“Hey,” I said. “We need to talk about Britta—”
Unexpectedly, he reached down and picked up my hand. “I talked to Spence,” he said, interrupting me.
“I saw,” I said, pulling back on my hand, but Jamie held tight.
“No,” he said. “Amber, we talked it all out. Spence and I are cool. He…” Jamie paused, and I was surprised to see his lip quivering. “He wanted me to give you this.” Jamie placed a note in my hand.
I looked down at the tightly folded piece of paper with my name on it. “He told me that he’s breaking it off with you, and he couldn’t do it in person. I’m really, really sorry.”
“I’M SORRY,” I SAID, WIPING MY CHEEKS. I hadn’t been able to stop crying for the past five minutes.
“Hey,” Cole said, putting a hand on the side of my face to get me to look at him. “You’re good, Lily. Don’t worry about it. The question is, what do you want to do?”
I swallowed hard and wiped another tear away. “What do I want to do?”
“Yeah,” Cole said. “We can drop all of this, you know. All of it.”
A small, mirthless laugh escaped me. “My father could’ve killed your uncle and you’d be willing to just…drop it?”
Cole’s lips pressed together. “Yeah,” he said. “If your dad was involved, Lily, what good would come of it? It’d ruin his life, your life, and probably my mom’s life, too. Plus, if your grandmother was involved in the cover-up, she’d probably get carted off to jail as well.”
I shook my head. My evil grandmother. Everybody feared her. Well, except for my dad. And suddenly, I wondered why. Why hadn’t he ever been afraid of her?
“We need to confront him,” I said. If my dad had never been afraid of his mother, maybe I didn’t need to be afraid of him.
Cole looked at me admirably. “You’re sure?”
“Yes,” I said. “Positive.”
“When?”
I pointed to the road in front of us. “Now’s good.”
We were in Richmond twenty minutes later, and I directed Cole to my old address. When he pulled up to the locked gate, I gave him the code and we drove through while I sweated about who would greet us at the door.
I knew someone inside would be alerted to the gate opening, because any time the code was punched in, there was a small ping from the alarm panel.
Sure enough, as Cole parked next to my dad’s Jag, the front door opened and his pregnant girlfriend stepped out onto the top step to put her hands on her hips and glare down at us.
“You can’t just enter the gate without calling the house,” she snapped as we got out of the car.
I walked purposefully up the steps, narrowing my eyes at her and silently daring her to try to stop me. Pregnant or not, she wasn’t gonna prevent me from confronting my father.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she demanded when I started to push past her.
“Inside my house,” I told her.
She stepped in front of me, blocking the entrance. “Don’t you have another place to call home now?” she sang meanly.
I looked her in the eyes and said, “No, Jenny, I have two places to call home now. As much as you’d like it to be different, this is still my home.”
“Not as long as I have anything to say about it,” she insisted, putting her large belly in my path to block me from entering. I squared my shoulders and stepped forward. I was taller than Jenny, and I stared her down as I began to press in against her and move her backward.
“Hey!” she yelled, raising her hands to shove at me. Before she could actually manage that, though, Dad appeared out of nowhere and barked, “Jennifer!”
Her hands fell instantly to her sides and her face flushed red before she backed all the way up and allowed both Cole and me to enter.
Cole shut the door behind us, and there was a very lengthy pause before Dad said to Jenny, “You look tired. Maybe you should go upstairs and rest.”
It wasn’t even a question. Dad spoke the words as if they were a command. Jenny jumped on the chance to save some face.
“Yes,” she said, putting a hand on her stomach. “The baby kept me up all night. I think a nap would be perfect.” She went very slowly up the stairs in an obvious effort to eavesdrop in on our conversation.
“What’re you doing here, Lily?” Dad asked.
I felt a small pang in my heart. Not even a greeting. I hadn’t seen him in weeks and he didn’t even start the conversation with a “Hey there, sweetheart. What brings you by?”
But then, my dad never was the sentimental type. I squared my shoulders and lifted my chin. “You and I need to talk,” I said. “Now.”
In all of my sixteen years I’d never disobeyed him or talked back or challenged him in any way, so this was a first. And he noticed.
“I see,” he said, his eyes flickering to Cole. “And who’s this?”
“His name is Cole Drepeau.”
“Sir,” Cole said. He tipped his chin politely, but his posture was guarded.