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The woman in the doorway had Nell’s frown.

But unlike Nell, her mother looked at Barrett with a pinch of terror in her face.

“George!” she called over her shoulder into the house, urgency giving her away. She didn’t even bother to pretend to be welcoming to Barrett.

He stood there, his hands shoved in his coat pockets to prevent himself from wringing them together.

He’d never been this anxious, not even his first time on stage.

Pastor Duncan looked more like Nell than her mother did. Barrett had only seen him in passing in town, occasionally at school activities. Never in church.

That’s obviously why they’d been so opposed to him in the first place.

“You need to leave,” Pastor Duncan said. “You’re not welcome in this house.”

Well, if he was going to get straight to the point, so would Barrett. “I love your daughter.”

Pastor Duncan narrowed his eyes. “If you’re here to change my—”

“I’m here because I agree with you.”

That caught them off guard. The pastor’s iron grip on the door loosened, and his brows rose. Nell’s mother covered her mouth with the tips of her fingers, her eyes wide.

“I love Nell. I love her so much that it kills me to admit it, but you’re right. I’m no good for her, not right now.”

Pastor Duncan’s hostile stance eased back slightly, but he remained cautious. Barrett chewed at the inside of his cheek because this was grating on him. He hated to give these people what they wanted, but what else could he do? They wanted the same thing as him—they wanted Nell to be okay.

Pastor Duncan stood aside, revealing the way into the house. “Come in.”

Barrett wasn’t sure he’d even been in a house like this. It was sparkling, literally. Twinkling Christmas lights adorned a glamorous staircase and accentuated dozens of holiday decorations.

The ceilings felt higher than his entire house.

They shut the door and led him into a cozy living room, where they gestured from him to sit on an obscenely comfortable couch. He was so far out of his element here.

It just reminded him once again why he’d come here in the first place.

“Why are you here?”

“Nell . . . she . . . she needs help.” Barrett took a deep breath. “Real help. The kind of help I can’t get her, and I don’t want to be the reason she never gets it just because I’m too selfish to let her go.”

“What have you done to her? What’s wrong with her?” the pastor snapped, on guard, eyes crazed.

His wife had her mouth covered.

“I—” Barrett didn’t exactly know what to say.

He hadn’t done anything, and he knew that.

But maybe that was the problem. He’d been so blinded that he didn’t do anything to really help her.

“I promise I never did anything to hurt her. But you have to know she wasn’t doing okay in the first place, right?

She was suffering more than I knew, and I just .

. . I’m not going to prevent her for getting the help she needs. ”

“What are you saying? She’d been getting better.” Nell’s mother sounded genuinely confused.

Barrett stared at them both. Nell had told him so many stories, so many things.

He knew enough to know he had every right to say this.

“Pardon my language, but your shitty ways of pretending she’s fine aren’t enough.

Because she’s not fine. She needs stability and care, and probably a fucking shrink if I’m being honest. You both have been trying so hard to force the problem to disappear that she has never figured out how to actually accept anything. ”

The pastor’s face grew red. “Are you saying it’s our fault something is wrong with her? She’s been in your care for weeks, and apparently something awful happened that made you come here. How is that our fault? We’re her parents, and we would never do anything to hurt her. Everyone knows that—”

Barrett scoffed. “Will you for one fucking second stop pretending that you guys are perfect? Stop thinking so much about yourselves and think about Nell. She should be the only thing in this world that matters right now.” Barrett swallowed, taking a moment to catch his raising voice before he got out of hand and started yelling at them.

When he spoke again, his voice was weak.

“She needs you. Needs real help. I’m not capable of being that for her right now.

She needs to do it without me.” His voice cracked, and he looked away, staring at one of their pictures on the wall—the three of them smiling brightly at the camera, what looked like years ago.

It was embarrassing to let himself be so vulnerable in front of these people who’d done nothing but judge him. But this wasn’t about him.

He wouldn’t be able to help Nell. Not with so much on the line for him, not when he wasn’t able to see her problems clearly until now. If he’d missed something so obvious before, he would never trust himself to see anything else wrong with her.

No one said anything, and finally Barrett looked back.

Both of them stared at him, but neither of them looked angry or hateful. They both looked surprised. Ashamed. Worried.

“W-we only want the best for her,” Pastor Duncan said, clearing his throat.

Nell’s mother dropped her head and wiped a tear.

Barrett nodded, acknowledging the single similarity between them all.

“I know. That’s all I want too.”