My eyes misted, and I turned my head to hide it. I felt the familiar burn in my throat that came with stomping down big emotions. My family had never been a safe place for tears. But lately, my defences were threadbare. Between the grief and the situation with the house, I was fraying.
Can you feel your feet?Dax’s voice echoed in my mind.
Good. Now tell me what the surface feels like.
I slipped my feet out of their yellow sandals and placed them on the wooden patio boards. Warm. Firm. A little scratchy under my toes.
For a second, I wished Dax were really there. Then I remembered I’d decided to find him repulsive for the rest of eternity.
“Whether or not we talk about that place, Riley owns it now. She deserves to know why.”
Dad leaned back and scratched his overgrown chin. “I don’t understand.”
“That makes two of us. I’m just trying to figure out who left it to me so I can give it back and be done with it. I don’t enjoy going there. I don’t like dealing with it. I don’t like this conversation,” I said.
“You’ve been there?” Dad stood abruptly, visibly shaking. He raked his fingers through his white hair.
“I had to.”
He paced the patio, hands over his face. I hadn’t expected that reaction. It didn’t sound like rage. It was something else. Something I recognised in myself.
“What’s it like now?” he asked, pausing with one hand on his hip and the other pinching the bridge of his nose.
Weird segue.
“It smells like an old lady’s wardrobe and it could do with some TLC,” I replied.
He glared at me for a moment, but in his eyes I identified what it was in his response that I couldn’t label before. Fear.
“Did they leave you everything? What have you found?” He demanded now, and I looked at June, whose tented brows looked just as shocked as I was. But it was him asking what we’d found that had the trickle of ice dripping into my belly.
“What do you mean, what have I found?”
He pinched the corners of his lips, eyes fixed on the wooden floor as though calculating his next words.
“Nothing. Nothing,” he said, waving a hand and forcing the corner of his mouth into a friendly smile. “Listen, girls, this has been lovely, but your visit really was unexpected, and I’m afraid I’m not feeling well.” He pulled the cup out of my hand and put it on the tray. June, looking as though she could catch a fly in her mouth, obliged and put her own back. I tried to make eye contact with him as he did everything to avoid my gaze.
“Sorry Dad. We didn’t know you were sick. Can we do anything before you go? Run the vacuum around or something?” June asked.
“No, no. You girls be on your way. I wouldn’t want you catching anything—especially with your little ones, June.”
He shuffled back inside, his throat making a strange noise as the door closed behind him.
“Did Dad just kick us out?” June whispered.
“Yeah. I think so.”
“What the hell was that? He’s always been secretive, but this is a whole new level. And it’s not like you didn’t have a good reason to bring it up.”
Back in the car, June drove at her usual death-wish speed. I closed my eyes, not wanting to watch every near miss as we rounded corners.
Dad’s words circled through my mind again.
What have you found?
Pressure built behind my ribcage. I felt like one of those steam trains from a kids’ cartoon, about to shoot hot air from my ears. There was something else too. Something that made me squirm in my chair.
What did he know?
