Her shoulders tensed.
“I said I’d wear it until the day I died.” My voice cracked. “I meant it.”
For a long moment, she didn’t move.
Then, without turning around: “That’s not enough, Knox.”
Knox.
Not Dad. Not even a sarcasticFather.Just Knox. Like I was some stranger she’d read about in a police report.
The buzzer sounded. The lock clicked. And I sat alone in that visiting room, surrounded by the ghosts of every choice I’d ever made.
And then she was gone. And this time, I couldn’t even tell myself it was for her own good.
I had saved my daughter from a monster.
But in her world, I’d become the only monster she could see.
41
KNOX
My boots moved on autopilot through the gray corridors while my mind replayed every word she’d said. Every crack in her voice. Every tear she’d refused to let fall.
Father-daughter dance. Empty seat in the stands. Walking across the graduation stage alone.
“I’d check the mailbox like it was some kind of ritual.”
“You threw everything away.”
“You weren’t there to tell me it would be okay.”
“That’s not enough, Knox.”
I’d told myself I was protecting her.
I was so goddamn sure.
Years of convincing myself that my sacrifice meant something. That the absence would heal cleaner than the truth. That she’d grow up whole because she didn’t know what happened in that bedroom.
But she didn’t grow up whole.
She grew up shattered.
And I was the one holding the hammer.
First Harper. Now Gwen.
The two reasons I’d had for getting through each day in this concrete tomb. Gone. Both of them. In the span of hours, theuniverse had ripped away every shred of hope I’d been stupid enough to hold on to.
Harper’s face flashed through my mind. The way she’d looked at me when she ended it. Not with hatred. With something worse.
Resignation.
Like she’d always known it would end this way. Like caring about me had been a mistake she’d finally found the courage to correct.
And now my daughter. My little girl. Walking out that door without looking back, telling me that what I had bought her was a lifetime of therapy and trust issues.
