Page 18

I dragged my feet over the threshold’s carpet, the shaggy beige pieces sliding between my toes. His hands rested in the inner parts of his elbows, not quite crossed: his fighting stance for our verbal brawls.

As I took in the knitted brows, the downward lips, the clenched fingers on his sleeves, I tried to recall the moment when things between us got so…disconnected. I didn’t think there was a specific one I could blame. Every year since my mother’s death his drinks got stronger, and our relationship weaker, and now it crumbled right in front of me.

I avoided his eyes—I couldn’t face them yet—and focused on a slug paperweight instead. The bronze mascot pointed at me from his tabletop perch with a cheesy cartoon smirk, holding a Professor Corbin Harlow, I DIG you! sign, and bearing the brunt of my nervous stare.

“Do you know what time it is?” My dad filled his coffee mug to the brim, his tone flat and failing to assuage the anxiety I had within.

“Yes.” No reason to argue against something as foolproof as time.

“Do you want to explain what happened?”

Sure, the night was full of terrors and trespassing and a brooding guy to boot.

Ryder. Just his name had my fingers twisting, my feet scuffing the carpet of their own accord. And when his golden-green stare flared in my mind…I tightened my arms around my torso, like they could protect me. I nodded in answer to my dad’s question before my mouth did something stupid: smile.

“It’s Grad Night, you know, the official graduation party thrown by the school? They talked about it at the ceremony. Remember?” I tried my best to keep my voice even as understanding dawned on him. “I reminded you about it over text. Did you check your messages?”

He eyed the phone that at some point had leapt from his pocket to the floor. With an audible groan infused with that oaky edge, he stumbled out of his chair to pick it up.

I bit the inside of my cheek. The tears wouldn’t win—not today. I’d hold them in even if it drew blood.

“I’m sorry.” He pressed on his knees to stand. “How could I forget.”

I grimaced at the answer to that.

“It was a beautiful ceremony. You made me very proud.” A sliver of that pride slipped from his already glassy eyes, and it started to soften the blow. Even if that diploma was still up for grabs, he didn’t mention my shortcomings, and in that endless sea of parents I’d found him clapping and cheering like I deserved every stride across that stage. “And I was listening, I just…forgot how late those things run.”

His ambient smile dampened the frustration in the air, his arms widening for a hug. I looped around his desk and dumped myself into his embrace. The grief dissipated the longer I stayed, as if every extra squeeze wrung it out a little more.

“I shouldn’t have been so hard on you,” he said into the top of my head. “After all, it is your birthday.” His arms left my shoulders as he glanced at his watch. “I know we’re only thirty minutes in, but I want to give you your present now.”

With a wistful smile that had my heart breaking all over again, he unlocked a hidden desk compartment and pulled out a small velvet pouch. It had no label or visible branding, just plain black with a silver cord. His fingers jerked, seeming to hesitate for a second, as he passed it to me. I stared at the peculiar bag as if it might bite me, then emptied its secrets into my palm.

A surge of prickling energy flooded my veins the second the lapis stone touched my skin. Folding my lips to conceal a gasp, the power traveled through me like a river and rushed my ears with a gurgle that sounded so similar to the syllables of my name.

All the air whooshed out of me as the sensation slowly receded, and the pins and needles faded, leaving my muscles tender and sore. I glanced at my dad to see if he’d noticed, but he was fiddling with his secret drawer again.

With my insides feeling a bit like churned butter, I ran my thumb over the back of the necklace’s circular pendant—smooth and silky as water, while the raised edges on its other side indented my palm. I flipped it over. A rippled water droplet with two four-pointed stars lining the upper lefthand corner brocaded the stone’s surface. It glistened with a blue so mixed and multihued, it could have been crafted out of the element itself.

“It was your mom’s.” My dad addressed me with an inscrutable sable stare, running his fingers through his wavy chestnut hair. “She never took it off. Until…”

Like a plague of locusts, guilt swarmed the frail buds of joy, leaving me—and the entire room—feeling raw and consumed. I’d already taken the most important gift, her life. I couldn’t take anything more from her. It didn’t seem right.

“It’s beautiful but…” I shoved my hand forward. “I don’t deserve it.”

My dad didn’t falter, staring deep into the necklace’s sparkling center.

“It was her eyes. One look and I was drowning. They reminded me of the sea on a winter day. Mira saw the world through a different lens, and she let me in.” He pointed to himself as if in disbelief. “Nothing got old for her, even the simple every day. Her love for us, her love for life…it renewed something in me.”

Sometimes, like now, I saw a flicker of that zest animate his entire being. It lasted half of a second, so quickly I wasn’t sure if I imagined it, because the real truth was it’d been lost long ago. Or maybe it’d just been numbed by his drinking.

“I know I need to let you grow and be your own person and let you experience life…be free. It’s what Mira would have wanted, it’s why she…” He shook his head, unwilling to finish the thought.

At this point I was happy to hear anything.

“I see so much of her in you.” He cleared his throat thickly. “And I can’t lose her again.”

I swallowed a sob.