Why had I asked for this?
Why had I begged for this?
Why had I put myself in this situation in the first place?
I blinked back at Edie, who had her face buried in her hands, her shoulders quaking.
Normally, she was strong for both of us.
Normally, she knew what to do.
But nothing about our situation was normal.
It terrified me that so much had changed in such a short period of time. My life had derailed from the endless, straight line I’d been sailing through, to a roller coaster with no beginning, middle, or end.
I was living in another state.
Knight hated me.
I hated Knight.
Rosie was dying.
I’d kissed a girl. And, pardon the poor cultural reference, but I’d liked it.
I’d really liked it. Not enough to change teams—well, maybe…though the only person I’d really ever wanted was my best friend—but enough not to regret it. That was a complication I couldn’t even focus on right now.
I’d broken a heart. Well, might’ve. Josh had stopped texting me. His unanswered messages were piled up in a neat corner of my phone’s memory like broken dreams, hung on a clothesline, damp from my tears of guilt.
And now this. The indigestible news I somehow still needed to swallow. The report sat between Edie and me, on the table, waiting to be acknowledged.
I stood up, slapped my open palm on the table, and yelled, “No!”
Only I didn’t do that.
I darted up and paced from side to side in our kitchen, throwing my head back and letting out a rabid laugh. “Good riddance!”
Only I didn’t do that, either.
I broke down in tears. I ran to my room. I felt. I felt.
Or I wished I had.
In reality, I just sat there, staring at my mom. My real mom. The one who’d been there for me from the moment she knew of my existence. The one who counted. Edie.
“Is that all he’s given you?” I whispered.
I hoped my voice would shock her into pulling herself out of her meltdown. It worked. She peeked at me between her fingers, then straightened in her seat, wiping the tears from her face.
“The private investigator?” She cleared her throat, trying to be cool.
I knew she would be cool about it. Knew she wouldn’t make a big deal of it, make a show, make me feel uncomfortable.
I nodded.
“He said she’d been living in Rio for the past eight years with her mother. Worked a job selling knock-off perfumes at a mall down her block. No partner, no kids, no family. Had a cat named Luar. She seemed to have gone through a really dark time. She died of an overdose eighteen months ago.”
My biological mother was dead.
I should feel devastated. I should feel free. I should feel, period. I poked my lower lip, tugging at it, not sure how to react.
Val was still my biological mother.
Also, the woman who gave me up.
The woman who’d screwed me over.
The woman who’d wanted to use me as a pawn.
But also the woman who named her cat Luar—moonlight in Portuguese.
Val wore many hats in my life. All of them had painted her in an ugly way. People were wrong. I wasn’t Saint Luna. I was capable of hating, too. I just didn’t know it until now. Somehow, I stood up. Edie rose to her feet after me.
“You have a mother,” she stressed, slapping her palm over her chest. “You have me, Luna. You’ll always have me.”
“I know.” I smiled.
“Speak more.” Her expression softened.
“I try. I’ve been trying my whole life. It’s just that…when the words come out, they do it of their own accord.”
“Don’t you get it?” She held my arms, giving them a gentle shake.
She had a goofy, lopsided grin—one I’d catch on Dad when he looked at her lovingly. She’d always had the courage to look at me and not through me.
“You’re free now. Free to speak. Free to talk. Free to be someone else, not the person she made you when she walked away.”
“I know,” I whispered.
But did I? What if this didn’t free me? What if I was destined to speak in random bursts?
We both shifted from foot to foot. There was a major elephant in the room, and we needed to address it.
“Your dad needs to—”
“I’ll tell him,” I cut her off.
Yes. I knew what I had to do, what I was capable of doing. Val was no longer here to remind me my words didn’t matter, that my voice held no weight. Edie was right. It was time to shed the dead skin of the person I was, and to become someone else.
The person Knight needed.
The person Dad, Edie, and Racer deserved.
I was going to talk to Dad.
With words.
“Come in.”
Dad looked up from the paperwork on his office desk, still clad in his suit. He shuffled some papers around for the sake of doing something with his hands, flashing me a tired smile. There was something pathologically wary about his expression when he looked at me nowadays. Love dipped in misery, wrapped in a bitter crust of pity.
Not disappointment, though. Never disappointment.
I closed the door behind me, moseying to the camel-colored leather armchair in front of him. I sank into it, the weight of what I was about to do pulling me down. Without breaking eye contact, my nails dug into the tender flesh of my palms until they pierced through my skin. I breathed through the pain.
I could do it. I’d done it with Knight. With Edie. At a party full of complete strangers.
But somehow, this was different.
My father had been tricked by Val. She got pregnant on purpose. He hadn’t wanted me. Yet he had been forced to raise me on his own for the first few years of my life. And it hadn’t been easy, with my lack of communication. They’d called him The Mute because he didn’t speak much, but his daughter truly crushed him with misery over her lack of words.
