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She looked around, wondering if someone would come if she screamed, if her father could hear her from inside the truck several spotsaway.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “I just want totalk.”
There was no trace of the rage that had exploded from him after DeLuca’s visit to the office. This was the Jason she knew — or the Jason she thought she’dknown.
Calm. Rational.Reliable.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I have nothing to say toyou.”
He drew in a breath. “It wasn’t supposed to happen the way it did. I’msorry.”
She shook her head. “You’resorry?You burned down my house!” she shouted. “You could have killedme.”
He shook his head, frustration evident in the set of his jaw. “You don’tunderstand.”
“You’re right,” she said. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand why you’ve changed. Maybe you haven’t. Maybe I just never knew you. But I will never understand how you could hurt me so much. How you could point a gun atMax.”
He shook his head. “That’s you’re problem, Abby. You don’t know how to let go of thepast.”
She narrowed her eyes, her earlier fear turned to a brand of cold anger that almost scared her. “I don’t know how to let go of thepast?”
He leaned in, his eyes skidding in the general direction of her father’s truck. “Why are you here with him? After what he did toyou?”
Shame heated her face. “That’s none of yourbusiness.”
“You have to destroy the past to step into the future, Abby. I was trying to help you by showing you that. A house can’t heal you. Neither can playing nice with the man who hurt you.” He hesitated. “Do you know what happens after afire?”
She stared at him, unwilling to dignify the question with ananswer.
He continued. “The ground is leveled, all the old brush burned away. It looks dead for awhile, but then everything starts to grow again, and this time it grows back tenfold, stronger and greener.” He sighed, as if her lack of understanding filled him with despair. “The only thing that heals is a clean break, Abby, and to have a clean break, you have to burn the past to the ground. It’s the onlyway.”
She had a flash of the statue on his desk at the Tangier: Ganesh, Destroyer of Obstacles. “You’reinsane.”
“No. What’s insane is trying to recreate something that’s dead. Trying to pretend things aren’t the way theyare.”
She took a step toward him. “I have togo.”
He opened his mouth to speak and was interrupted by the sound of herfather.
“Abby? Everything allright?”
She glanced at him and forced a smile. “Everything’s fine, Dad. You ready togo?”
“Beenready.”
There was something unfamiliar in her father’s eyes, something alert and wary. She doubted he recognized Jason as the childhood friend who had run wild with Abby through the streets of the city — she hadn’t made a habit of bringing friends around when she was a kid — and he was even less likely to be up to date on the latestheadlines.
“Excuse me.” She angled her way aroundJason.
He didn’t move to make the way any easier, and she caught his scent — expensive cologne and tailoredwool.
The scent ofnothing.
“See you around,Abby.”
The words were directed at her back. She didn’t bother acknowledgingthem.
When they got to the car her father sat in the driver’s seat withoutmoving.
