Page 8 of Cabin Fever

Fifteen years, and this is his opening move? Not I'm sorry or I’m so sorry I ruined our whole lives or Did I mention how sorry I am? Something along those lines was really the only acceptable option, and yet here he is trying to give me compliments?

Here's the thing nobody tells you about having a criminal for a father. The crime they commit is almost irrelevant. It’s the breaking apart of everything you thought you knew about them that devastates you.

All those years before, he was Ray Quinn of Quinn & Associates, the guy who did the books for half the businesses in Maple Glen, Ohio. The guy who sponsored the Little League team and the fall festival and the new scoreboard at the high school, whose name was on the outfield fence in letters you could read from the road.

Dads trusted him with their payroll. Widows trusted him with their retirement. Our church trusted him with the building fund, and every Sunday he passed the offering plate down the pew.

Every Monday he moved money that wasn't his into accounts that didn't exist.

Eleven years. That's how long the forensic accountant said it went on. Eleven years of skimming, shell companies, and doctored statements. My entire childhood, basically, give or take a few toddler years. The house I grew up in, the braces on my teeth, the trampoline he bought us when I was jealous of Finn’s. Some percentage of it was paid for with the college funds of the kids I sat next to in homeroom.

They never could pin down the exact number. High six figures. Enough that when the case finally cracked open, it didn't just take down our family. It took down half the families in our town, including Hendersons' hardware store, which never recovered, and Mrs. Kaczmarek's retirement. She taught piano to half the town, including me, and was forced to move in with her son in Dayton. I still can't hear a metronome without feeling sick.

Maple Glen is not a big town. There was nowhere we could go without witnessing the wreckage.

They repossessed the cars the same week the school did spirit week. Mom stopped going to the grocery store in town. She drove forty minutes to the one where nobody knew us, and then, for about two years, stopped driving anywhere at all. Dahlia was fourteen. I was sixteen, and I did what I do. I made lists. I forged Mom's signature on permission slips and learned which bills had to get paid first.

“The casserole's decent,” my dad says, nodding at my plate like we do this every Sunday. “Your mother always said cruise food was overrated, but I don't know. I think people just like being disappointed in nice things.”

And that is the sentence that does me in. A little philosophy, warm and charming, like he's a man with opinions about buffets instead of a man who made me the answer to a security question at three different banks before I could vote.

My eyes go hot with zero warning. I stare at my watermelon until it blurs and am about to ask him how it compares to the food in prison when a hand lands on the back of my chair, and I jump.

“There you are.”

Finn. Empty plate in one hand, sunglasses hooked on his collar. His eyes hit me for a half-second, one flick, reading my face and wet lashes, then move to my dad with a smile so friendly and cold, I shiver.

“Mr. Quinn,” he says. “Been a while.”

“Finn Gallagher.” My dad stands to shake his hand, delighted. “Look at you. Your father used to say you'd either end up building bridges or jumping off them.”

“Little of both.” Finn's hand comes off the handshake and back to my chair. “Hey, Harp, we're late. The thing with the venue guy. He moved us up.”

There’s no venue guy. There’s no thing.

“Here, let me get that.” Finn leans over and picks up my laptop, hesitating so I can swipe my tears and stand without my dad seeing me do it. “You'll have to excuse us,” Finn tells him. “She's the only one who knows what’s happening around here.”

“Course, course.” Dad's already seated again, reaching for his orange juice. “We'll have plenty of time to catch up. Whole week ahead of us.”

Finn steers us out of the buffet with a hand that hovers an inch off my back through the hall, out the heavy door onto the promenade deck, where the wind sweeps against my face, hot and humid. I get about four steps before my breath goes shaky.

Finn guides me to the rail, still holding my laptop, and stares out at the water. “Wind's brutal out here. Making my eyes water.”

I make a noise that's half laugh, half hiccup. “Shut up.”

He grins at me. “Not making it better?”

I shake my head, and I can’t hold it in a second longer. My eyes well up, and in one motion, Finn sets the laptop on a lounge chair and pulls me into him. His arms wrap around me, crushing me to his chest as I sob.

He doesn’t say anything, just lets me cry into his perfect shirt. He smells even better up close. Both strange and familiar. I don’t know how long we stand there like that, but it’s long enough that I can’t figure out how to untangle myself without it being awkward.

Finn does most of the work for me. When he feels me start to pull away, he drops his arms and steps back, shoving his hands in his short pockets. He looks out at the water while I try to clean up my face.

“I didn't know they invited him,” he says.

“I got outvoted.”

His jaw works. I wonder if he’s going to bring everything up. Talk about what happened after Dad left, or at least acknowledge how weird it was that we never talked about it back then.