“Dad’s texting me. He wants to tell her tonight,” Brady’s voice said in a whisper.

Her, as in me? What were they talking about?

West tensed underneath me, and I stayed still, my eyes closed. “She needs a little time after seeing her mom today,” he said so softly, I wondered if Brady could hear him.

Brady sighed. “I agree. I’ll talk to Dad. Your mom’s home again? Right? Didn’t she come home last week?”

West’s mom was home, but she was acting strange. I knew he was worried about her. She had left so abruptly after his father’s death and had gone to stay with her own mother, leaving West to deal with things alone. It didn’t seem like her at all. Now that she was back, she was acting odd. Forgetting things, burning food, sleeping half the day.

“Yeah, she’s home,” he replied. The worry in his voice was obvious. I wanted to hold him and promise him it would all be okay. But I couldn’t do that because I didn’t know for sure that it would be.

I waited to see if they said anything more about what my uncle wanted to tell me. When they didn’t after several minutes, I stretched and slowly sat up.

“About time you woke up. You’ve slept most of the drive,” Brady said in a teasing tone.

West chuckled and pulled me to him as he kissed the top of my head. “Leave my girl alone. She’s had a long day.”

West knew what my uncle Boone was going to tell me. If I asked him, he’d tell me. He wouldn’t keep it from me. I tilted my head up to look at him. He tilted his head down to meet my gaze.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Anything,” he replied. He didn’t have to say more, because I knew what he meant. He’d do anything I needed. Anything I asked of him.

“Can we stop it with the sweet shit, please? Y’all aren’t alone,” Brady said.

West smirked. I loved that smirk.

I waited until West went home to check on his mother before going downstairs to confront my uncle Boone. Brady and West knew something I needed to know, but they both wanted to protect me. As much as I appreciated that, I wanted to know what it was.

Uncle Boone was sitting in his recliner, a book in his hands. He looked up at me over his reading glasses. I saw a brief flicker of concern before he masked it and smiled at me.

“Did you have a good trip?” he asked.

“I needed that. To see her,” I told him. “But I also need to know what it is that Brady and West don’t want me to know yet.”

Uncle Boone frowned and then put his book down before taking off his glasses. “You’ve been through a lot today, Maggie.”

I had. He was right. But that didn’t change the fact I had a right to know this secret that affected me. “I want to know.”

He motioned for me to sit down across from him on the sofa. I considered telling him I would just stand, but I walked over to the sofa and took a seat. He clearly didn’t want to tell me whatever it was, and I knew it had to be something to do with my father.

I gripped my hands tightly in my lap and waited.

Uncle Boone studied me a moment before speaking. “It’s your father . . . ,” he began. The dread and fear that came with those few words sank in. “He’s dead, Maggie. They found him this morning.”

He’s dead.

Two words that should mean sadness, devastation, pain, but that only gave me a sense of emptiness. I wanted to feel relief, but I couldn’t. He’d taken my mother from me. Cut short her life and ruined everything. I wanted to cheer that he was gone. That I’d never see his face again.

But I couldn’t.

Instead I just sat there, repeating those two words over and over in my head. It was over. He’s dead.

The good memories I had of him didn’t outweigh the bad. There were too many bad. Too many sad memories. Too many regrets.

My mother had been a beautiful object he’d wanted to own. In the end he had owned her, then thrown her away as if she were nothing. She’d loved him. I had seen it in her eyes and in the way she wanted to please him. Yet nothing she did was ever good enough. She wasn’t what he’d hoped for, yet he hadn’t been able to release her and let her live her life. He had kept her only to destroy her in the end. To destroy us all.

I always believed he loved me. I had moments where he made me feel cherished and precious. I wondered if my mother had had the same. If that was why she’d loved him so much. But he hadn’t been worthy of our love.

I had hated him. I had wished he were dead.

And now he was.

But there was only emptiness. A void inside me.

