Amelia eyed the door with the instinct to bolt. She inched toward it in a shuffle and conjured a flimsy explanation.
“No, I was just curious. On the phone with Rich, you said…”
“Yeah, about that.” Her father slowly rose from his desk and stuffed his hands in his pockets. Amelia knew that move too. He was gearing up to drop a bomb. “Burt’s wife is disputing his cause of death. The FBI has agreed to investigate. I doubt it’ll amount to much, but they may ask you some questions. Routine stuff, nothing to worry about.”
Heat exploded across Amelia’s cheeks and spilled down her chest. “Disputing how?”
No longer impassive, concern carved a canyon between her father’s brows.
No, not this.
Amelia needed him to cosign her denial, to tell her that Burt really was a sad old man who took his own life, that it had nothing to do with that folder or his warning to her.
“She thinks it was foul play.”
Amelia’s throat ached with the promise of tears. “You mean murder.”
She should’ve seen it coming. People said funerals were for the living, but so too were the questions because “why” and “how” didn’t matter to the dead. Everyone knew the “how,” but why would Burt take his own life?
He wouldn’t. He hadn’t.
“Amelia, is something wrong?”
Her father edged closer. His searing gaze could take her apart, overturn every piece until he was satisfied she had nothing to hide.
Some nights, Amelia sat at the dinner table with Burt’s warning rattling in her head as her father ate his supper in small bites. She wanted to carve out the secret like a malignant growth and drop it onto his plate. This was his world, not hers.
He’d given her a chance, but what could she say? The folder told one tale—the Velascos wanted Emory dead—and one her father probably knew well, so why promise her silence?
Amelia didn’t know. But then there was Burt and how she dreamed some nights of his secrets poisoning him. What if those secrets could poison her father too?
A thunderclap rattled the window, and they both turned to a darkening sky. Outside, the trees bent against the assault of rising wind, the canopies in chaos.
“I’m fine,” Amelia said and buried her tears behind a phony smile. “I have to go. The weather’s turning, and I’m already late.”
She started for the door, but the cold snap of her father’s voice stopped her.
“Why are you running?”
She swung around, certain of his anger, but found hurt etched on his face instead. “Dad, I told you. I?—”
“That’s just it. You used to tell me everything, and now there’s a part of you I can’t reach. Are you that angry with me that you have to run from home? Why pack like a maniac just so you can leave early? And why Arizona, of all places?”
He meant the randomness, the way she seemingly closed her eyes and pointed to a map. That wasn’t far from the truth. For good reason, he called her his wildflower and saw in her something hard to tame. Amelia flourished in places he couldn’t understand.
But home had always been elusive, a state of the heart more than a place to put down roots. Arizona promised belonging she had yet to find and an escape from the secret she held inside. It burned him up that she wanted to leave so badly.
“Not every decision I make is anchored to you,” Amelia said and licked the tears from her lips. “I’m leaving in two days, and there’s nothing you can say to stop me.”
Her father drew a deep inhale and conceded with his chin tucked to his chest. “You’re right. I should let you go.”
Amelia didn’t know if he meant the party or her. She saw him clearly for the first time since their fight; not cold and needlesslycruel but devastated and reeling. He finally seemed to see her clearly too; not a darling disappointment but lost at sea and sinking.
She waited for something, anything other than his impassive stare. His lips pressed together, though, and in a rare moment, he curated his words with care. Amelia took the silent blow. The things he didn’t say wounded her worse than those he did.
“A storm’s coming, a bad one too. You and your mom be careful tonight.” Insult to injury, he dug in his wallet and handed her three twenty-dollar bills. “In case the food sucks and you wanna stop for something on the way home.”
Amelia took the money with nothing else to say. They talked in circles around what they were after—a sweeter past where they didn’t exist like strangers.
