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I can’t see Ben since his back is to me, but I can picture the face he’s making. Stern, frustrated, brick wall. His arms are crossed in front of him, the muscles of his back tense beneath the black dress shirt he’s still wearing.
“Excuse me, I would like to see my daughter,” my dad says, his politician’s voice on full blast.
Shit.
“No.”
Double shit.
My eyes move to Hattie, who is fighting back a laugh. I roll my eyes and shake my head, then look at my sister, who, to my surprise, has her own lips tipped up in a small smile.
Her head dips close to me and she whispers, “Ooh, I like him,” and if my hand wasn’t throbbing, I’d smack her.
“Excuse me?” my dad asks, clearly shocked.
No onetells Shane Turner no.
That’s what got us into this mess, after all.
“Ben, it’s fine—”
“No, it’s not. He put you in this position.” My dad’s face goes pale, eyes moving around Ben’s shoulder to give me an accusing look.
But I’m tired of hiding his mistakes.
“What have you told him, Lola?” Dad asks me while Lilah’s face goes confused at the same time.
“What? What are you talking about?” she asks. Her pretty face looks so lost.
At this moment, I wonder if it was a mistake.
Maybe all this time, Mom was wrong. Maybe it would have been better to tell Lilah from the start, tell her the full truth. We could have worked together to figure it out, instead of apart. She’s been working for years with a fractured vision, a puzzle missing vital pieces.
Regardless, while I’m in a hospital bed, bleeding from my eyebrow and waiting to see if I’ll need to stay overnight, this is not the time.
“Ben, seriously, not now.”
“What’s going on?” Lilah asks.
“Now seems like a good a time as any,” Ben says, glaring.
“I think I’m gonna . . . take a walk,” Hattie says, cringing at me and sneaking out the door. I remind myself to deny her cookies next time she’s in the shop, the bitch. My dad moves his eyes from Ben, looking at me and going soft.
“Lola, I didn’t know,” he says, and that churns in my guts. The truth is, the Carluccios would never in a million years come to me unless they were told to.
By Dad.
“You didn’t know your bookie would come for her?” Ben accuses. My dad sighs.
“I didn’t think it would go this far.”
“He threatenedLilah, Dad.”
“What the fuck is goingon?” Lilah asks, and now she is even paler, her tan skin looking more like my own fair shade and her voice raising in an almost panicked way. She knew about Dad’s addiction, even if she didn’t know how bad it was. She knows some of the secrets, but the big one? It was the one secret I kept from her.
It didn’t feel like mine to tell.
“They never would have gotten to Lilah. It was all a bluff.”
