"With our father, sometimes you have to play the game to make things easier, so be good when you're with him."
"Like you are?" she asks sarcastically.
"I'm more than of age and a lost cause to him, whether he wants to admit it or not. But I took the rougher road. Take the smoother one. Okay?"
"Fine."
"Monday morning, he wants you home, so go back Sunday night."
"But—"
"Play the game, and we will have a much better chance at you living here and transferring to your school. Deal?"
And she nods.
Now all I have to do is present Dad with her plans and make it work for her.
And then?
Then I just might have a roommate.
Great.
Still...anything for my sister.
Chapter Twenty-Three
LOLA
I sit back,frustrated.
There is nothing that I can find leading to what happened between my family and Enzo's in the boxes I have.
I'm not sure what I expected... A giant bow around something with a nice tag saying 'The Truth'?
This is just stuff that is old, along with some of the things returned by the authorities. Nothing here at all.
And as I get up and cross to the kitchen, pouring myself a glass of water, I'm even more confused. Because all my memories are good ones, until they are not.
The thing is, I didn't pay attention to business. I don't even think business was done in front of me, and Dad wouldn't choose me to confide in. He never did.
Business was always separate.
It explains why I was genuinely in the dark when the authorities questioned me and why I wasn't ground into dust by them. Dad kept me safe by keeping me ignorant. Because in all this, ignorance equaled innocence.
Of course, just knowing what he happened to do and putting the pieces together of the type of people he workedfor and apparently ripped off doesn't even begin to answer the question of why the rift.
Money?
Did Dad steal money from the Marinos?
But when that falling out happened, it was so long before he took his own life that I can't see that. In fact, I can't see Mr. Marino letting someone get away with ripping him off. And he never struck me as a man who liked revenge cold or even tepid.
"Back to the drawing board, but with extra helpings of confusion," I mutter, rinsing the glass and putting it in the rack.
I honestly don't know why it is suddenly important for me to uncover the truth. It might have been the catalyst, but Dad took his own life, that is the harsh truth. And even if I knew...would it matter? The past is the past, and Dad is still dead.
I miss him.
