.
“Fuck, honey, she was only away from us and scared for two days.” He took a ragged breath. “And then it was over for her.”
I burrowed into him.
“Only two days,” he said, his voice cracking.
I cried harder and held on stronger.
I felt him shaking with his tears before I felt them on my skin.
I had no idea how long we stood like that, crying and holding each other. But eventually, Dad lifted his head, but he didn’t move away.
I tipped my head back to look at him.
With both hands to my cheeks, he swiped at my face with his thumbs.
Then he caught my eyes.
“Now we know,” he whispered.
“Now we know,” I whispered back.
I fell into him again and recommenced crying.
Dad gathered me close and cried with me.
* * *
One good thingabout finding out your sister was murdered by a notorious, murderous, serial pedophile was that I didn’t act like a dork when I met Stella Gunn.
Not to mention, Cap’s beloved Jules.
And I didn’t have it in me to react too much, after meeting the famous Hot Bunch, when their counterpart Rock Chicks entered the scene.
Mace and Stella had been really cool, asking if we’d like to stay and offering a bedroom to Dad and Deb after Deb called the airlines and switched their flight to one that went out on Wednesday.
Though, they were clear that if we felt we needed to leave and give the final licks to a wound that had been festering for nineteen years, but now maybe we could allow it to close, they were down with that too (they didn’t phrase it that way, but that was the gist).
Dad and I had already started working on healing that wound. It would leave a scar, but I figured Dad and I were okay with it. The scar would represent Macy, as well as Mom, like an emotional tattoo, and neither of us wanted rid of it.
I didn’t know why Dad took Stella and Mace up on their offer to hang out (though, Deb also rebooked them into the Hermosa Inn, so they didn’t accept their other kind offer).
Maybe he thought these were my people and I’d want to be around them. Though, he didn’t know Cap and I had known each other less than two weeks (which meant they had solved a nearly-two-decades-long mystery in that time, which, even as emotionally lacerated as I was, I was together enough to think was super impressive).
Maybe he just realized what good people they were.
Once it was ascertained we were staying, Cap took over and got Luna, Scott and Louise there.
I really didn’t know how they did it. And I often caught Luna looking at me like she was checking some gauge I had on my face, the same with Scott, however, his glances held sorrow and pain for me (he shot the same looks to Dad). Not to mention, Louise, Deb and Shirleen flitted around, not hiding they were taking our pulses.
