“I don’t know how to feel.”
“You don’t have to know,” she said. “Not tonight.”
“I should be?—”
I swallowed hard.
“I don’t know. Sad? Angry? Or relieved? Am I awful for feeling relieved?”
“No.”
The word was immediate. Fierce.
“You’re not awful. You’re human. And you’re in shock. And that man—Hazel, that man hurt you in ways no father ever should. Feeling relief that he can’t hurt you again isn’t wrong. It’s normal.”
Normal.
Nothing about this felt normal.
I pressed a trembling hand to my forehead. My skin was cold and damp. “I don’t want to look at him again.”
“You won’t,” Maude said firmly. “The boys will handle anything that needs handling outside. You stay right here with me.”
The “boys.”
They were still out there.
Gideon was still out there.
At that thought, another surge of dizziness rolled through me. A fresh spike of fear—not about my father this time, but about the man I loved stepping into darkness with a sniper lurking.
“Gideon,” I whispered, almost inaudible.
“He’s fine,” Maude said gently. “He’s coming back. He’ll walk through that door, you’ll see.”
My throat tightened. I stared down into the empty sink, watching my tears leave tiny dark spots.
I hadn’t even felt them fall.
“Here,” Maude said softly, reaching past me to fill a glass with water. The sound of it was too loud—sharp, cascading, almost violent. She pressed it into my hands. “Sip.”
I tried. The glass rattled against my teeth. Water dribbled down my chin.
“You’re all right,” she soothed. “You’re right here in our kitchen. You’re safe.”
Safe.
The word thudded inside me like a heartbeat.
Safe, even though everything felt shattered and raw and trembling.
I leaned forward, resting my forehead against the cabinet door. My breaths came shallow, but deeper than before.
A little more mine.
Maude stayed beside me, quiet and steady, her hand warm on my back like a lighthouse beam—constant, guiding, impossible to ignore.
Outside, faint voices rose—urgent, low, overlapping. A car door slammed. Boots pounded on gravel. The marsh wind shifted, rattling the porch swing.
