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“What did you do to Tyler ten years ago to make him leave?”
Dad frowned, as if the question didn’t make sense. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Cut the crap!” I cried, gripping the balustrade so hard my fingers ached. “I know you did something that night, or Owens did something worse than beating the shit out of him. What was it?”
Dad stepped down the rest of the stairs, back straight, eyes focused as though he was taking me out on my first cotillion again.
“Ten years ago is a long time,” he said. “It’s possible no one really remembers the truth.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You don’t forget anything, Dad,” I said. “What did you do?”
“I gave him a nudge,” he said, with one of his long-suffering sighs. “That’s all. A point in the right—”
“Stop the riddles,” I sighed. “Look, I know since Mom died you and I—” Dad tensed, but I pressed on. “You and I haven’t always seen eye to eye. And maybe me coming back to be chief wasn’t the best idea, but I’m an adult, Dad. And you need to tell me the truth.”
He didn’t say anything, he didn’t even move. Or twitch.
“If you don’t say something, I am going to walk out that door and I swear I won’t—”
“I gave him his father’s address in Las Vegas. I told him to find his way and to let you find yours.”
I rocked back on my heels, all too able to imagine what Tyler would have felt, faced with that information. Tyler, whose whole life had been steered by missing parents.
“Is that all?”
Dad shrugged. “I might have indicated that life would get more difficult for him if he stayed.”
“Difficult?” I asked. “What exactly is that code for, Dad? You’d continue to sic Owens on him? You’d arrest him? His grandmother? Maybe his little sister?”
“Maybe!” he cried, his righteous poise cracking. “They’re the O’Neills, Juliette. Every single one of them is trouble. But leaving was Tyler’s choice, Juliette. He left on his own—”
I bit my tongue and swallowed my anger. “He was twenty-one, Dad. And you were abusing your power.”
His eyes got wide. “I was doing what a police chief and a father does. I was protecting the good citizens from the bad.”
I was suddenly so weary of this battleground. We never got anywhere and the land between us was scorched and ruined. If we kept at this, there would be nothing left. Nothing worth salvaging.
More and more I looked at him and he was a stranger.
“You need to stay out of my life, Dad,” I said. “And out of my job. Can you do that?”
“I’m not in your—”
“You don’t even see what you do, do you?” I asked, so sad, full of disbelief that our relationship was coming to this impasse.
We stared at each other a long time.
“I don’t know how to answer that,” he whispered.
“I know you don’t, Dad,” I said, and turned away.
“I’m sorry,” he said, stepping after me. Reluctantly, I turned. “I’m sorry for calling OCS. You’re right, it wasn’t my place.”
I rocked back slightly, stunned by the apology.
“And I know…I can be tough, but you’re all I have left,” he said, so small in his big empty house. “I don’t want to lose you, too.”
“You might be too late,” I said, as honest and blunt as I could be, because I had nothing else to give him. “You might be ten years too late.”
I left, my boot heels like gunshots in the empty foyer.
In the car I couldn’t find my keys. Once I found them, I couldn’t get them into the ignition. My hands didn’t work, my whole body shook.
I dropped the keys, put my head on the steering wheel.
Just like that, I understood. I understood why Tyler had thought what he had ten years ago. Why he’d left and even why he hadn’t told me. Because he was right—I would have gone with him. In a heartbeat.
And even though he was wrong, he thought he was doing the best thing for me. He thought he was protecting his family, and even more, he thought he might finally find his father. A piece of his puzzle he’d been missing his whole life.
He’d been a young man manipulated by someone who should have known better.
In the end, it was easy. Ten years of anger. Of hurt. It all rode out on a long breath.
“Tyler,” I sighed.
I forgive you.
I got in my car ready to race over there and tell him. But it was the middle of the night and his words from the other night still hurt enough to bruise:
You’re taking me up on the dirty little secret thing.
No. I…I needed to show him that he wasn’t a secret. I needed to show him that I forgave him. He was used to getting crumbs from people but I wasn’t going to do that. I was coming to him in the bright light of day, with everything I had.
