Chapter 10: The Window

I woke up alone, with the smell of coffee in the air and sun across my pillow.

For half a minute I let myself lie there.

My body ached in places I'd forgotten I had.

Then I remembered my father's text, and I sat up.

Rafe was in the kitchen in his jeans and nothing else, with his back to me and his hands flat on the counter.

He had made two cups.

He didn't turn around.

"You're going," he said.

"It's my father."

"He said bring nobody."

"I heard what he said."

"Cecelia." He turned, and his face was tired and careful.

"You can't walk into that house alone. Not after Danielle got out of his car on Tuesday."

"I'm not asking your permission."

"I know that."

"Then what is this?"

He picked up his cup and put it down.

"I want to ask you something," he said. "And I want you to answer it honestly."

"Ask."

"Seven years ago, why did you leave without saying goodbye to me?"

It was such a small question.

It hit harder than anything Preston had said in his life.

I stared at him over the top of my coffee.

"You were at the window," I said.

"Yes."

"I came out with the last box. I looked up and you were in the carriage house window, watching."

"You didn't open it. You didn't come down."

"You let me drive away from the only place I had ever lived."

He went still.

"I thought you wanted me to stay out of it."

"I was twenty-two. My mother was dead and my father had put a key on a tablecloth."

"I wanted somebody to come down the stairs."

"I did come down."

"When?"

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