Page 104 of What's Left of Us

“Because I’m being punished,” he answers, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he evades his eyes briefly to look at something on the wall. “That is what love gets you. Punished.”

All I can do is shake my head.

His eyes turn back to me, skating over my tired expression that’s grown guarded and cautious since this conversation started.

Then something on his face shifts, like he shut off whatever emotion he was showing me before in order to bury it deep, deep down. “I was glad to hear the head librarian found the money they said you’d stolen. I thought to myself, ‘No daughter of mine would be caught doing such a scandalous thing,’ and that’s what I told the director when I made a donation in the Del Rossi name.”

Gaping, I let out a tiny breath. “How did you even know about the money?”

“The money you stole?” he questions.

He knows damn well I didn’t steal it. “We both know there was no stolen money, especially now that I know you wrote a check to ‘fix’ it. You hate that I work here—that I work at all instead of staying home like some dutiful nineteen-fifties housewife to a man whose family you seem to fear.”

His lips press together.

I sigh, feeling defeat warm my stiff muscles into my shoulder slump. Whoever this person is, he is not my father. Not the one I remember. Will I ever get that version of him back? I don’t think so, and that’s heartbreaking.

“You have interjected yourself every way you can since I turned down your last proposal. All I want is to behappy. I never wanted to be at war with you.”

Those dark brown-black eyes that used to be full of so much love before my mother passed away lock with mine. A newfounddarkness in them that leaves me leery. “It is not me you’re going to war with, Georgia. It’s people far more powerful.”

And I have a feeling I know who now. “The same people you’re leaving me defenseless against? That you’re keeping me in the dark about?”

He doesn’t answer.

“What deal did you make that you can’t get out of?” I question, my gut clenching with warning over asking these things. “Ever since Mom died, you’ve buried yourself in a world that has taken the man I used to know away from me. You used to love me. You used to loveus. But now you only see me as some object to trade in for something better. Mom wouldn’t have wanted that for me.”

He walks over to me, closing in on the space I put between us until the air is thick. “You knew nothing about your mother, so don’t act like you know what she would want for you.”

Swallowing down my retort, I watch his crazed eyes grow darker until there’s barely any of the brown color left. He is a man possessed by power and something far darker.

“You’re afraid,” I whisper. “Of whoever is pulling the strings.”

His nostrils flare. “You should be too. He is everywhere, daughter. He’s always looming, with one foot in the door, ready to take it all away. That is the deal I made. I asked for a future, and his price was you.”

Me.“Who is he? Antonio? Luca?”

“His name doesn’t matter. You only think you’re happy because you assume the alternative is worse,” he informs me, glaring at the romance books stacked on the counter. “But you have no idea the things he can do to get what he wants.”

“If you’re in trouble, maybe I can help.” It’s a last-ditch effort to find the man who used to tuck me in at night with my mother. I may not remember a lot about her, but I remember his warm smile whenever she was around. She made him better. Withouther, he succumbed to demons I’m afraid I can’t do anything about. “We don’t have to be enemies.”

For a split second, he stares at me as if he sees the genuine concern on my face and feels it in my voice. I think there’s a chance he could accept the help, the figurative hand I’m offering to get him out of whatever situation he’s in.

He straightens to his full height. “If there is one thing you need to remember, it’s that weak foundations can be the collapse of otherwise sturdy structures, Georgia. I am not your enemy. But I am not your friend.”

I begin to answer, but he turns and walks out before I can so much as utter a syllable.

But his words soak in all the same.

*

The library letsme go two weeks later. They say they can’t keep me because of budget cuts, but I know better. Mariam can’t even look me in the eye when she asks for my key, so I don’t bother pleading my case or asking for her to reconsider.

It isn’t up to her. Not if my father’s visit has anything to do with the sudden change of funding.

She gives me a card signed by everybody and offers me an envelope with some cash they’ve saved up to “get me by” until I find something else. One of the girls I work with on Saturdays says she can get me a job at the new bookstore in town because she knows the owner.

When I get home that night, I don’t tell Lincoln that I’ve been fired when I see the weight slouching his shoulders. I decide to wait—to let him tell me about the lost little girl they had to search for who’d been taken by a relative, then the brutal suicide involving a revolver and lonely old veteran that they’d walkedinto in the afternoon, followed by two different unattended deaths caused by drug overdoses.

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