“Maggie, I know he was your father. No matter what—”

“No,” I said, stopping Uncle Boone from saying more. “No. He wasn’t my father. He stopped being my father the day he took my mother from me. Don’t tell me you’re sorry for my loss. Don’t say that it’s okay for me to grieve for him, because he’s been dead to me for two years. This just finalizes it.”

Uncle Boone didn’t try to say more. I stood up and hurried back to my room. Where I could be alone. Where I wouldn’t have to talk.

Aunt Coralee came and knocked on my door a few minutes later. I assured her I was okay and wanted to be alone and didn’t want to talk about it.

She didn’t argue with me.

An hour later my bedroom window slid open, and West stepped inside. His face was etched with worry and concern. I stared up at him from my spot on the bed where I was sitting with my knees folded under me. The hollowness where the pain should be shattered, and the first tears broke free.

He was on the bed, pulling me into his arms, before the sobbing started. While I was safely tucked against him, I cried for all I’d lost. All I’d never have. I cried for my mother and how tragically she’d died. I cried for West and his dad. And I cried for me.

Epilogue

WEST

It wasn’t until we were sitting at Brady’s, looking through old photo albums several weeks later, that I realized who she was.

It was the Christmas that Brady and I were in seventh grade. He’d had to go to Tennessee for his family’s Christmas party, and he begged his mom to take me with him. I had been before and I knew how boring it was, but he was my best friend. So I went.

We always took our football and tossed it outside, even in the snow, while the party went on. The only time we went in with everyone was to eat. There weren’t any other kids but a girl. I had seen her a few years ago, the last time I came to this thing, but I hadn’t seen her this visit. Not that I was looking.

Brady had gone inside to help his dad, and I’d decided to explore the house. I didn’t get far before I heard someone crying. I debated going inside the room, hoping whoever it was didn’t notice me standing there in the doorway. But she lifted her head, and the prettiest green eyes I’d ever seen looked directly at me. Long dark hair framed her face. The pink-and-silver bedroom reminded me of something from a fairy tale. It fit her.

She sniffled and continued to look at me. I wasn’t sure if she wanted me to leave her alone or to ask her if I could do something. My momma hadn’t raised me to run off and leave a girl crying, so I’d walked over and sat down beside her.

“It can’t be all that bad. It’s Christmas,” I said, hoping to lighten the mood. I didn’t mention the fact she reminded me of a princess and I’d never seen one of those cry on television.

She sniffed again and wiped at her face. “It doesn’t feel like it,” she’d whispered back.

“What with all the Christmas music and the way this house is decked out with more decorations than the entire town of Lawton? How can it not feel like Christmas?”

The girl looked away from me. Her face remained sad. “Not everything is what it seems. Not everyone is what they should be or appear to be.”

How old was this girl? She talked like she was grown. But she didn’t look any older than Brady and me. “One of your friends do you wrong?” I asked. I knew about girl drama. Happened at school all the time.

“I wish,” she whispered, not looking back at me.

She wasn’t a real open book. I was getting tired of trying to cheer her up, because I obviously sucked at it. “Whoever it is isn’t worth your time if they’re making you sad like this.”

Finally she glanced back at me. “We don’t always get to choose who we give our time to. We don’t get to choose our parents, for example. And we don’t get to make their decisions for them. So it’s not that simple. He’s my dad. I love him. I have to love him. But he hurts her. She tries so hard to make him happy, but he’s always off with someone else. Like tonight. He’s supposed to be here. He promised her he would be.”

I didn’t know what that felt like. My parents loved each other and I could never imagine my dad hurting my mom. But it sounded like this girl had a very different life. One I wasn’t envious of. Even if her house was bigger than the church I went to on Sunday. It was even bigger than Gunner Lawton’s house, and that was big.

“Then yeah, that sucks,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

“Yeah, it does,” had been her only response.

Brady had called my name then, and because I didn’t know what to do or what to say, I left her there. When she’d come to eat, I couldn’t make eye contact with her because I felt guilty for not being able to help her. And for knowing her secrets.