She toyed with her necklace—her mother’s cross, never taken off, no matter how rebellious she pretended to be. “It’s a madhouse. They brought in therapy dogs for the all-nighters. Tiffany almost got bit.”
“And you?”
She smiled, just a flicker. “I pet the dog. Didn’t get bit.”
I let the moment hang, then changed gears. “You know, Bart was out tonight.” I watched her face for the tremor. There. Gone, but not missed.
She shrugged. “Probably trolling for speeders near the campus. Did he see me?”
“He saw someone looked an awful lot like you. Said she was downtown, near the old post office.” I let my eyes sharpen. “Not the library.”
Darla met my gaze. She didn’t blink. “Maybe he needs his prescription checked.”
I smiled, but only with my lips. “Maybe.” I leaned forward, voice soft. “You know why I care, right? It’s not for my sake.”
She looked away, just for a heartbeat. “I know, Dad.”
I caught the lie. She was good, but not perfect.
I let her stew in the silence. The clock ticked, the house breathed. “I have to trust you,” I said. “And I need you to trust me. When you lie, it’s not just you who pays the price. It’s everyone who believes in you. It’s the church. It’s me.”
She bristled, and for a second I saw her mother in her—the same stubborn tilt to her chin, the unwillingness to give an inch. “I’m not a child. I’m allowed a life.”
I nodded, solemn. “Of course you are. But you don’t get two of them. Remember Lot’s wife.” I let that hang—a threat, a sermon, a father’s plea.
She didn’t answer, but she folded her hands, white-knuckled, and held my gaze until I looked away.
“Go on,” I said, waving her off. “Get some sleep.”
She moved to the stairs, and for a second I wondered if she’d say goodnight, or even look back. She didn’t.
She was getting better at lying. That scared me more than anything else.
The sound of her door was almost silent, but I heard it. Of course I heard it—there was nothing in this house I hadn’t mapped, measured, or weaponized. I waited ten minutes, then climbed the stairs with the same slow step I used in hospital rooms or confessionals, where people broke down easier if they didn’t see me coming.
Darla’s room looked just the same as it had when she was twelve, but now the books on the shelf were all psychology and business ethics, and the perfume on her dresser cost more than my first car. I leaned against the wall in the hallway, counting her breaths by the way the floorboard vibrated under my heel.
She was crying. Quiet, disciplined, no gasping theatrics. It hurt, and it was supposed to.
I pictured her curled in bed, eyes red, brain running through every mistake she’d made since the day she learned I wasn’t God,only the closest thing she’d ever get to it. She’d get over it. They always did.
I went back to my study and poured a finger of Old Forester, watching the men outside smoke their last cigarettes before bed. My soldiers. My flock.
Upstairs, the house stilled again. I poured a second drink and waited for the night to tell me what it wanted.
It took less than twenty minutes for the light to come on again under her door. She moved around, creaking the boards, then went still.
I poured a third drink and walked up. This time, I put my ear against the wood.
A faint, electronic trill. She’d turned on her phone. Not the one I paid for, not the one the church’s data plan could trace in three seconds. A burner, then. Clever. Or maybe just desperate.
I let my lips part, just a hair, and listened.
Her voice, soft. “Hey. You up?”
A pause. The tiniest beep. Her hands moving, fast, like she was running from something inside her own skin.
I pictured the device, a prepaid, bought with cash, probably from the gas station on Versailles. She’d stashed it somewhere in the room, maybe under the mattress, maybe inside a stuffed animal with its seams picked open and sewn back by hand. It made me want to laugh, but only because I wanted to weep.
