“Arethese licensed?”
“Laws are for poor people.”
“Yeah, I think that’s part of our problem.”
“Come along. It will make you feel better.” When Samantha hesitated, her father started for the exit. “Don’t start acting like a moody teenager now.”
The options were limited at best; she could stay inside and mope, or she could watch her father shoot a gun for an hour. And she’d given everything to be in his good graces. She might as well not waste them now.
“Fine.”
Ten minutes later they were set up in the back forty, a wide swath of empty acreage behind their house. Besides the two members of the Ashbrooke line, an aging, stone-faced butler in a crisp uniform and protective World War I helmet stood beside a mechanical pulling mechanism and a stack of fine china.
“Is this…” Samantha narrowed her eyes at the plates and their telltale gilt engraving of the lettersAMfor Ashbrooke Manor. “Ourchina?”
“Spare china. Have to get rid of it anyway. Cluttering up the damned attic.” He slapped his rifle on his shoulder, spotting the air through his scope. “Pull!”
Pop…Snap… Crash.The plate flew through the air, only to be intercepted and shattered by one of her father’s bullets. Samantha’s gun lay at her feet, having been dropped there a few minutes ago when the man sidled up to the makeshift gun range. She stared at it, conflicted. She’d gotten what she wanted. She got her father. But it wasn’t the relationship she wanted.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m taking my daughter out for an old-fashioned shoot. It’ll cheer you up.”
He reloaded the weapon, clearly better at spotting airborne targets than his own flaws. After months of ignoring her, he was just going to swoop in andplayher father? Hearing him call herdaughterwas moving, a moment she’d clutched to her heart every time she thought it would fall apart again. But still.
“You”—she poked him in the shoulder, not caring this was as many words as they’d ever spoken to one another at one time—“are the most blind old man I’ve ever met.”
“I’m barely forty-seven, Samantha. Don’t call me old.”
The dam holding her back didn’t break. It shattered, rushing all of her blood and pain straight to her temples before exploding from between her lips. Thomas always told her not to air the dirty laundry in front of anyone—not their father and certainly not any servants—and Sam was tired of following protocols. Raging floods didn’t follow the orders of anyone.
“You’re infuriating! I did all of this for you and now you want me to sit here and shoot plates and talk about my feelings when a month ago you didn’t want to remember I was in the house? How dare you!”
“You did what now?”
“I only joined the Animos Society for you. I wanted you to see me. And I lost Daniel.” Even saying his name cracked her breastbone. Rivulets of pain clattered in her ribs. “Because I wanted my father to acknowledge my existence. Because I wanted to be someone he could be proud of. Because I wanted to bewithsomeone he would be proud of. I loved him. And I gave him up so you would finally see me, and now that you have, you can’t even do that right!”
She had so much more to say. She held back. Let the old man figure it out for himself. She couldn’t spell everything out for him.
“That’s why you’ve been so upset? Not because you didn’t get in, but because…” He put the pieces together. “You thought you’d lost me and this boy in one night?”
Well, maybe shedidn’thave so much more to say. He’d pretty much summed it up.
“Basically. Yeah.”
The pair shuffled their feet for a moment, neither being too comfortable with any kind of emotion, much less the ones they shared now. Sam spent her entire life wanting to confront her father. Now she was here, she felt small in the face of it.
“I did not grow up with a warm father,” he conceded. “I didn’t learn how to be one.”
“It’s no excuse for ignoring me until I joined your stupid club,” Sam snapped.
Her father took exception.
“I didn’t—”
“Don’t deny it. You didn’t give a shit until you realized I wasn’t a complete stain on your house.”
“That’s not fair.” He picked his rifle back up and pointed it toward the sky, intent on changing the subject or at least distracting himself. He didn’t want to feel that he’d contributed to her joining the Animos Society. If he was the cause of that, then he would have to own up to being the cause of her suffering. His refusal to see her side of things pushed Samantha to new heights of indignation, even as he continued shooting. “Pull!”
