Page 105 of Lilly

"I don't know. I have to talk to my dad. But if they tell her now, I want to be here. And even if they don't, I still feel like I need to be here."

"I understand. Stay as long as you need."

"Make sure everything's locked up at the house. Keep an eye on the security cameras. And keep the kids inside. I'm not saying you're in danger but when something like this happens I can't take any chances. I need to know you're safe. And get Grace over there too. I want all of you to stay together in the house until I get back."

"Okay. Call me later."

"I will. Love you."

"Love you too."

"Garret," my dad says.

I turn and see him standing behind me with my mom. "You can go home now. Your mother and I will deal with this."

I get up and go over to them. "I'm not leaving. Not after what happened." I glance toward Lilly's room. "You guys have to tell her. There's no other way to explain what she saw."

"Yes," my dad says. "We had already planned to tell her. Just not yet. We were hoping we could wait, but that's no longer an option."

We hear a door open and turn and see Lilly coming down the hall. She stops when she reaches the kitchen, her eyes on us. "Why is everyone staring at me?"

I hadn't realized we were until she said that.

My dad clears his throat. "I need to speak with you."

"Dad," I say. "Can I talk to you for a minute? Alone?"

He sighs. "Fine. Let's go in my office."

My mom heads to the kitchen. "Let's get something to drink," I hear her say to Lilly. She'll keep her occupied while my dad and I talk.

We go in his office and close the door.

"Let me do it," I say.

"Do what?"

"Let me tell her. It'll be better coming from me than from you."

"No." He sits down behind his desk. "This is my responsibility. She needs to hear it from me."

"Dad, I'm telling you, it'll be easier for her to accept coming from me. I'm speaking from experience here."

He leans forward, his arms resting on his desk. "What do you mean?"

I sit in the chair across from him. "Remember when you told me? We were in the car, driving to the meeting. You couldn't even look at me when you told me. I assumed that's why you did it in the car, so you could keep your eyes on the road."

"That's not how I wanted to tell you. They gave me no time. They ordered me to appear at that meeting and said I had to bring you. I had no choice but to tell you on the way there."

"Even if we hadn't been in the car, I still don't think you could've looked at me when you told me." I pause. "You were ashamed. Ashamed to be part of it. Ashamed of what you'd done. Ashamed that you'd brought me into it. And because of that, I felt ashamed of you too. But it was wrong for me to feel that way. Because that's not who you are. You never wanted to be part of this. You never wanted to do those things. Lilly needs to know that."

"And I will tell her that."

"Dad, I know you feel better about things now than when I was her age. I know you don't blame yourself as much, but it still comes across like you do. The guilt, the shame. It's still there, and I don't want Lilly to see it. I don't want her thinking for a second that any of that is true. All those years I saw you struggle with this, I struggled too. I thought that if you felt that guilty and that ashamed of what you'd done, then maybe a part of you had gone along with it and not questioned it. But that wasn't it. You only acted that way because you're not like the rest of them. You can't hurt an innocent person and not be affected by it, not have it eat away at you, question your humanity. The rest of them? They don't even care. Some of them even like it."

"They're not all like that. William's not."

"My point is, you can't hide how you feel about this. If you tell Lilly, you'll have that same guilty look on your face and I don't want her to see it. She thinks you're the greatest dad ever and there's no reason that should change. Looking back, I wish someone else had told me about you. I wish they'd explained to me how hard it was for you to get through each day. You never showed me that side of yourself. I only saw the guilt, the anger, and it made me think less of you, until I finally understood. That's why I need to be the one to tell her. I need her to know what I know. That you're not a bad person because of this, and that you're still a great dad. That'll never change."

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