“Tilly? Why are you calling the office?”
Mati had long ago stopped trying to get her family to stop calling her by that name. It was what her father preferred, so she was stuck with it.
“It’s a long story. But where’s Mary? Does she have the day off?”
“What?” Stephen asked. “Oh, yeah, the day off. She has the day off.”
Mati frowned at the phone. “You okay? You sound weird.”
“No, I’m fine,” he said too quickly. “Why are you calling?”
“Mikey wants to talk to me and went off the deep end when I didn’t answer my phone. He drove out to the Lamont estate.”
Stephen sighed. “Mikey is an idiot.”
“Well, we know that,” Mati said. “Is he there?”
“No. Not right now. He’s out teaching…uh, the new guy his route.”
“Oh. I didn’t think Mikey was still driving. I thought he was too busy in the office.”
“We both do routes all the time,” Stephen said sharply. “I have a meeting at the bank today, so he offered to train Frankie.”
Mati’s brain screeched to a halt.
“Did you sayFrankie?”
Reese and David’s murmured conversation came to an abrupt halt.
“Uh, yeah.” Stephen sighed. “Dad kind of insisted, and he was willing to work for cheap, so…”
“So, you hired the guy who stalked your sister because there’s a profit in it for you?”
“You know what?” Stephen snapped. “There’s a lot going on that—just trust me. This made sense. He’s not going to have any reason to go near you, and I’ll keep an eye on him, okay? And I’ll tell Mikey to leave you alone.”
Mati’s heart hurt, because shedidn’ttrust him. Or her father. Not with this. Look what they’d done already.
“Okay,” she said evenly, clinging to her dignity alongside the boulder of old hurts lodged in her chest. “Email if you need anything. My phone is broken.”
“Will you be home soon?”
Mati wished she could saynever. At some level, she knew those were her hurt feelings talking. She loved Sydney. Her friends. And her family, as best she could, knowing they’d never love her back the way she deserved.
“I don’t know when we’ll be back. We have some things to take care of first.”
“Where are you?”
“I have to go. Send Mom and Dad my love.”
She hung up and shoved David’s phone into his hand. When she could speak without a tremor in her voice, she said, “You should tell Chance that Frankie got a new job.”
David and Reese pulled her into a hug.
“I’m sorry,” Reese said, his lips pressed to her hair.
David kissed her temple. “Me, too.”
She held on to them and tried to let it take some of the sting out of the humiliation. It wasn’t new. It helped knowing there were people who cared, who saw things the same way she did, and who wouldn’t do to her the things her family would.
