Her admission hits me hard, never considering that he would confide in her. “Yeah,” I whisper.
“And you’re going to lose him,” she adds.
I flinch and she watches it happen. Satisfied she got another jab.
“Do you know what it’s like to live with… what your dad did to me?” she continues, shoving a quarter into the game.
I don’t say anything because it's time I listened to her story. She doesn’t need to know mine, not yet.
“Every time someone touches me,” she says, voice flat and empty. “I wonder if it’s going to turn into something else.”
I know the feeling and Parker is the first man to make it past that point where I was no longer scared.
She shoots down the spaceship. “I don’t trust men. Not completely and I probably never will.”
I close my eyes for a beat. Because I helped create that fear for her in some ways by not calling my dad out and reporting it.
“I built a life. I function and pretend I’m okay,” she says, her gaze locking onto mine. “But I’m not.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “He did it to me too. That's why I didn't say anything—he threatened to kill me if I told anyone.”
She nods like she believes me.
“Will you ever forgive me?” I ask, placing my hand on her elbow. She flinches at the touch and she makes me suffer through a long stretch of silence.
When her last man fighter plane dies, she pulls out her phone and says, half-smiling, “I have a daughter.”
My heart stutters. “You do?”
She turns her phone screen toward me, showing me a young girl maybe nine or ten, with dark hair and big round brown eyes. The knot in my stomach twists tighter.
“She’s….”
Nadia watches my reaction.
“Say it,” she says.
I shake my head. “No.”
But I already know. I already know it, feel it.
“She’s…” I whisper.
Nadia’s expression doesn’t change and I feel my world tilting as she says, “Your half-sister.”
THIRTY-THREE
PARKER
Parker
MONDAY:
Same morning routine, except there’s no session with Annika. She messages but I need more time. I can’t give my whole self to Annika if she can’t do the same. What happens if she got sick and didn’t tell me. What if she got accused of something professionally and didn’t tell me? What if we had kids and she kept their secrets from me.
Dad calls, shaking me from the black hole I was falling into.
“Hey. I’m on my way over.”
