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Haley knew all of them. She was the keeper of all of them.
She could hurt Claire if she wanted to, but she wouldn’t. She
wouldn’t repeat history. Never.
“Please get your things. I’ll have Snake drive you back to
your father’s house as soon as you’re ready.” I want to change
my mind. I can’t. Her voice didn’t have to be hardened steel to
deal a death blow. As it turned out, it was soft as a whisper.
As it turned out, whispers cut the deepest.
That was a lie. They didn’t cut deeper than the pain in
Haley’s eyes as she blinked hard, but not heard enough to keep
the tears at bay.
Claire made herself watch Haley as she left. She made
herself take in every detail from the slump of her shoulders to
the tremble in her steps, to those horrible, glistening tears that
Claire had put on her cheeks. They weren’t the kind of tears
that Claire wanted to see Haley cry. Not ever. She wanted to
run after her.
She reached for her, into the empty space, after Haley was
gone.
Claire couldn’t go after her. She was weighted to the
ground, her body so heavy, a metal statue, a pillar of granite.
She no longer felt like a living being. She’d thought, all those
years ago, that her father’s coldness, that Henry’s forced touch,
that Robert’s betrayal were the worst things she could ever
experience.
She wasn’t entirely wrong, but this was a new kind of
suffering that she was unfamiliar with, and God, it hurt.
Chapter 18
Haley
July had finally arrived. It was one of Haley’s favorite
