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“Daisy didn’t ask for anything,” Laura says. “Neither did I. It was Ben’s decision to take care of us.”
“As was his duty,” Mom says, lifting her chin. “I, on the other hand, owe you nothing.” She picks up her bag and walks to the door.
Ryan glares at Laura and Daisy as he takes Celeste’s elbow and helps her to her feet. Mattie, Jared, and I follow. We’re far from being a perfect family, but we do stand together when it matters.
Mom opens the door. The solicitor stands on the other side of it, talking quietly to his secretary.
He gives a start. “We’re not done.”
“Well,” Mom says, stepping around him. “It would seem that I am very much done here.”
ChapterEleven
Sabella
Ididn’t know an emotion can fill your chest with so much ache that the bruise feels physical. That every breath you take hurts.
How do I deal with the betrayal? I’ve barely had time to process Dad’s cold-blooded murder. I’m still digesting the fact that the man who raised me, the dad I loved and admired, was a criminal. That the man I had sex with killed him. Now I discover that I never truly knew my dad. It makes me question everything we shared. Which parts were real? Which parts were deception and lies, covering up an illegal business and a second family?
A second family.
Mom locked herself in her bedroom when we got home. Jared is making tea. Mattie does what she always does in a crisis. She remains cool and collected, throwing herself into the funeral arrangements. Ryan is tightlipped, and Celeste is asking too many questions, questions to which none of us want to know the answers.
Because it hurts too damn much.
Because it’s too painful to admit that our whole life up to now was a farce.
My dad, the man I placed on a pedestal, the man who taught me with so much patience to ride a bike and to drive a car, lied to my face for as long as I’ve been alive.
Mom is hiding. Mattie is organizing. Ryan is closed-off. Celeste is playing with Brad. Those are their go-to coping mechanisms. Mine is swimming.
It’s cold outside, but I don’t care. I’m always swim fit, even in winter. I pull on my swimsuit and climb down the dune to the beach.
The coldness of the water comes as a shock. I welcome the iciness that steals my breath. It numbs my body and my senses. It dulls the feelings I can’t express, and it freezes the havoc in my chest. When my muscles contract with cold, I don’t feel the hollowness in the pit of my stomach. I don’t feel the sickness that pushes up in my throat.
I swim and swim, putting distance between me and my life. But no matter how hard I kick and how fast I swing my arms through the water, I can’t outrun what’s trapped inside me. I carry it with me into the deepness of the water until the heaviness of the burden pulls me down.
At first, I fight. Hard. I fight the cramps and the fatigue and the onslaught of emotions. I fight long past knowing it’s too late, knowing I exceeded my limits.
For a terrifying moment, there’s only darkness and finality, but the dark and the cold have always been my safe place. The water is where I’m free.
Sinking.
It’s not like when I was drugged in the hospital and I wanted to surface. It just feels so good to stop fighting.
To be free.
Alive.
I gulp. My lungs fill with water.
I’m drowning.
The realization pumps a rush of adrenaline through my veins. Everything vanishes—the storm, the numbness, the tiredness. Only one thing remains. A will to live.
I kick with all my might, using my arms to drag myself through the water, but my muscles are uncooperative. Useless. My ears pop painfully. An engine sounds somewhere, a thread that connects me to life. It’s like a lifeline to reality. I can almost taste the diesel fumes of a boat. An urge to vomit the water in my lungs contracts my shoulders. Spots explode in my vision.
A fist punches through the surface. And another. A man dives into the water with his arms stretched out in front of him. No shoes or jacket. Just a shirt and trousers. Those arms grab me. They pull me toward the surface, back toward breath.
