She nods and we both face her father now. I’m not concerned with the fact that he may recognize me. Other than the day Hope went missing, he never spoke to me. I’m just hoping to hell he doesn’t recognize her, but I know he will. A parent would recognize his own child, no matter how long it’s been.

He’s making his way toward us, and the closer he gets, the more I see the recognition in his eyes. He knows her.

Shit.

He pauses when he’s several feet from us and tries to look her in the eyes, but she presses herself against me and looks down at the ground.

“Princess?” he says.

She begins to slide out of my arms and I look down at her. Her eyes have rolled back into her head and she’s falling. I keep a tight grip on her and ease her to the ground completely so that I can get a better grip on her. I need to get her out of here right now.

I slide my hands under her arms and try to pull her up. Her father comes closer and grabs her hands to help me.

“Don’t you fucking touch her!” I scream. He immediately backs away, looking at me in shock.

I look back down at her and grab her head, trying to bring her back to consciousness.

“Baby, open your eyes. Please.”

Her eyelids flutter open and she looks up at me. “It’s okay,” I reassure her. “You just passed out. I need you to stand up. We need to leave.” I pull her to her feet and steady her against me. I give her a second to regain her strength. Her father is right in front of her now.

“It is you,” he says staring at her. He looks at me, then back to Sky. “Hope? Do you remember me?” His eyes are full of tears.

“Let’s go,” I say to her, attempting to pull her with me. She has to know how much I’m trying to refrain from attacking him right now. We. Need. To. Leave.

She resists my pull as her father takes another step toward her, so I pull her a step away from him.

“Do you?” he says again. “Hope, do you remember me?”

Sky’s whole body grows tense. “How could I forget you?” she spits.

He sucks in a breath. “It’s you,” he says, fidgeting his hand down at his side. “You’re alive. You’re okay.” He pulls out his radio, but I take a step forward and knock it out of his hand before he can report it.

“I wouldn’t let anyone know she’s here if I were you,” I say. “I doubt you would want the fact that you’re a fucking pervert to be front-page news.”

The blood drains from his face. “What?” He looks back at Sky and shakes his head. “Hope, whoever took you . . . they lied to you. They told you things about me that weren’t true.” He takes another step forward and I have to pull her back again. “Who took you, Hope? Who was it?”

She begins to shake her head back and forth. “I remember everything you did to me,” she says, taking a confident step toward him. “And if you just give me what I’m here for, I swear I’ll walk away and you’ll never hear from me again.”

He’s shaking his head, not wanting to believe that she remembers. He watches her for a minute. I know he’s just as caught off guard as we are.

“What is it you want?” he asks her.

“Answers,” Sky says. “And I want anything you have that belonged to my mother.”

Sky reaches down to my hand, which is wrapped around her waist, and she squeezes it. She’s scared.

Her father glances at me, then back to Sky. “We can talk inside,” he says quietly. He looks around the neighborhood nervously, making sure there aren’t any witnesses. The fact that he’s even looking for witnesses lights up a huge caution sign. There’s no telling what this man is capable of.

“Leave your gun,” I demand.

He pauses, then removes his gun from his holster. He lays it on the porch.

“Both of them,” I say.

He reaches down and removes the extra gun from his leg, laying it on the porch right before he walks into his house. I spin Sky around to face me before we walk through the door.

“I’m staying right here with the door open. I don’t trust him. Don’t go any farther than the living room.”

She nods and I give her a quick kiss, then watch her turn and step into the living room. She walks to the couch and takes a seat, eyeing him guardedly the entire time.

He raises his eyes to hers. “Before you say anything,” he says. “You need to know that I loved you and I’ve regretted what I did every second of my life.”

“I want to know why you did it,” she says.

He leans back in his seat and rubs his hands over his eyes. “I don’t know,” he says. “After your mother died, I started drinking heavily again. It wasn’t until a year later that I got so drunk one night that I woke up the next morning and knew I had done something terrible. I was hoping it was just a horrible dream, but when I went to wake you up that morning you were . . . different. You weren’t the same happy little girl you used to be. Overnight, you somehow became someone who was terrified of me. I hated myself. I’m not even sure what I did to you because I was too drunk to remember. But I knew it was something awful and I am so, so sorry. It never happened again and I did everything I could to make it up to you. I bought you presents all the time and gave you whatever you wanted. I didn’t want you to remember that night.”

She grips her knees and I can tell by the way she’s struggling for breath that she’s doing everything she can to remain calm.

