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Me: Right

Si: So, away from you. Obviously

Me: You think she can’t get better with me?

Si: Adonis, you have her for three months. And one of those months is gone. What kind of miracles are you expecting?

Me: It was a yes or no question

Si:

Si: In all seriousness, keep an eye on her, Adonis. We can’t rule out absence seizures until I get her in with a neurologist.

Me: Seizures? What the fuck Silas?

Si: I’m not saying that’s what it is but come on, man, nobody just zones out in a swimming pool and almost drowns themselves. And I don’t know if that’s what happened during her appointment or not but I can’t ignore the signs.

Turningmy phone face down on my desk, I face my computer and type ‘absence seizures’ into my search engine. Five minutes of clicking through results has me feeling like my world is tilting. A sickening mix of anger and panic tightens my muscles, until a cracking sound pulls me out of my haze and I realize how tight I’m holding the mouse.

Every symptom I read on the screen steals my ability to pull in air.

All those times she went quiet, and I thought she was daydreaming.

Her sinking in that pool.

The silence that would come out of nowhere in the middle of a conversation.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Me: When is her neurology appointment?

I’m going with her.I don’t care what I have to ignore to make it happen.

Si: Next Friday. Don’t worry, I won’t stop until we have answers for her. I really like her, Adonis. She’s sweet and I want her to be okay as much as you do.

I don’t sendanother text after that. I can’t. What I do is walk over to my bar cart and give myself a generous pour of tequila. I skip the ice and down it like a shot. I do that two more times until a numbness settles over the chaos thrumming through me.

But later, when the numbness begins to fade, I open the folder with a year of Delilah’s life on it and start watching again.

For the past few nights, nothing has stood out from what I’ve been able to watch. Delilah rarely shows up on camera and when she does, it’s only for short flashes before she disappears again for days at a time.

That changes in August 2024. After two months of barely seeing her, she’s in the first frame of footage for August with her father.

My back straightens like an arrow as I turn up the volume and listen to their exchange.

“Daddy, I don’t want to marry him.”

Marriage? She was supposed to marry someone?

“You’re going to do exactly what I tell you to do,” he roared, closing in on her.

Delilah stood her ground, chin angled in a proud tilt. “But I want to go to school. I’m twenty-four and I’ve never?—”

Marcellus’ fist connected with the side of her head until she stumbled back into the rickety railing near the stairs.

“Get up, lil’ girl. Let me hear your smart-ass mouth now.”

Delilah got up, cradling her ribs and shaky on her feet. “I’m not being smart when I tell you I don’t want to do something. Why don’t you ever listen to me? What the fuck did I do to you?”