Page 15 of Hold on Tight

That was why.

But she hadn’t said any of that to her father, because she knew he wouldn’t understand.

Not telling her father she was pregnant until it was too late for him to influence the outcome had been the only way she knew to make sure the decision washersand hers alone. But it had been like whispering in the wind, because he’d come to school and packed her up and brought her home to live with them again, and there was nothing she could do about it. Without his help, there was no way she could give her baby the life he deserved.

For seven years, she’d bided her time. She’d fought the good fight, when she could, when it mattered. She picked her battles with her father, and she won the piece of territory that mattered most to her:Shedecided where Sam should go to preschool, how much time he was allowed to spend on the computer, whether refusing to eat vegetables was an action subject to discipline, what time bedtime should be.

In doing so, however, she lost the big fight. She took her father’s money. She listened to his advice. She gave up the right to build her own life from scratch, her way.

For a long time it had been worth the trade-off. His love, the security of his household, for a little autonomy.

Until she saw the check in Aaron’s wallet. Because sheknewher father had the best of intentions, but she was drowning in his good intentions. In his love. She had to remove herself. She had to retake, remake, her life.

She accepted the job. She took Sam and she went to Seattle.

It was the first thing she’d ever done as an independent adult, and she loved it. Even the hard and complicated parts. Even the canceled sitters and Jake’s unexpected appearance. Because it was hers.

Her father was talking again. “I think this situation calls for extreme caution. He’s been badly injured. As far as we know, he’s been fighting the last eight years. I’ve been reading about this. They’re giving soldiers these long deployments, more engagement with the enemy than in past wars. More consecutive deployments. They’re coming back with much more serious mental issues, and that’s setting aside the fact that we know he’s lost a limb, which has to be incredibly traumatic in and of itself. This is a guy we don’t know, who’s been exposed to we-don’t-know-what, who is potentially going to be involved in my grandson’s—”

“Dad?” Mira said. “I can handle this.”

“Huh?”

“I can handle Jake. You can relax over there.”

She heard a sound on the line that might have been Lani snickering.

On the kitchen counter, her iPhone buzzed. She crossed the kitchen to pick it up. The text said:It’s Jake. What’s your email?

Her heart pounded. She hesitated, then tapped, [email protected].

I’m sending you things.

Shld I be scared?

No.

Her father sighed. “Just—”

“I know, Dad.Be careful.

“I’d better go,” she told her parents.

“Just promise me you won’t—”

“Love you, guys,” she said, and hung up.

She went to the computer and waited for Jake’s email.

Back when she was pregnant, back when Sam was little, she hadn’t challenged her father’s view of Jake.Stupid. Hotheaded. She and Jakehadbeen stupid, both of them. And hotheaded.

At eighteen, she’d been willing to see the world through her parents’ eyes. You had to be at least a little bit hotheaded to sleep with an eighteen-year-old girl you’d known only a few weeks. To go off and fight a war.

It had been okay for her to accept her father’s version, back then, because there was nothing at stake, not really. Jake was far, far away, both geographically and emotionally, out of their reaches. They could believe whatever they wanted about him, whatever prejudices, whatever half-truths. But now he was here. In Seattle. And he was Sam’s father. Not some abstract concept, but a man who might, depending on what they did next, play a role in how Sam came to see the world. It wasn’t enough to just accept what she’d been told about him.

For Sam, she needed to know who Jake really was.

For herself.

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