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“Why would I be? I don’t know if you’ve notice this, but I’m not close with anyone in town. The only need I had for Virgil was to provide me with food to eat, and I paid him for that.” I meet his gaze, hard and level. “Why? Did you think we were pen pals?”

His smile doesn’t change. “No. Just saying… if you’ve got nothing to hide, there’s nothing to worry about.” He’s pushing. Testing. Like he thinks I’ll give him something if he stands in the heat long enough.

“Sometimes,” I say, slowly, “I think it’s better when some people just… stay gone.”

That lands different. His expression doesn’t shift much, but the stillness in his body says everything.

“Is that right?”

“Not everyone deserves to come back.”

The fire snaps, sending sparks into the wind. He stares at me, something ticking behind his eyes.

“That’s a strange thing to say,” he murmurs. He drops his voice. “Who exactly are you hoping stays gone, Lydia?” I don’t answer and he lets the silence stretch. “Because last I checked, your dad is still alive. Breathing. Preacher or not. Is that who you meant by people not deserving to come back? Awful thing to say about your father, Lydia. He gave you life. He showed you the true love of God.”

The words land like a crack down my spine.

“You don’t know a damn thing about me, or my father, Clyde.” I hold his gaze. Don’t blink. But for the first time, something shifts beneath my ribs. Not panic. Just… the beginning of it. Clyde watches me for another second, then turns to leave.

But before he’s gone, he throws one last line over his shoulder. “People go missing all the time. But the ones who stay missing? That’s when folks start asking the wrong kinds of questions and thinking the wrong kind of things.”

Then he walks away, leaving nothing but ash behind.

I stay by the fire, still as stone, the heat at my back and the truth buried beneath my feet.

He thinks he knows something.

But he has no idea how far I’ve already gone.

CHAPTER

THIRTY

I roll my sleeves up, the fabric scraping against my arms like skin remembering too much. The office no longer resembles the room I hated to be summoned to when I was a child. Knowing those calls were never friendly and certainly never loving. I never thought this room would smell any different than it once did, but with everything that was once in this office now gone, the smell is gone with it. It’s almost bearable to be in here.

My father sits in his wheelchair, slouched but somehow still managing to feel like a threat. His body’s failing, but he’s still here. And that’s the problem.

The wheels squeal as I pull him closer to the bed. The sound makes my teeth grind. It echoes through me, back to a time when I could hear the floor creak from his footsteps, and I’d know to disappear. I set the basin on the bedside table. As soon as I get him cleaned, I can get him into the lift and hoist him onto the bed.

“Let’s get this over with,” I mutter, to myself, not him. He doesn’t deserve the intimacy of being spoken to.

He watches me, eyes flat but alert, like a predator cornered by something it never expected to bite back. I dip the sponge and wring it out, water slapping against the floorboards. I start with his hands. They’re soft now. Weak. But I remember those hands strong on my arms, on my neck. The human body forgets nothing. And mine remembers everything.

The act of touching him again makes my stomach twist. But I do it. I want him to feel it. That I’m the one holding him now. And I won’t be gentle. As I move up to his arms, my foot lands on a loose board near the bed. It squeaks. Loud. Sharp.

His eyes flick downward. Then snap back to mine.

I pause.

“What?” My voice is calm, quiet. Deadly.

A blink. Deliberate. His lips twitch like he wants to speak, but all that escapes is a wheeze.

I shift my weight again.

The board whines.

His shoulders tense. There it is, panic. His silence curdles into fear. And that fear rolls off him like heat.