“Is everything okay?” He furrowed his brows, seeming to realize the atmosphere in the room had shifted. Maybe that I’d shifted, too.
I used to be dependent. Small. Scared. The last few months had changed me. And I was still evolving, changing like clay—spinning through tiny changes that made small, yet significant differences in my life. Each dent shaped me.
I opened my mouth.
He dropped his pen.
My lips moved.
His eyes widened.
I smiled.
He listened.
“Not everything,” I whispered, aware of the way my lips molded around the words.
Sadness laced in my victory. The only reason I was able to speak was because my birth mother had died. There was no reconciliation possible. I’d lost something permanently—but gained something else.
I reached for his hand across the desk, clutching it with shaky fingers. Free at last. The pen he’d been holding a second ago bled ink onto his new leather planner. I only noticed because everything was illuminated, like I was on ecstasy or something.
“I have a confession, Dad.”
I wasn’t sure how I expected him to react. My father had tried everything to get me to talk. I had award-winning speech therapists knocking on my door, the best psychologists and experts in the world at my disposal. I’d seen his back shake from weeping dozens of times when he thought I wasn’t looking, as he mourned the words that never left my mouth.
Then, I wasn’t ready. Now, I was.
“Luna…” He put a shaky hand to his mouth.
I dragged my hand from his, fanned my fingers on his desk. “Val died,” I said.
“How do you…”
“I asked Edie to hire someone to investigate. I’m so sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I needed to know.”
He made a sudden move. The bleeding pen rolled across the desk and dropped onto the carpet. He shook his head, paused for a second, then stood up, rounding his desk and yanking me to my feet. His eyes bore into mine, saying so many things he’d bottled over the years. I thought he was going to hug me, but to my astonishment, he got down on his knees, staring up at me, his eyes twinkling.
“You’re talking.” He looked puzzled.
I laughed. I actually laughed, which was horrible, seeing as my moment of greatness was tainted by the death of my biological mother. But then I started crying, too. Tears ran down my cheeks, following one another along my neck, soaking my shirt. Talk about bittersweet moments.
“I mean…are you?” His throat worked. “Talking?”
“To some people.” Guilt, guilt, guilt. Piles upon piles of messy, black, foggy guilt.
“Some?”
“You. Edie. Knight.”
“Since when?”
“Since…a few weeks ago.”
“Luna,” he whispered.
“Dad.”
“Say it again.”
“Dad.” I smiled. He closed his eyes. Took a deep breath.
“Again? Please.”
“Dad.”
His shoulders shook. Not with sobs. With happiness. Happiness I’d put inside him. I was drunk on my newfound power.
“Tell me again.” His voice was soft.
The pen behind him spread blue ink all over the lush crème carpet.
“Dad. Trent. Mr. Rexroth. Father.” I wiggled my brows, and he opened his eyes, laughing. The crow’s feet fanning around his eyes squished up his entire face adorably.
“What about your brother?”
“What about him?”
He gave me a really? look, and I pulled him to standing. I buried my face in his chest, inhaling him. I hated that he looked like a man who’d just been released from prison. Happier. Lighter. I’d sentenced him to a reality he hadn’t wanted, caged him into a situation he’d struggled with every day.
“I’ll try. I…I don’t control it, Dad. It’s not like that. Yet. I’m sorry.” I swallowed. “Aren’t you…mad?”
“Which part should I be mad about? The fact that my daughter wanted to understand her past better and I obviously failed her if she felt she couldn’t ask me about her birth mother, or the fact that you’ve just given me the only thing I’ve truly wanted since the day you stopped talking?”
“The first one. Definitely the first one.” I laughed.
Melancholy dripped between us. This was the big moment. The top of the hill. Me, talking to my dad, telling him I knew my mother was dead. He didn’t look surprised. Why didn’t he look surprised?
Ever the mind reader, he cleared his throat and looked down.
“You knew about Val,” I said. There was no accusation in my voice.
He nodded. “It seemed redundant to bring her up after all these years. Plus, she hurt you in such a vital way, I couldn’t bring myself to think what would happen if—”
“It’s okay,” I cut him off. I got it. I did.
“God.” He shook his head, pulling me into another hug. “Your voice. It’s beautiful.”
“I love you,” I whispered into his suit. My words had life, and weight, and a pulse. I said them again. “I love you, Dad. I love you. I love you. I love you.”
He lifted me up like I was a little girl, spinning me in place and burying his nose in my hair. Tears rolled down our faces. The pen bled the last of its ink, marking this page in our lives forever in my father’s office. I knew, with certainty that made my heart swell, that he was not going to replace that carpet.
He was going to look at it every day, remember the day it had happened, and cherish it.
“I love you, too, baby girl.”
