The Daughter They Sacrificed Chose a New Life novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Ginger Ale

The party emptied out in four minutes.

My professor said good night to every guest at the door with her hand on their back, and she was gone from the front hall before I could ask her to stay.

Flynn looked at my face, and at the man in the cardigan, and went out to the porch without a word.

That left me alone in the kitchen with my father.

He sat at the long table with his suitcase beside his chair and his hands flat on the wood.

The cake was a ruin of crumbs and wax. Eighteen candle stubs lay across the plate.

"I should have called first," Dad said.

"You never call."

"No."

He looked older than he had a week ago.

His cardigan was buttoned wrong, one hole off all the way down.

"Can I have a glass of something?" he asked. "Not wine."

I opened the professor's refrigerator.

There was a can of ginger ale on the door, left over from somebody's party.

I poured it into a glass and set it in front of him, and he held it in both hands and didn't drink.

"Did Mom send you?"

"Your mother doesn't know I'm here." He said it fast. "She thinks I'm at a conference in Providence. Please don't tell her. Or Chloe."

"Why would I tell Chloe anything?"

"Because she asks." He turned the glass a quarter turn on the table. "She's very good at asking."

I sat across from him.

There were forty questions in me, and none of them got as far as my mouth.

"I'm sorry about the party," Dad said.

I hadn't expected it.

I had waited nine years to hear him say sorry for anything, and now that he had, I didn't know what to do with it.

"You gave her the Cape house," I said. "In front of everyone."

"I know."

"You said I was selfish."

"I know." His mouth shook. "I'm a coward about your mother, Saskia. I've been one for a long time. I wanted to tell you that, in person. I'm sorry."

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