Slipping my hands into my pockets, I drifted around the room, gazing at my wife as she danced with Kai’s father, his wife deep in conversation with a few ladies from the garden club. I caught Rika’s eyes as she stood near the fireplace, munching on another green tea macaron.

She froze, seeing me watch her. I cocked an eyebrow. Another one? You want a cake, too? Maybe two cakes, Rika? She hesitated only a moment and stuffed it into her mouth, followed by another one, before flipping me off and stalking away with her chipmunk cheeks full of unhealthy food for the baby.

I laughed, just teasing her. Winter had had her cravings, as well. Live it up.

I gazed back at my wife, loving her this time of year most of all. She adored the music, the food, and all the little things. She couldn’t see the lights, but in a way, she did. She said they made the house feel different. Warmer, somehow.

I loved that nothing escaped her. Even the scent of wrapping paper. It had never occurred to me wrapping paper had a scent, but she made me lie down under the tree every winter and inhale the presents.

She was right. I noticed it now.

Kai and Banks walked back into the ballroom from wherever they had been hiding, Banks’s hair now hanging down around her as Kai straightened his tie. Will twirled Emmy around the now-spacious dance floor, since some of the guests had left, his laughter filling the room.

But then I saw Matthew head across the room, through the center hall, into the dining room.

Christiane wasn’t with him. I immediately searched for her.

Spotting her as she drifted in the opposite direction, I hesitated a moment, watching her disappear into the next room. I tensed, something nipping at me as it did more and more the past couple of years.

In the days, months, and decade since I’d found out Rika’s mother was also mine, I waited for what I was sure was coming from her.

Failure.

At some point, she’d relapse. She’d forget one of my kids at the store or the park. The novelty of being a loving, attentive, and responsible grandmother would wear off or take too much energy to keep up with, and she’d slowly disappear from our lives.

No matter how cold I could be, or the years of answering her in one-word responses, nothing had fazed her, though. She was nothing, if not patient.

As time passed, the opposite happened. Instead of her giving up, my fight began to lose its steam. It was hard not to love how indulgent she was with Octavia—making almost all of her clothes by hand, since there really wasn’t any quality period clothing in the style Tavi liked that didn’t look like some cheap costume.

She was amazing with Gunnar, always thoughtful in scrounging yard sales for spare parts he could use for his inventions, and she didn’t mind when Fane and Dag destroyed her house, building forts in every room.

She’d been a huge help when Winter was in the hospital giving birth to Octavia, one of Kai’s dogs nearly bit off Ivarsen’s ear and he was only six. She stayed in the hospital room with him two floors down when I had to be with Winter.

I didn’t want to swallow my pride. It felt like I was fucking choking.

But more and more, I was also starting to hate the hurt in her eyes she tried to cover up when I ignored her. I didn’t used to care.

Something had changed.

I followed her, my feet moving without thinking.

Pulling open the white door, I slipped into the next room, a smaller ballroom, dark and vacant. She stood at the window, the moonlight making her sparkly white gown shimmer and her blonde hair—pulled back in a bun—shine.

I stood there, pulling the door closed behind me as I watched her.

It was like she was waiting for something.

“You do that a lot.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Leave rooms full of people to be alone.”

She didn’t turn around, just clasped her hands in front of her.

“I do it to give you an opportunity to follow me,” she said. “I figured you wouldn’t speak to me with others around.”

“You think you know me?”

She turned her head, meeting my eyes. “You don’t know me.” Her voice softened. “There are so many things I need to say. Have been waiting to say.”

I didn’t move. Well, let’s hear it, then. You’ve had years to prepare.

Part of me was dying to hear this, if for no other reason than to open old wounds and get me angry again. Angry enough to remember why I should hate her.

She’d abandoned me. Every day, for years.

She might be a good person, but did it matter? Did I need her now?

No.

She turned her body but remained in her spot. “Do you remember the toy bear I gave to Ivarsen his first Christmas?”

I still didn’t move. Or respond.

But I remembered it. It was small, about half the size of him, with a red ribbon tied around its neck. It had been wrapped in old, wrinkled brown paper with a dusty bow. I remembered thinking it looked out of place among the fancy bags and boxes of the other presents she’d bought him.

She dropped her eyes, and I started to tense.

Well, what? Did she steal it while she was high? Mean to give it to Madden? What?

“That bear was yours,” she told me. “It had been yours since you were a baby.”

I clenched my jaw.

I heard her swallow, but she didn’t come closer. “I thought I’d find a way to get it to you—and all the other presents I bought over the Christmases and birthdays throughout the years.”

I stared at her, unblinking.

“The music box I gave Octavia, the toy trucks I gave to Fane, and the remote-control boat and books I gave to Dag and Gunnar…”

My throat swelled, and I tried to force down the needles, but I couldn’t.

All mine. An image of all the toys wrapped, collecting dust in her attic and waiting for a kid who would never open them flashed through my head, but I pushed it away.

So what? I had all the toys I could ever want growing up. I never went without anything money could buy. I didn’t miss it.

“It’s my fault.” She took a step toward me. “Everything that…everything you grew up with, it’s not your fault. It’s not theirs, even.” She shook her head. “They weren’t good people. We couldn’t expect them to do good things, but I was a good person once, and while I didn’t know how bad it was for you, I knew it wasn’t good.”

I balled my fists under my arms.

She let her eyes fall again, and I saw something shimmery drop off her cheek.

“I wanted to die.” Her voice was thick with tears. “I deserved to die. I was trying to die.”

Every muscle in my body hardened.

“God, I wanted it all to end,” she whispered, her shoulders shaking. “I had no idea how ugly the world could be until your father.”

She turned blurry in my vision, because that was a good way to put it. With my father, everything was dark and hell.

“I was a child.” She walked closer. “I didn’t even know how to ride a bike until I was eighteen. Schraeder taught me. I was so sheltered.”

Tears spilled down her face, thinking about this teenage girl, younger than Rika was when I terrorized her.

Banks, Winter, Em, Rika…I had no doubt they would survive what Christiane went through, but…they would’ve been hurt. Badly hurt, inside and out.