“Suck it up, Gabby,” she told herself. Sipping at her coffee, she stowed the sandwich in the fridge. Her room first. Then his—after she’d had the morning to steel herself. She hadn’t been in his room since . . . ever. It was an off-limits domain, and always had been. Even after his return from the hospital, she’d only knocked on his door and asked if he needed anything.
“No,” he had answered. “Good night.”
Being dismissed even then, she totally understood her reluctance to trespass into his private domain now. What else could she be, considering?
Dropping her handbag on the kitchen counter, she fished out her pepper spray and stuffed it into her left back pocket, then her phone into the back right one. Not because she felt threatened, but if two murders could occur in this house in the middle of the day once, a murder here could happen again, regardless of what Bain or Marsh’s CI said. Daylight hadn’t protected her father or Lucy. Shadow Watcher had been right. Being alert and staying alert was just using common sense.
Gabby taped up two boxes and then headed up the stairs. A short walk down the hallway, she stepped into her old room. Its closet doors stood open and the space was nearly bare. Spare pillows and blankets, and a small familiar floral box were stacked on the shelf above the hanging rod. Gabby pulled the box down and then removed its top and looked inside.
A clothespin reindeer she had made in Kindergarten. A Mother’s Day card made in grammar school when she hadn’t wanted anyone to know she had no mother. A silver pin she had received from a computer club she never had joined in high school. Annual school photos, and one of her accepting her diploma from high school and then another from college. Both taken by strangers.
Her heart twisted. Graduation days had been painful. All the other graduates had been surrounded by family. She’d stood apart, alone, and watched them. So many laughing people, proud parents, and so much shared joy. Many times in her life she had felt isolated, but never more so than on those two days. Well, except for Christmas. Every Christmas.
“Where’s your folks, Gabby?” Charles Day, her science lab partner, had shouted out to her after the high school ceremony when families were meeting up with their students on the front lawn of the facility.
“Over there,” she’d said. “See ya.” She’d nearly run to her car to get away, had fist-sized knots in her stomach before she’d left the parking lot. And, she admitted it, tears blurring her eyes.
It was a full two weeks later before her father ever mentioned the event. He sat with his breakfast at the kitchen table, his face hidden behind his newspaper. Apparently, there was a mention of the graduation ceremony in the news because he asked her, “Did you graduate?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to college?”
“Yes. I start classes in two weeks.”
“Where?”
“Tulane.”
“I’ll arrange funding.”
“I’ve taken care of it.”
“Your trust has taken care of it?”
She hadn’t touched her trust. It was the only thing she had of her mother. “Scholarship,” Gabby had told him.
“For what?” He’d sounded utterly shocked.
“Academics.” Her face had flamed. Even now she recalled the searing heat. “I’m studying computer science.”
“Mmm.” He lifted the newspaper between them.
It wouldn’t have killed him to congratulate her, to acknowledge that she had done well in getting a scholarship, or—what she’d hoped and prayed for—to show so much as a spark of interest that she was studying computer science, following in his footsteps.
But he hadn’t. No reaction whatsoever. He’d given her nothing.
Gabby mentally shook herself. It didn’t matter. She shoved the lid back onto the box and set it aside atop the dresser. None of it mattered. He didn’t care. He never had. At least, he wasn’t a hypocrite about it, pretending what he didn’t feel. In an odd way, that helped. She had never expected anything, not even a modicum of kindness from him, and on that, he had never disappointed her.
She finished packing her room. The small floral box of childhood personal things, she placed near her handbag. The two filled boxes of non-personal items, she placed against the wall near the door.
In the hallway outside her father’s room, she paused. Her heart beat fast and she steeled herself before walking inside. His room smelled like him. She glanced around and saw no personal items atop the dresser or chest on even on the nightstand. The absence of anything at all personal made the room look like him, too. She dragged in a jagged breath, felt the swelling of tears.
He might not have been eligible for Father of the Year by anyone’s standards, but he had been her father. She’d loved him, and she’d hated that he couldn’t open his heart just enough to let her in. How different things could have been . . .
But they had not been different. He’d made that call. They both had lived with it. A tear slid to her cheek. She slapped at it and began filling boxes.
Finally, she finished the room proper and moved to the closet. She’d unloaded nearly all of it before she spotted a small green leather box. Curious, she lifted it and walked with it into the bedroom. Until now, this could have been any man’s room. Nothing personal beyond his wallet, which purportedly had been stolen while he lay on the street waiting for someone to notice and call 911, and a laptop that looked brand new and untouched. Oddly, that personal-effect absence included his wedding band. He hadn’t worn it, but considering he missed her mother enough to never speak her name, Gabby fully expected to run into it. Yet she hadn’t.
She placed the green leather box on the corner of his dresser and opened it. It was stuffed with letters still in their unopened envelopes. Dozens and dozens of them. Gabby thumbed through them, checking the return addresses. All of them were from her Aunt Janelle.
Gabby’s heart raced. She opened the first letter. How many years will you keep Gabby from me? Why will you not let me see her or even speak to her on the phone? You’re heartless, Adian. Spiteful and cruel. Are you still ignoring her? Acting as if she doesn’t exist? I understand your hatred of me. I know too much and it terrifies you. But I will never understand how you can treat Helena’s daughter this way. Never!
Gabby stilled. Her jaw fell slack. Her Aunt Janelle hadn’t forgotten her. She’d been forbidden from seeing or speaking to Gabby. Why? What too much did Janelle know? And why would her father hate her mother’s sister for it?
Another realization slammed into Gabby. She hadn’t been unlovable.
The knowledge washed over and through her. Janelle had loved her, and she had fought for Gabby. She’d failed, but oh what a difference it made to Gabby to know her aunt hadn’t abandoned her. She had tried.
Gently, Gabby closed up the box and went down to the kitchen, eager to read the rest of the letters over lunch. Maybe in them she’d find out more. Maybe she’d learn something that could soften her heart toward her father. Because right now, she felt many things. Bitter and angry and confused. And she hated feeling any of those things.
At the kitchen bar with her sandwich and a bottle of flavored water, she began reading, and she read all of every letter. Before she knew it, she was done with them and with her sandwich. She learned nothing new except that her Aunt Janelle had suddenly stopped writing the year before Gabby graduated from high school.