Page 106 of To the Grave

“I’m… I'm sorry,” I said, because Iwassorry.

For Mac, who’d loved a woman who didn’t choose him.

For my mom, who had everything and still hadn’t known what she’d wanted.

For my dad, who’d loved a woman who would never love him the most.

“It was a long time ago,” Mac said.

But the pain in his eyes said it wasn’t as long as it seemed. That at times like this, the past was closer than ever.

I looked down at my hands. “I don’t… I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything.” When I looked up, his blue eyes were kind, his voice gentle. “Like I said, it was a long time ago.”

I nodded and stood to leave. “Thanks for talking to me.”

I wanted to know more: about the friendship between Mac, Michael, and Arlo, about Arlo and Michael and their feelings for my mom, about what had happened after high school.

But it seemed cruel to ask. Mac had loved my mom. He’d loved Jace enough to take him in, raise him like a son when Arlo took off to work with Piers while Piers built his empire.

That part of the story wasn’t mine. Besides, I was starting to think not every story needed to be told.

Mac opened the door and I stepped out onto the porch.

“Do you want to know?” I asked, turning to look at him.

He studied me. “Do you?”

I thought about it, then sighed. “I don’t know.”

“When you do — if you do — let me know. We can do whatever you want.”

I nodded. “Am I like her?” It was the only question I had left that I felt entitled to ask.

He smiled for the first time. “From what I can see, in all the best ways.”

“And the other ways? The ones that weren’t all the best?”

His expression softened. “I don’t know you well, Daisy, but it seems to me like you know exactly what you want.”

I swallowed around the emotion in my throat. He was right.

I knew what I wanted.

And they were waiting.

Chapter 81

Daisy

Tears streamed down my face as I left the compound behind. I didn’t get the answers I’d expected, but maybe I’d gotten the ones I needed.

And Mac was there, willing to talk, willing to answer my other questions if I decided to ask them.

It wasn’t nothing.

I was halfway back to the house when my phone rang from an unknown caller with a city area code. I hesitated before answering — the media had been wild in the days after the deaths of Piers and Gray Cantwell, plus two “associates” of Cantwell Holdings — but I finally decided to accept the call.

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