Page 109 of Pay the Price

“Daisy, take a seat,” Piers said, gesturing to the conference table. “Everyone, this is Daisy Hammond, she’ll be one of your liaisons to Cantwell during the design process.”

Holy shit. It was happening.

I’d half expected Piers to renege on his promise to include me in the design aspect of the new resort, to withdraw the carrot once I’d proven I wasn’t going to out Gray for being a rapist.

“Hello,” I said, taking a seat. “It’s nice to meet you.”

The blonde woman nodded and clicked a button on the remote in her hand. “Let’s begin.”

Chapter 66

Otis

The box was full of pictures. There were newish ones where Mac looked almost like he looked now, with his beard and the wrinkles around his eyes, and older ones where he looked the way I always saw him in my mind — young and happy.

Wolf handed Jace a stack, then handed me one. We started flipping through them.

It was weird, like seeing a movie of Mac’s life without sound. I hardly noticed the heat creeping into the building as I watched Mac age from a guy who was about our age to a middle-aged dude with creases in his forehead and more facial hair.

“Look at this one,” Wolf said, holding it out for me and Jace. In the photo, Jace was a toddler, sitting on Mac’s knee. Mac had a beer in one hand while he balanced Jace with the other, both of them blond, both of them happy. “He even wrote on the back.”

Jace took it and flipped it over:Me and Jace (four YO).

My chest felt funny thinking about Mac writing on the back of the picture, caring enough to do it.

Jace let out something like a grunt and handed the picture back to Wolf. “We’re looking for Daisy’s mom.”

I wondered if Jace’s chest felt funny too.

I was almost to the bottom of the stack when I came across the first picture of Daisy’s mom. I knew it was her because she looked almost exactly like Daisy, and I would know Daisy anywhere.

“Got one.”

Jace and Wolf huddled around me, all of us staring at the picture. Daisy’s mom was draped across Mac’s lap, her arms around his neck, her head tipped back.

Laughing. Like Daisy.

Mac’s arms were around Daisy’s mom’s waist. He was looking at her, and there was something in his eyes that I didn’t have a name for even though it felt important.

“He loved her,” Wolf said softly. “He fucking loved her.”

“How do you know?” I was always fascinated by the things other people seemed to just… know. The things I couldn’t see. The things I couldn’t feel.

Not the way everybody else did anyway.

“It’s the way he’s looking at her,” Wolf said.

I flipped it over and saw Mac’s handwriting:Nory and me.

“Give me that stack,” Jace said.

I handed it over and he flipped through it while Wolf and I watched.

Nory and Mac having a playful water-balloon fight, both of them dripping and laughing.

Nory and Mac in the river, their tubes tied together with a rope like the one Wolf had used to keep Daisy close during Summer Shit.

And then Nory in bed, clearly naked under a sheet that barely covered her tits.

---