Page 95 of On the Rocks

She scoffed. “Selfish. What a silly word. Should you give to the ones you love? Absolutely. But should you lose yourself in order to bettertheirlives at the expense of your own? Never.”

With that, she stood, stretching her arms above her head with a yawn before she started walking.

I frowned. “You’re leaving?”

“I’m going to take a nap, like an old woman should,” she said, glancing back at me over her shoulder. “And I’m going to leave you alone to think. Toreallythink — without your mom in your ear, or your sister, or Noah, or Annie, or me. I just want you to sit here, on this bench, in this garden, and I want you to ask yourself the tough questions.”

“I know the questions,” I said on a sigh. “It’s the answers I’m having trouble with.”

She smiled knowingly. “Well, then, sit here until they come.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Then you didn’t sit long enough,” she tossed over her shoulder.

Then she rounded an old oak tree, and she was gone.

Later that night, I knocked on my father’s office door before letting myself inside.

He looked up at me from where he sat at his desk, his reading glasses low on his nose and hands still typing away on his keyboard. “Hey, pumpkin.”

I swallowed, letting myself in and closing the door behind me with trembling hands. Anthony and Mom were out on the front porch, drinking sweet tea like Mama loved to do after dinner, but just in case, I wanted another barrier between us.

“I need to talk to you,” I said when I was inside.

“Okay,” he answered, but his eyes were back on his screen now, fingers flying over the keys. “I’ll be out in an hour or so, just have to finish this up.”

I ignored his request and sat down in one of the chairs on the opposite side of his desk, folding my hands in my lap.

Dad glanced up at me, and I watched the concern wash over his face when he saw me — when he reallysawme.

I had to look as tired as I felt. I knew it. I knew there were bags under my eyes, that my blotchy skin had to be betraying the fact that I’d cried all evening after leaving the nursing home. I had barely eaten at dinner, which Mama covered up by saying I was worried about fitting into my wedding dress.

Ever the damage control.

But now, sitting across from my father, I didn’t want to hide it anymore. I didn’t want to pretend like everything was fine.

Dad swallowed, pulling his hands from the keyboard and steepling them together as he sat back in his chair. “Or we can talk now.”

My next breath was a shaky one, one that burned as much as it brought relief in the form of fresh oxygen. I looked down at my hands, at my manicured nails, at the engagement ring on my finger.

“I know about the deal you made with Anthony and his father.”

I couldn’t look at my father, then.

I couldn’t glance up from my nails and see the man I’d admired my entire life paling at the realization that his little girl knew about the debt he owed, about the way he planned to pay it.

My gaze stayed fixed in my lap, and that was the only way I had the courage to keep talking.

“I want you to know that I understand why you did it. I understand that, sometimes, sacrifices have to be made to keep a family afloat. You and Mom have taught me that.” Tears flooded my eyes, and the next words choked out of me with less steadiness. “But, I also want you to know that I have never been so hurt in my entire life. And I never thought my father would ever be capable of selling me to the highest bidder.”

“Pumpkin…”

“No,” I said, shaking my head, effectively letting the first two tear drops fall into my lap. “I’m not finished.”

Silence.

I sniffed, wiping the back of my hand against my nose with my heart thundering hard in my chest now. “Anthony doesn’t love me. I know that now, and I also know that it doesn’t matter. You and I both know that at the core of my heart, of who I am — I am a giver. Just like you. Just like Mom. We sacrifice for others, and more than anything, we put this family first.”