“I’m not happy about it either. I swore to never let a Ryker boy set foot in my driveway after that mess you got yourself into with Alexander.”
Fury replaces my anxiety in a flash, and I point to the treehouse across the windswept grass. “Do you mean that mess? That living, breathing, beautiful mess I call my daughter?”
Dad pauses for a moment, I’m assuming he realizes his colossal fuck up, but his cop face is hard to read.
“I mean, how you trusted a Ryker to do right by you.” His stern words steal my breath and replaces it with fitful memories of the night I was abandoned by the creek in a rainstorm by the boy I loved. The same night my mother hit a moose on the slick winding road between Raston and home.
“Can’t we get someone else? Someone from Morleau?” I ask.
“You knew this was coming.” My father’s lack of vocabulary infuriates me, but I learned to interpret what he meant in the spaces around his limited words over the years. Of course, I couldn’t come back here and expect not to see Xan.
“I’m not ready.” My voice wobbles. It’s only been two days. I need more days.
“What would make you ready? You needa wear a certain blouse or something?”
Dad’s mocking me, but it’s laced with the harsh truth. I’ll never be ready to face the father of my daughter. Because it’s one thing that he rejected me...that I can live with. What I’ll never forgive is how he rejected her.