My mouth drops open as Parrish grits his teeth, turning a monstrous look on me, like this is somehow my fault that he lied and got Tess upset. If he’d just told her the truth, that I was at the school the whole time, this wouldn’t be happening.
I wouldn’t have had the worst start to my first day on campus, and Tess wouldn’t be slowly recovering from what looks like a PTSD reaction to finding me missing.
You have some responsibility in this, Dakota, I tell myself, but it doesn’t matter. Not right now. Not when I’m so mad at Parrish that I could spit. Not when I’m now dreading my first day of school at Whitehall more than ever.
“And you can hand over your car keys,” Paul continues as Parrish turns a stricken look in his father’s direction. “I’ll drive it home, and you can earn it back over the next two weeks by doing some work at my office.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Parrish snaps, and I raise both brows. Uh-oh. He throws a hand out toward me accusingly. “This girl—this stranger shows up—and suddenly my life is a living hell?”
“This stranger is my daughter,” Tess says, and any small spike of pleasure I feel at hearing her defend me is obliterated by the look of agony on Parrish’s face. “Like it or not, you two are family now.”
“We are not family,” Parrish growls back, his gold-flecked eyes turning my way again. He’s hurt. By what or who, I’m not sure, but the look of devastation on his face is staggering. “Never will be. Send her back to New York. She wants to go back anyway. She’ll never be happy here. She showed up wanting to hate us all.”
He turns on his heel and storms off, leaving the four of us in the empty hallway. The classroom door slams behind him, echoing ominously in the sudden silence.
Frankly, if I spoke to my grandparents back home the way Parrish speaks to Tess and Paul, I’d have received far worse punishment than two weeks grounding and a brief hiatus from my car.
I almost smile thinking of the punishments that Grandma and Grandpa would cook up: scrubbing the chicken coop, taking my phone away, stealing the power cord from my TV and PlayStation. Oh, they’d have made me wear grandma’s old brown shoes to school for two weeks. I’d be tasked with dinner prep for the whole family every day for a month.
In the end, I can’t make myself smile because I’m too sad, too lonely to do anything but stand there.
“I apologize again for my dramatics, Ms. Miyamoto.” Tess glances my way and tries to force a smile. “We could tour the school together while we’re here?” she queries as Paul checks his Apple Watch and fists Parrish’s keys against his palm.
“I’ll be off now. I’m already missing my first patient of the day.” He gives Tess a kiss on the cheek and offers me a tight smile on the way out. I notice that his gaze lingers a bit on my shirt, and I briefly remember Delphine’s warning from this morning. Heh.
“I think I’d rather go …” I almost say home, but I don’t have a home anymore, now do I? I have a fancy multimillion-dollar house that I live in. Across the country, a home waits in New York state that will never be mine again.
My stomach roils and I fight back a rush of tears.
“Understandable,” Ms. Miyamoto says, giving me an empathetic smile. “We’ll see you on the twenty-eighth then.” She hands me my schedule and then heads back down the hallway.
Standing there alone with Tess, it’s my own personal version of hell.
“I’m sorry if I embarrassed you,” Tess says finally. “But you can’t just run off like that. I don’t know how those people raised you but—”
The look I turn on her is nothing short of murderous. She notices and redirects the conversation.
“I’m not totally unreasonable,” she tries as I turn and head in the direction she came from, assuming there’s some sort of exit this way. “All you had to do was tell me where you were going.”
“Parrish had his phone,” I reply tiredly, “but he chose to lie to you and leave me shoeless and alone in the parking garage.” Tess’ eyes drop to the red heels on my feet and both of her perfect eyebrows go up in question. I decide some things are best left a mystery and neglect to fill in the blanks.
She doesn’t respond, and we make the drive back to the house in silence. The only backdrop to our combined suffering is an audiobook that I realize is Tess’ newest release, the one I didn’t read because it came out two days after I met her for the first time.
There’s just something about knowing how she is in person that makes me not want to read her books anymore. It’s probably like that with most authors, huh?
I do my best to shut out the narrator’s voice, closing my eyes as we approach the gates to the house and the still sizable crowd of reporters.
As soon as the garage door closes behind us, I’m out of the car and into the house, heading straight up to my room and slamming the door behind me.
It isn’t long before my pillow is wet with tears and I’m feeling so sorry for myself that I get nauseous.
My phone is right where I left it on the nightstand, so I grab it and ignore the disturbing number of notifications waiting for me. Every influencer worth their salt wants me on their YouTube channel or their Instagram feed, wants me to appear on TikTok for them or do an interview.
I ignore all of it and dial up Maxine. She declines the video chat and texts me instead.
In class right now with the she-devil professor. Call you later!
And then I’m left to drift, lying there on my back and staring at the ceiling. When Tess knocks later, I pretend to be asleep.
Saturday, and my coffee meeting with Maxine cannot come quickly enough.
Parrish clearly blames me for his grounding and the loss of his car. Fortunately, all that means is that he avoids me and refuses to have even the most basic of conversations.
“Pass the orange juice,” is met with a glare and the juice is only passed when either Paul or Tess is present and watching. Kimber joins in the fun, going so far as to purposely bump into me in the hall as if I’m a ghost. She doesn’t apologize, and I don’t ask her to. Frankly, she could drop dead for all I care.
The younger kids—Ben, Amelia, and Henry—aren’t so bad though. And they don’t deserve to be punished or ostracized for anything that’s happened, so I spend the next week playing with them, helping with their homework, or reading to them at night.
Actually, the only—and I mean only—good thing about this nightmare is getting three new siblings that don’t hate my guts.
Oh, and grounding at the Vanguard household doesn’t appear to extend to Chasm. He comes over every day after school and stays through dinner. The following Friday, he doesn’t leave, and I’m forced to listen to him and Parrish laughing their asses off every time I enter or leave the living room and kitchen area.
Early Saturday, I wake up and get dressed, heading to Tess’ office where she’s working on a typewriter.
A typewriter.
No offense or anything but only pretentious assholes use typewriters. I just stare at her back, dreading this moment, dreading what I’ll be forced to do if she tells me no.
I knock on the doorjamb and lean my shoulder against it. Tess holds up a single finger and then taps out a few more words before turning around with a smile.