CHAPTER 45
Icurled my knees to my chest, hugging them tight against the premonsoon breeze. The clouds had spread overhead and blotted out the stars. Only a tiny break showed that the moon was up and slowly being swallowed by the encroaching clouds.
The night was quiet. No gossiping neighbors in their yards, no sirens, no screaming. Even Sean had gone home.
I’d been up on my roof for what felt like hours. Waiting.
Earlier, he’d given me no reason to expect him. No look or indication that he’d want to talk with me—needto talk to me. Nothing beyond that fleeting moment when our eyes had met and I’d exhaled more air than my body could possibly contain, knowing he was okay.
The wind kicked up and my hair flew around to whip my face. A clap of thunder sounded. By my guess, I had about eight minutes before the clouds split apart.
Eight minutes wasn’t enough time.
I was watching the last glimmer of the moon disappear as the storm clouds took full possession of the night sky, when I heard him.
The back door of his house squeaked open. His head was turned in my direction before he even stepped out. It was as dark as it ever got, but I thought I saw his shoulders lift when he saw me. Two long steps, a burst of energy on the last, and he was on the wall. Seconds later, he was next to me.
And I couldn’t blink for fear that I’d waste what little time I knew we had; time that really didn’t have anything to do with the coming rain.
Lightning flashed in the distance, throwing the planes of his face into relief for one second, two. My heart broke for him in those seconds.
His jaw was locked, his eyes lowered. His dark hair fell forward to skim his cheekbones. More thunder. Louder and closer this time. I wasn’t even going to get my eight minutes.
“He’s dead.”
“I know,” I said.Altercation.That was the word the officer had used. It sounded so civil for what amounted to one prisoner beating another to death.
“I went to see him last week.”
A boulder hit me square in the stomach. The officer had said Daniel’s dad died that morning, and Daniel had been home for a few days already, so he hadn’t been theretherewhen it happened, but maybe…maybe he’d said something? Or his dad had?
“I’m not sorry he’s dead,” Daniel said.
“I’m not either.” And more than that, I was relieved Daniel felt the same way. I could still taste the bile that had risen in my throat when Daniel had confronted his mom with the physical marks his dad left on him. If he had to deal with guilt on top of that…I’d want to kill his dad all over again.
I didn’t want to ask him any more questions because there were no good answers, but they spilled out anyway. “Why did you go see him?”
“I found out she was calling him, from almost the second she got out of the hospital. Maybe even before.”
My eyes shut.
“It didn’t matter that I got her away, moved her halfway across the country, because he still had a hold on her. I could take her to the other side of the world and she’d still write to him, talk to him.” His voice was so full of pain that it hurt me. “She’d wait forever.”
My head and heart lurched in opposite directions. He’d gone to the monster that had destroyed his childhood—and was still poisoning any possible happiness with his mom—to plead for her. I shuddered, knowing this man I’d never met—and now never would—would have never acquiesced, not if half of what I’d heard about him was true.
“I asked him to stop. No more calls, no more letters. To let her go.”
I didn’t need to ask what his dad had said.
The answer had been no.
Horribly, unthinkably, no.
I could imagine that fight through a pane of Plexiglas, the heated words and hotter tempers. I could see the guards dragging his father off as if I’d been there. And even though Daniel didn’t say, I could all too easily see his stoked temper inciting the wrong inmate—or five in Daniel’s father’s case—and sparking the last deadly encounter of a brutally executed life.
It had taken his dad more than a week to die from his injuries.
And I couldn’t be sorry about any of it.
