But she’d been too young to understand the gift he was offering.
She’d hesitated in answering and he’d turned his head to look at her—frigid blue eyes the color of a lake in winter.
“You were snooping through my truck?” he’d asked a different way, giving her one more chance to take the lie and run with it.
She hadn’t taken it.
“I just saw it,” she’d whispered, her heart thudding in her chest like something wild and trapped. “Like in a dream.” Her daddy was scary most days. But when he looked at her like that—like she was something unnatural, something wrong—he was the scariest thing in her world.
She’d felt the warmth running down her legs before she’d even registered the shame of it. Her bladder releasing in fear, the puddle spreading across the worn linoleum while everyone stood frozen. No one moved. No one spoke.
He’d stood up slowly and towered over her small form, and she’d heard her mother’s whimper from the kitchen as she continued with the dishes.
“What else did you see?”
“I—I don’t know,” she’d stuttered out, her voice barely above a whisper. “I don’t know the men at the table. You were just playing cards. And then you took all the money and put it in the glove box. You drove into town and that lady was waiting for you on the steps. How come you kissed her but you never kiss Mama?”
That was the last question she asked before his belt swished through the loops—a long hiss and slither, like a snake moving through grass. Then the lightning crack of leather against skin as the belt landed across the middle of her back.
Again and again until the world narrowed to nothing but hurt and the sound of her own screaming.
He’d taught her something that day, in that small house with the pathetic Christmas tree in the corner. He’d taught her that truth was dangerous. That seeing things—knowing things she shouldn’t know—made her wrong. Made her bad. Made her deserving of whatever came next.
No—Daddy hadn’t liked her saying those things at all.
One year and three days until she turned eighteen.
The hours crawled by. Pain ebbed and flowed like a tide. Fever burned through her, making the shadows dance and shift across her walls. She drifted in and out of consciousness, caught between waking and dreaming, between past and present.
And then it came.
Not a vision this time. A knowledge that settled into her bones like truth. The screaming. The flames. Just as she’d seen it.
She felt it the moment his life ended—felt it like a cord being cut, like a weight lifting from her chest. The house seemed to exhale around her. The air shifted, became lighter somehow.
He was gone.
Relief flooded through her, so powerful it brought fresh tears to her eyes. Not tears of grief. Tears of release.
“He’s gone,” she whispered into the darkness.
Marnie closed her eyes and let herself breathe.
Her father was dead.
And she was finally, truly free.
Chapter One
Thank God for the O’Haras.
Marnie had learned through the years to keep her mouth shut and stay invisible. It was an art form, really—the way she could fold herself into corners, slip through rooms unnoticed, become small enough that her father’s attention slid right past her like water off glass. The older she got, the better she became at it. The beatings came less frequently now, though when they came, they came hard.
Mostly because at almost seventeen, she’d gotten very good at not being home.
She spent most of her afternoons and weekends at Sloane O’Hara’s house, and had since they’d been seated next to each other in Mrs. Green’s kindergarten class—two five-year-olds who’d looked at each other and known, the way children sometimes do, that they were meant to be friends. Sloane with her wild black hair and mischievous blue eyes. Marnie with her quiet ways and the secrets that lived behind her dark gaze.
The O’Hara Ranch was everything her own house wasn’t. Warm. Loud. Full of laughter that didn’t have sharp edges. It was easier—so much easier—to pretend she belonged to them. To a family that loved unconditionally and didn’t discipline with the smell of Jim Beam on their breath and a leather strap singing through the air.
