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“Well, where’s she supposed to be?” he asked, his tone mocking. “You won’t let me see my kid for six years and now you’re calling because you’ve lost track of her?”
My breath stuttered on its way into my chest. The only response my mother had ever offered as to why he had stopped visiting was, Your father has his reasons. Why had she lied? And what could he have done to make her bar him from coming to see me?
“Sorry.” He smoothed his facial hair. “It’s been a strange day.”
There was a long stretch of silence, followed by a heavy sigh.
“Yes, she’s here,” he said, and a cold splash of betrayal washed over me. “Because I invited her.”
Anger seared my chest like heartburn. My father sat quietly. Whatever my mother had to say, she was taking a hell of a long time to say it.
“Paige is old enough to make her own decisions. …What’s that supposed to mean? Look, whatever agreement we had about my role in her life ended in June. I’ll assume you didn’t bother to pass along that card either. …For fuck’s sake, Charlotte, she thinks I abandoned her.”
He pinched the spot between his eyes.
“No,” he said, “she’s right. I did abandon her. I never should’ve let you convince me she was better off without a father. That was my mistake, and I have paid for it every single day. Well, I’m done paying for it. She’s my daughter, too.” He scowled. “If that’s how you still want to see it, fine, but I’m not throwing her out. She’s safe here. She always was. …Sure, and while you’re at it, you can tell her how you and Dave got ahold of those emails. …Fuck you, too.”
He lobbed his phone at the bedside table. I gripped the glass of water with both hands, needing to feel something solid between my palms. My mother had lied to me. Not only that, but she and her boyfriend had invaded my privacy. Who knew how many of my accounts had been compromised. I’d have to change my passwords immediately.
As for my father, what could’ve happened that was so dangerous my mother had insisted he cut me out of his life?
I had come to the city looking for answers, and now I had nothing but questions.
Chapter Five
My scrubbed at his face, righted his boxers, and rose from the bed. I held my breath as he disappeared from view. A door slammed. From the soft roar of running water, I assumed there had to be an ensuite bath attached to his room.
Now was the time to bolt, but I couldn’t make myself move. Everything I thought I knew about my childhood had been turned inside out. I needed answers, ones only he could tell me.
But how could I ask?
This was hardly the sort of topic one brought up over eggs and toast. No, better to confront him about it tonight, when he’d be more likely to tell the truth.
I eased the door open. The only source of light was the television, which I avoided looking at straight-on. I wasn’t ready to come to terms with what I’d just witnessed, or what seeing it had made me do. Still, I couldn’t talk to him with porn streaming in the background. I set my water glass on the nightstand and felt around in the sheets for the remote. Finding it, I let my gaze flicker to the screen with every intention of making it go black.
It took me a second to register what I was looking at.
“What the fuck?” I whispered.
The girl had long chestnut hair and dark chocolate eyes, a pronounced widow’s peak and cupid’s bow. She could’ve been me. Or I could’ve been her. Either way, the resemblance was uncanny.
Then I saw the man she was fucking, saw a close-up of the arm attached to the hand attached to the fingers slipping inside her. The realization of what I was looking at made my stomach clench.
He’d been jacking off to a video he’d made with my mother when they were my age.
Bile washed the back of my throat—finally, a normal physiological response to the thought of my parents in a sexual situation. It was too real all of a sudden, too intimate, more so than it had been when it was just my father.
I tossed the remote onto the bed and scurried out of the room, closing the door behind me. I didn’t stop moving until I was back in my own bed with the covers pulled up to my chin.
Facing the window, I shut my eyes and listened for the pounding of footsteps. When they didn’t come, I began counting. If he hadn’t stormed in by the count of one hundred, I could assume he hadn’t heard me.
At one hundred one, the door opened.
Footsteps approached, quiet and measured, then stopped beside my bed. My pulse thundered. I kept still as a corpse, for surely, I was as good as dead.
He lingered at my bedside for what felt like an eternity, then retreated. The door clicked shut.
I flopped onto my back and breathed deeply, my heart one rogue beat away from busting a hole through my chest.
