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“Out,” I murmur.

“Are you okay?” She pulls back, still holding onto my arms, as she studies me. “What happened with Dad? Were you there all this time?”

I close my eyes and draw in a deep breath. This is why I waited to come back. I wasn’t ready to field all these questions. I still don’t even believe it’s all true.

I open my eyes and blow out the breath. “I’m okay, and Dad is…well, he looks like ass, and he said a lot of things that got me thinking. I was only there a short time before our call got cut off, but I guess we’ll see him tomorrow at court.”

“What did he say?” she demands.

“Can I, like, walk in and take a breath? Maybe get a drink of water before you start the interrogation?”

She drops her arms from mine. “Yes, of course. I’m so sorry. I was just so worried about you, and—”

“Evy, you don’t need to worry about me,” I say softly.

She stares at me a long time before she finally nods. “You’d think I’d have learned that by now, but I will always worry about my sister.”

It feels like a breakthrough. It might be the first time she referred to me simply as her sister, not her baby sister or her little sister, but a contemporary.

I follow her into the kitchen, and she gets me a glass of water while I slide onto the same stool at the counter I sat at earlier. My stomach growls.

“Did you eat?” I ask.

“No, I was waiting for you. What do you want?”

“Let’s go out.”

“Go out?” she repeats.

“Yeah. It’s on me.”

She narrows her eyes at me.

“I don’t want to wait for food to be delivered here, and I know there’s not much food in your sad little fridge since you haven’t been here in months. Maybe it’s time to sell this place, Ev.”

She glances around and nods. “Yeah. Maybe. It’s just…it’s hard. It was the first home I bought when I was able to access my trust fund, and there are so many memories here. And I like having a home I can come to when I’m in town, you know?”

“Yeah. I get that,” I murmur.

“Where do you want to go eat?” she asks.

“There’s this little French place down the street I want to try. We can walk.”

She nods. “Let’s go.”

We walk toward the restaurant in silence, and I feel better breathing in the late September air. Everleigh is clearly waiting for me to talk, and I can’t help but think about how there’s a lot of stress surrounding tomorrow’s sentencing. My father is sixty years old. If he gets fifteen to twenty, that could be a life sentence.

It’s weird to think that he might not ever be a free man again.

Tears pulse behind my eyes. I know he’s bad. I know he did bad things.

But he also did good things.

“Dad said before Mom died, she amended my trust. It got stuck in the courts for a bit, but I can access it now.” I stare straight ahead as I say the words, keeping my eyes focused on the French restaurant’s signage coming into view down the block.

She stops walking. “You can access it now?”

I keep going, and she rushes to catch up to me.