Page 37 of Lovely Deceit

I pull out my phone. “I’m taking this. If it gets bad, I’ll call Oliver. If someone else is in there, I’ll call Oliver. If it’s just me and my dad talking, I can handle it on my own. Okay?”

Leo glances away. He still has his hold mounted on the steering wheel like he’s second-guessing just driving off with me still in the car, but he nods once.

“We’ll be ready for you,” Oliver says. Leaning forward, he squeezes my shoulder.

I step out of the vehicle, apprehension slicing through my stomach. I’ve never had a hard time talking to my father before. But Leon Forbes slapped me, right there in front of him, and he did nothing. He let me down. Why didn’t he just stick up for me? He knew I wouldn’t want to marry Keegan, that much was obvious when he had a hard time bringing it up. Yet, he still went through with it.

Don’t be a baby, I chastise myself before hopping up the front steps and letting myself in the front door. The house is mostly quiet. Deserted, even.

I don’t want to gain my mother’s attention in case she’s here because she’ll insist on sitting and talking when all I really need is to talk to my father, so I start in the most likely place. His study.

The scene I find when I open the door takes my breath away.

My father lifts his bloodshot eyes to mine. His hand is wrapped around an almost empty crystal glass, only a swallow of brown liquid left in the bottom. I shut the door behind me, and he bursts into tears.

I’m so shocked I don’t do anything at first. It’s not as if I haven’t seen my father cry before, but I expected him to be stubborn and hard-nosed when I confronted him about this. I didn’t expect to see a waterworks show.

“Edie,” he chokes out. “I’m sorry.”

I rush forward, leaving my crutches behind. “Dad, it’s okay.” I hobble around the corner of his desk and reach for his hands. “Are you okay?”

“I’m going to lose you, too,” he blubbers, huge tears tracking down his cheeks. There’s something so unnerving about seeing someone important fall.

“You won’t,” I promise, even though that was my big bargaining chip. “Dad, I’m here.”

He pulls me into a hug, and I squeeze his frail shoulders tightly. He’s lost weight. I didn’t notice when he was sitting there with his suit on, but he’s definitely losing mass. I open my eyes and notice my father’s hunting rifle leaning against his desk.

Alarm buzzes through me. I’ve only ever seen him get the gun out of its case in the attic when he was going out shooting with friends. And here it is as he’s drinking himself into a stupor. I can smell the liquor all over him.

I move away, my heart breaking inside, hoping that what all this evidence points to isn’t what’s actually going through his mind. Reaching over, I grab a tissue from the box on the corner of his desk and hand it to him. He wipes at his tears, then blows his nose with a loud honk.

After a few moments, he composes himself. Tears still leak from his eyes, but they’re no longer sobs racking his chest. “I thought you’d be a world away by now.”

“I figured I owed you the benefit of the doubt,” I tell him, the ache in my chest blooming as I tighten my hold on his hand.

He grips me tighter in response. “When your mother and I had girls instead of boys, I knew we were embarking on a different path, but I didn’t understand how you’d get under my skin. How I’d want to protect you both. I failed Delilah.”

Immeasurable pain screws up his face until he squeezes his eyes closed. Tears that had been welling in their corners fall freely down his face.

“I never meant to fail her.”

“You didn’t, Dad,” I reassure, only because it’s what I’m supposed to say. I refuse to say what happened to her was an accident. I won’t. But as long as my father wasn’t the one who killed her, it’s not his fault. Even if he let her pledge the Knights, Dee and I were brought up in this world. There was no escaping it.

Dee was promised to Keegan, and now I am. The only benefit my sweet sister had was that she actually loved him. I hope he gets skewered by his own grief.

I wait, unsure if I should start talking about Dee now since he’s brought her up or to go on with my plan about not marrying Keegan. “I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to marry him. You’ve never liked him.”

“He’s a pompous asshole who was always mean to Dee,” I charge ahead. “And Leon Forbes is a sick bastard,” I growl. “Don’t pretend you didn’t see the way he looked at us. The way he still does.”

He swallows. “I tried my best to keep you girls out of harm’s way. I know it wasn’t good enough. But Delilah, she did love Keegan, right?”

His question is like an appeal. He needs me to say yes. “She did, Dad,” I reassure once more. “I don’t know why, but she did.”

He heaves out a breath of relief. “I thought so, but I don’t trust myself anymore.”

This once proud man looks broken. I should’ve come around more often. I should’ve been here for him, but at the same time, isn’t what I’m doing at Carnegie just as important? I think it is. Maybe if he knows who killed her, he can put his grief to bed. He can acknowledge it and move on. We’ll never get over Dee, but to have some questions answered may just be that step that all of us need to move forward.

He’s quieted down, so I grab one of the chairs on the other side of his desk and drag it closer so I can sit and rest my ankle. “I’m so proud of you, Eden,” Dad says. “I don’t say it enough, but I know how hard it was for you to leave your life and come back here.”

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