Because it would serve no purpose past this moment to tell him what happened in this pool last night, or in mine the night he and Brianne had to come retrieve Cherish and me. It would leave him breathless, knowing that there’s an empty space inside her, that it’s of his creation, and that only I can fill it—but there’d be no going back.
Control.
Tight.
Tight.
Wind it back like a fishing line.
Even the good make missteps, and Jerry Whitman is good.
Control.
I will not share our secrets. I’ll only tell him what he already knows.
“Cherish knows that,” I say, in a reassuring voice that nearly pleads on her behalf. “I guess she just considers me family.”
A moment later, and one corner of his mouth ticks as though it wants to smile. When it doesn’t spread, he looks almost smug in the uneven darkness. It could be a smirk in this light, a challenge. Like he knows more on the subject than I do, despite the fact that Cherish didn’t know she was empty until she saw me smile.
“Genetically, Cherish and I are probably more family than she could be with Eloise.”
I laugh. I have to. I spoke again without meaning to, and they aren’t the kinds of words that can be taken back. I have to be a silly, thoughtless teenager who doesn’t understand the impact of what she’s said.
Jerry Whitman turns his face from me and I almost hear Kelly laughing, the broken way he bore the pain so that I’d know he was willing to hurt to prove me wrong.
They only want one.
My legs are still in the water, and even if I try to kick Kelly down again, it’d be too slow and heavy the way it was in my dream. He’d just keep laughing because he doesn’t know what the Whitmans and I did together today, that I am as in sync with them as I am with Cherish now. He doesn’t know that they’ve already disproven whatever he wanted me to believe that night.
Kelly is wrong—but I have never been this clumsy before tonight, and I wonder if my mother’s got something to do with it. She came and disrupted me, even if she didn’t get her way—or else she did and I just wasn’t smart enough to see it until now. Until I’ve said the single most offensive thing imaginable to the adoring father of my best friend.
Nichole never fails. She never falters. If she’d really come to take me home, she would have and no unrehearsed display of unity between me and the Whitmans would’ve changed that.
She didn’t come to take me home. She came to ruin this one. To get inside my head, pretending she didn’t understand the waltz we did around Kelly’s phantom body, letting me place her exactly where he fell, so that I’d uncoil it again. She got me to call it back to the surface and I couldn’t tuck it away.
Cherish’s father stands, but he’s always angled away from me, the light from the house splashing across his face where I can’t see it. His shoulders rotating once when his hands slide into his pockets.
I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to tell him I’m not myself, that this is sabotage and I am not to blame—until I do. Until, as quickly as my breath went sharp and shallow, it settles.
I know how to show him that I’m not myself, that I couldn’t be.
Thank you for loving our daughter the way we do, Farrah.
It’s what he knows best about me. That I love his daughter. That the real Farrah—the Farrah who is in her right mind, who can be held responsible for what she’s saying—would never speak ill of Cherish. So I do, mildly, because he’ll still feel bruised and defensive over what I’ve already said.
“She has been kind of inconsiderate lately,” I say, my words slipping free as though on tiptoe, venturing but timid. “Not just about family heirlooms.”
Jerry doesn’t turn completely, but his chin almost meets his left shoulder when he glances back, his weekend attire completed by the absence of product holding his hair in place. There’s a sharpness to the way it curves away from his brow.
“She doesn’t mean to be, though,” I reassure him. “That’s not how Cherish is. When she hurts you it’s never because she meant to. She just broke up with Kelly! I think it’s got more to do with that than losing respect for Whitman family tradition.” And then I confess as though unaware anyone else can hear me, “Or really wanting to steal Tariq away from me.”
I don’t wait for him to face me before shrugging the way self-conscious teenagers do when they’re trying most to convince themselves, and when he does, I’m looking between the pool and the sky at nothing. I’m as confused by Cherish’s behavior as he is. I’m helpless.
“It’s okay. It isn’t like Tariq and I were really together. She probably doesn’t think it counts since she knows we didn’t do the kinds of things she and Kelly did.” I pull my lips to the side because it’s awkward talking about intimacy with a dad, even when it’s a relief to get something off your chest.
I wish I could see his face without looking. I want to know whether or not Jerry Whitman is preparing to scoop me up the way he did at the renovation site, even though Cherish isn’t hurt this time—and even though she’s the reason I am not myself.
“Come on,” he finally says through what Cherish calls a dad sigh because she thinks Jerry’s adoring brand of bemused exasperation is common. “Brianne’ll never forgive me if I don’t get you out of the water and get that arm dressed.”
He gestures toward the house with his head and without removing his hands from his pockets. He doesn’t extend a hand to help me up because sometimes he coddles his daughter and sometimes he reminds her that he knows she’s capable. It’s loving in a way that bolsters her confidence and doesn’t feel like a gift because it isn’t. It’s an acknowledgment.
I show him that I understand, smiling through a firm nod before easily getting to my feet.
“Where’s your towel?” he asks, walking ahead of me because I don’t need a chaperone in what is now my backyard.
“I forgot to grab one,” I tell him, without confessing that I’d hoped Cherish would bring one down to me when she noticed. “Should I wait outside while you get one?”
“Since when is that an option?” he jokes. “Am I not supposed to know about the last time you girls made a post-swim mess in the kitchen?”
“We were very mindful not to wake anyone,” I say, almost as dismissively as Cherish would.
“Church mice, the both of you.” Jerry feigns sincerity, holding the door and bowing his head at me while I pass. “Have a seat and I’ll get the supplies.”
I obey and sidle up to the kitchen island while he disappears around a corner. It must be a drawer in one of the nearby alcoves, because I hear it open and shut, and Jerry’s back a moment later.