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“Careful.”
“Or what,” he hisses. “Going to dump kerosene all over my bed while I sleep—”
“Finish that fucking sentence and we will never speak again.”
The phone goes quiet. A half minute ticks slowly by, as if we’re both consciously weighing the magnitude of actually following through on that threat.
“She was a child, Noel,” he says quietly. “She’d just lost everything. She was angry, and emotional, and irrational. And you stuck her in prison for four years.”
My driver pulls the car down the gray gravel driveway, up to the front gates of Hemlock Estates. He already knows to drive around the side of one of the out-buildings, out of sight of the main academic and administrative hall.
“I put her someplace where she could get help, have boundaries, andnotgo to actual prison,” I growl.
I had my other reasons for sending her here, too. But those are reasons no one will ever know. If they all choose to believe it was out of vengeance or retribution, so be it.
“Fix this, Noel,” Braddock mutters. “Thomas trusted you with the two things he cared about most in this world. Now one of them is dead, and you locked the other one up in—”
“Fuck off and fix your own life, McCreed.”
I hang up angrily, tossing the phone down on top of the newspapers with his very name in the headlines.
The car stops. I lower the divider as Clarence, one of my attornies, turns to eye me through the window partition.
“Lewis was clear with what needs to happen here, yes?”
He nods quickly. “Absolutely, Mr. Ransom.”
“You will explain to her that this is non-negotiable. You will make her see that twenty-three is alongroad from here, and that she has no other options. She signs this, she returns home with us, today, and we bury this. Be sure she’s clear on that, and on the consequences of failing to do so.”
“Yes sir, Mr. Ransom.”
I wait a minute after he gets out of the car before I too step out. I finger the lighter in my pocket, aching for a cigarette even four years after my last indulgence. But the control gives me power over those demons.
Control and power over all things.
I step to the corner of the smaller out-building we’ve parked behind. Around the side of the gray, ivy-covered wall, my eyes travel across the stretch of driveway to the main building. Clarence is standing at the bottom of the steps that lead to the big double front doors of the imposing, draconian looking façade.
Today is her eighteen birthday. We haven’t spoken in four years, but I havezerodoubts that she’ll be checking herself out of this place today. The main school offices open at nine. It will take approximately five minutes for the school administration to try and reason with her to stay through graduation before they realize they’re not changing her mind.
It will take another three minutes for her to sign the necessary documents. I’d add on another half hour for packing, but I’m guessing she’s either leaving with only what she can carry or has already sent whatever she can’t somewhere else.
I mean God only knows where she plans to go after this. Or how the fuck she plans on surviving, at that. But that ends today. She’ll sign, she’ll get in the bloody car, and she can go sulk in her room until she turns twenty-three for all I care.
But Iwillsee this through.
I’m under no illusions that I made things difficult for her. I know I was hard, and cold. But my job—my obligation to Thomas—was never to be warm and loving.
I was never going to be her father.
But I will make sure she doesn’t starve on the streets.
The offices open at nine. By my calculations, it will take her all of eight, maybe ten minutes to sign what she needs to sign and get out.
I glance at my watch. It’s nine-oh-nine.
My gaze raises to the front door. Andboom, there it is. The doors swing open, and a beautiful young woman I almost don’t recognize steps out in a storm of wind-swept blonde, with a triumphant, wild grin on her face.
Christ, she looks every inch the Ashford she is.