“It was night . . . after night . . . after night,” she says. I immediately rush to the couch and kneel next to her. I wrap my arm around her back and grip her arm so that she stays put. “I was scared to go to bed and scared to wake up and scared to take a bath and scared to speak to you. I wasn’t a little girl afraid of monsters in her closet or under her bed. I was terrified of the monster that was supposed to love me! You were supposed to be protecting me from the people like you!”

The pain in her voice is heart-wrenching. I want her out of here. I don’t want her to have to hear him speak.

“Do you have any other children?” she asks.

He drops his head and presses a palm to his forehead, but fails to answer her. “Do you?” she screams.

He shakes his head. “No. I never remarried after your mother.”

“Am I the only one you did this to?”

He keeps his eyes trained to the floor, avoiding her question.

“You owe me the truth,” she says, her voice quiet now. “Did you do this to anyone else before you did it to me?”

There’s a long silence. He’s staring at the floor, unable to admit the truth. She’s staring at him, waiting for him to give her what she came here for.

After a long silence, she begins to stand up. I grasp her arm but she looks me in the eyes and shakes her head. “It’s okay,” she says. I don’t want to let her go, but I have to allow her to handle this the way she wants to handle it.

She walks to him and kneels in front of him. “I was sick,” she says. “My mother and I . . . we were in my bed and you came home from work. She had been up with me all night and she was tired, so you told her to go get some rest.”

He’s looking her in the eyes like a regretful father. I don’t know how.

“You held me that night like a father is supposed to hold his daughter. And you sang to me. I remember you used to sing a song to me about your ray of hope. Before my mother died . . . before you had to deal with that heartache . . . you didn’t always do those things to me, did you?”

He shakes his head and touches her face.

I have the urge to rip his hand off, just like all the urges I’ve had to rip Grayson’s hand off. Only this time I don’t want to stop at his hand. I want to rip his head off and his balls off and . . .

“No, Hope,” he says to her. “I loved you so much. I still do. I loved you and your mother more than life itself, but when she died . . . the best parts of me died right along with her.”

“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” she says with little emotion. “I know you loved her. I remember. But knowing that doesn’t make it any easier to find it in my heart to forgive you for what you did. I don’t know why whatever is inside of you is so different from what’s inside other people . . . to the point that you would allow yourself to do what you did to me. But despite the things you did to me, I know you love me. And as hard as it is to admit . . . I once loved you, too. I loved all the good parts of you.”

She stands up and steps back. “I know you aren’t all bad. I know that. But if you love me like you say you do . . . if you loved my mother at all . . . then you’ll do whatever you can to help me heal. You owe me that much. All I want is for you to be honest so I can leave here with some semblance of peace. That’s all I’m here for, okay? I just want peace.”

Her father is crying now. She walks back to me and I can honestly say I’m amazed by her right now. I’m amazed by her resolve. Her strength. Her courage. I slide my hand down her arm until I find her pinky, and I hold it. She wraps her pinky tightly around mine in return.

Her father sighs heavily, then looks back up at her. “When I first started drinking . . . it was only once. I did something to my little sister . . . but it was only one time. It was years before I met your mother.”

She exhales a breath. “What about after me? Have you done it to anyone else since I was taken?” It’s obvious he has by the guilt that consumes his features. “Who?” she asks. “How many?”

He shakes his head slightly. “There was just one more. I stopped drinking a few years ago and haven’t touched anyone since. I swear. There were only three and they were at the lowest points of my life. When I’m sober, I’m able to control my urges. That’s why I don’t drink anymore.”

“Who was she?” Sky asks.

He nudges his head to the right, toward the house next door.

Toward the house I used to live in.

The house I lived in with Les.

I don’t hear another word after that.

Chapter Forty-four

One would think that finding my sister’s body was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.

It wasn’t. The worst thing that ever happened to me came later that night, when I had to tell my mother her daughter was dead.

I remember pulling Les onto my lap, doing everything I could to make sense of what was happening. I tried to make sense of why she wasn’t responding. Why she wasn’t breathing or talking or laughing. It just didn’t make sense that someone could be here one minute, then the very next minute they’re not. They’re just . . . not.

I don’t know how long I held her. It could have been seconds. It could have been minutes. Hell, I was so out of it that it could have been hours. I just know that I was still holding her when the front door slammed shut downstairs.

I remember panicking, knowing what was about to happen. I was about to have to walk downstairs and look my mother in the eyes. I was about to have to tell her that her daughter was dead.