Chapter 9: Dad, More Syrup

I didn't sleep.

The investigators' email kept scrolling behind my eyes: Somebody pointed us at you first, nine days before the video.

If nobody had filmed us at the market, someone had still put my address in a stranger's hands.

At two in the morning I gave up and went down the hall to check on Poppy.

Her door was open six inches.

The night light threw a yellow circle across the floor.

Preston was sitting in it.

He had his back against her bed, his long legs stretched out, and his head tipped against the mattress.

He was asleep in his shirt and trousers with a stuffed fox in his lap.

Poppy slept above him with one arm hanging over the edge, and her fingers were wrapped around the end of his collar.

I stood in the doorway for a long time.

I had planned for a lot of things in three years.

I had never planned for this.

She'd had a nightmare, I realized.

She had called for me, probably, and I hadn't heard because I'd been lying awake two rooms away, and he had been closer.

I took the blanket from the chair and put it over his shoulders.

He didn't wake.

I told myself that was all I was doing.

Then I went downstairs for water, because my hands didn't know what else to do.

The kitchen was dark.

Voices came through the open terrace door.

I stopped on the tile with my glass in my hand.

"I'm not asking you to forgive me," Jack said.

He sat on the stone steps below the pool, with his elbows on his knees.

Bridget stood above him in an oversized shirt, with her arms wrapped around her ribs.

"Good," she said. "Because I won't."

"I know."

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