Chapter 7: What Dad Wants

Grady's taillights were still in the street when I went back inside.

Dex and Emmett had cleared the table without being asked.

They were stacking plates at the sink, and neither of them would look at me.

Dad stood in the doorway to the den with his arms crossed.

"What did he say to you out there?"

"That I'd regret it."

"Do you?"

"No."

He rubbed the back of his neck.

"You humiliated that boy in front of company, Di."

"He was about to move into your spare room, Dad. With a girl on the side."

"I'd have thrown him out myself." He rubbed his beard. "I'd have liked to be the one who found out."

"You're right. I'm sorry I didn't tell you first."

That seemed to soften him, and he came over and put a hand on my shoulder.

It was a heavy, familiar hand, and it smelled of the hardware store.

"I just want you safe," he said. "Since your mother, it's the only thing I'm any good at."

That was the moment I should have waited.

Instead I said, "I'm moving out in December."

His hand stopped.

In the kitchen, a plate went down on the counter with a small, careful click.

"I've got eleven hundred saved," I said. "I'm looking at a place on Twenty-Sixth. It's small, it's got a door that locks, and it's mine."

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