Page 42 of Second Dance
I forced a calm I didn’t feel. “No. He walked away a long time ago. He gave up any right to you and Bella the day he left your mom. He has no claim on you. None.”
Some of the tension drained from Peter’s shoulders, though his eyes searched mine like he wanted to believe me but wasn’t sure he should.
I reached across the counter, covering his hand with mine. “You don’t need to worry about any of this. That’s my job. Yours is to be a kid, okay? Play baseball, hang out with your friends, worry about college applications. Leave the rest to me.”
Peter let out a long breath. “Okay.” He didn’t look entirely convinced, but he nodded anyway.
I heard the garage door opening and, seconds later, Bella appeared. She looked startled to see the two of us sitting there, but quickly masked it with hostility. “What are you doing? Waiting up for me? Like I’m a criminal or something?”
Every instinct in me cautioned me to stay calm, so as not to make it worse. “I just got home myself.”
“I was waiting up for you both,” Peter said. “But only to see how your nights went.”
“Thank you for coming home before your curfew,” I said, trying to find something positive to say.
“Ten during summer vacations is so lame.” Bella dropped her bag onto the counter with a thud, seemingly deliberately close to Peter’s bowl of chips. “No one else has a curfew. Only me. Which makes me super lame, so thanks a lot.”
Beside me, Peter shifted, voice soft. “Bella, maybe chill out a little. You’re being very disrespectful.”
“Shut up, Peter! You’re such a butt-kisser.”
Peter winced but didn’t push back, just lowered his gaze to the counter.
“Bella, apologize to Peter,” I said.
“I won’t. Because I’m not sorry. You both suck.” Bella grabbed her bag and ran from the kitchen. Seconds later, I winced as her bedroom door slammed shut. With the way it was going, I’d have to replace the hinges before long.
For a second, I had an image of her at six years old, wearing her footie pajamas and insisting she sit on my lap while we watchedCinderella. She’d been adorable back then. When she’d actually liked me. Which clearly was not the case right now.
Peter let out a long breath. “She didn’t mean it. I bet she apologizes tomorrow.”
I wanted to believe him. Wanted to brush it off and tell myself she’d wake up tomorrow with a cooler head and apologize. Surely we could make peace? Right now, though, I couldn’t imagine how we could possibly do so.
After Peter went up to bed, I stayed in the kitchen, knowing sleep wouldn’t come. I poured a glass of wine and meant to turn on a movie, but instead I found myself in my study, laptop open, staring at the search bar.
The desk lamp threw a dim circle of light across the papers, catching the edge of a photo—Mattie’s smile, frozen in time. Typing his name felt like conjuring a ghost I’d buried long ago. My throat tightened.
Still, I typed: Darren Slater.
For a while, it was nothing but the wreckage of a wasted life—old mugshots, a DUI in Oregon, half-dead links from twenty years ago. Then one entry stopped me cold: a public-record site listing aliases.
Also known as Darren Kincaid.
A new name. A clean slate. No wonder Mattie and I never found him. I clicked.
A police blotter from Reno appeared—two months old. Public intoxication. Resisting arrest.
The mugshot loaded slowly, pixel by pixel, until his face emerged. Older. Bloated. But those eyes—they were the same. Restless. Cold. Already searching for the exit.
My stomach turned as I dug deeper, landing on a nearly empty Facebook profile: a man slouched against a pool table, beer in hand, smirking like the world still owed him something. A few rants about “the system.” A plea for cash pinned to the top—”medical bills after a fall,” it said. Beneath it, the location tag stopped me cold.
Cliffside Bay, California.
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. He wasn’t lost somewhere in Nevada or Oregon. He was an hour north in Cliffside Bay.
Mattie used to say only the good died young. Looking at him, I believed it. My beautiful Mattie gone, and this parasite still breathing.
I closed the laptop hard and pressed my palms to my knees, trying to steady my pulse. How could Bella want to meet this man? Would she still want to if she saw what he’d become—a criminal, a drifter, a coward who’d run from every responsibility he ever had?
