"You coming?" Candace calls from the red aisle.
"I'm good here." Darla's voice is too bright. "You pick. You have better taste anyway."
Candace pauses, bottle in hand. Darla hasn't set foot past the sparkling water display. Six months ago she would have been elbow-deep in the rosé section, debating labels and demanding to smell every cork.
"You're not even going to look?"
"I'm looking." Darla gestures vaguely at the sparkling water in front of her. "I'm just in a sparkling water phase."
Candace sets a bottle back with controlled precision and steps closer, dropping her voice. "Darla."
Darla's hold tightens on the sparkling water. "Candace."
A long silence. Recognition passes between them. Protection, suspicion, tenderness sharpened into vigilance. Darla's chin lifts, but her look gives her away.
Candace exhales. She looks at the sparkling water in Darla's hands, back at her face.
"That's what you're drinking tonight."
Darla nods, clutching the bottle, shield and secret both. "Okay," she murmurs, quiet enough to pass for gratitude.
By the time we reach the café, my patience is thin in the way it gets when I've been pretending to be normal for too long. Windows, warmth, noise. Late-afternoon people with laptops, couples sharing tables, a mom bouncing a baby. The espresso machine hissing beneath it all.
We claim a small table near the front. Candace orders as though she owns the place. Darla orders something sweet after changing her mind three times. I order coffee I don't want because my hands need something to do.
Mid-conversation, Darla plotting googly eyes on every framed photo in the clubhouse, Candace arguing for "bigger, meaner, louder," the hair on my arms lifts.
The café door opens, and a draft pushes in colder than it should be. The noise dips, that instinctive hush that settles over a room when something dangerous walks in.
My gaze snaps up.
He's standing just inside the entrance, adjusting his cufflinks. The reason my throat closes. My father. Harrison Mercer. The man whose voice used to mean rules and consequences and silence.
He doesn't look surprised to find me. He looks satisfied. My mind runs the calculation before the fear catches up. He knew I'd be here. This café, this afternoon. Which means he's been watching, or someone has been watching for him, long enough to learn my patterns. The thought sends ice through my veins.
How long? How close has he been while I was buying groceries and drinking coffee and acting safe?
I stay neutral because I learned young how to keep my expression smooth while my insides turned to ice. My fingers curl around my cup hard enough to hurt.
Darla stops mid-sentence.
Candace's posture shifts, subtle and controlled, her whole body tightening into something coiled and ready.
My father walks toward us with the calm confidence of a man who's never been told no and believed it. Suit perfectly tailored. Hair neat. His smile is soft and practiced, the kind he wore at fundraisers while his hand pressed too hard on my elbow.
"Sloane. There you are."
Candace stands so fast her chair scrapes. She steps slightly in front of me. Not blocking my view, simply making herself the first point of contact. "Wrong table. Keep walking."
He spares her a glance. A mild inconvenience. "And you are?"
"Someone telling you to leave."
His mouth curves. "Spirited."
"And you," Candace replies, "are exactly where you don't belong."
Darla's hand finds my wrist under the table. Warm, a steady anchor. She squeezes once.
