“You didn’t know how?” His voice cracked upward, sharp and disbelieving. “How about ‘Hector, my father killed your wife’? How about being honest instead of lying to my face every single day?”
“I wasn’t lying?—”
“You were!” He slammed his hand on the counter and I flinched. “Every time you smiled at Lily, every time you let me trust you—that was a lie!”
Tears were streaming down my face now. “I wanted to tell you. I tried to find the right words?—”
“There are no right words for this!” His hands shook, fury and grief fighting for space in his body. “Your father murdered my wife. He got drunk and drove into oncoming traffic and killed the mother of my child. And you thought—what? That you could just keep that information to yourself?”
“I was scared?—”
“I don’t care that you were scared!” He looked at me and I saw devastation written across every line of his face. “I trusted you with my daughter. I let you into our lives. I—” He stopped himself. “And this whole time you were lying.”
“Hector, please?—”
“I can’t do this.” He turned away. “I can’t have a murderer’s daughter around my child. I can’t forgive this. I can’t forgive you.”
“Can we just talk about this?—”
“LEAVE!” The word detonated between us, loud enough to shake something loose inside me.
The shout echoed through the kitchen. I took a step back, my whole body shaking.
“Daddy?” Lily’s voice was a tremor.
We both turned. Lily stood in the doorway, her eyes wide and frightened. She looked between us, taking in her father’s fury and my tears.
“Why is everyone sad?” Her voice was so small it barely existed.
“Go to your room, Lily.” Hector’s voice was too harsh, too sharp.
“But—”
“Now!”
Lily flinched like she’d been struck. She looked at me one more time, confused and hurt all over her face, before running down the hallway. I heard her bedroom door slam.
I grabbed my bag with shaking hands, shoved my laptop inside without bothering to close it. Tears were blurring my vision but I could still see Hector standing there with his back to me, shoulders rigid with anger and grief.
“I’m sorry,” I managed. “I’m so, so sorry.”
He didn’t respond. Didn’t even acknowledge I’d spoken.
I walked to the door, each step feeling like I was leaving pieces of myself behind. At the threshold I turned back one last time, tried to find something to say that would make this better.
But Hector had already turned away.
And there was nothing left to say anyway—not when the truth had already done all the damage it could.
CHAPTER 19
Sarah
I packedmy entire life into three suitcases in forty-eight hours.
Most of what I owned was garbage anyway—thrift store furniture that had been falling apart before I’d dragged it off the curb, dishes with chips in them, clothes that had seen better years. The landlord could keep it all. I just took what mattered: my mother’s jewelry box, Colin’s old school photos, the speech therapy textbooks I’d been studying for years.
And one drawing Lily made months ago—a ballerina with stars around her head that I’d kept folded in my nightstand drawer.
