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“Yeah,” Dad says, his gaze breaking from mine. “I can’t even imagine.”

Maybe he can’t, but I’ve watched Mom plow through bottle after bottle of wine, Steven’s fur is matted with her tears, and she’s not eating.

“She said she has to question everything now,” I tell him, not mincing my words. “The man she married has been a liar from the beginning. She’s wondering if she ever really knew you and how else you betrayed her.”

Dad nods, his eyes filling with tears. “I deserve it, but if you could tell her . . .” It’s his turn for his voice to break, and my turn to look away. “If you could tell her, that was the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life, and if anything could wash me clean of that, it was her.”

“I’ll tell her,” I promise him. He won’t have the chance to tell her himself. She’s refusing to come see him and won’t take his calls.

“But, Dad . . .” I go on. “The worst thing you’ve ever done in your life is murder. You killed someone. You killed Denise Halverson.”

“I did, yeah,” he says. “And I’ve been waiting since I was seventeen to say so.”

“Dad,” I begin, but he interrupts me.

“No, listen, Lydia,” he says, leaning forward. “Thank you.”

“What?” I don’t know what I’d been expecting. Anger, maybe. Disappointment. A story about being a Chass, and what that means, the weight of our name and all the responsibility that comes with it.

“Not a day went by,” Dad says. “There wasn’t a day that passed I didn’t think about Denise Halverson. Every morning as soon as I woke up. My wedding day. The day you were born . . . Lydia, it colored everything. No matter how beautiful a moment, no matter how right everything else was going in my life, I always knew it could be taken away in a breath.

“I don’t have to do that now,” he says, his good shoulder lifting in a shrug. “I wake up and there’s nothing hanging over my head. I’ve had clients try to tell me before, there’s relief in doing your time and paying your dues. I never believed them, until now.”

“Dad,” I try again, but I’m sorry sticks in my throat. Dad doesn’t want me to be sorry. I came here to apologize to him, and he’s thanking me.

“You don’t have to do that, Lydia,” he goes on. “You don’t have to live like that. You will never have to wake up and wonder if everything is going to be taken from you today, because you did the right thing, in the right moment. Even when I was telling you not to.”

“I shot you,” I finally gasp, the word spitting from my lips.

“I deserved it,” he says. “It was my penance, and a lesson.”

“A lesson?” I ask, finally raising my eyes to his.

“Sure,” Dad says, a smile playing across his lips. “You can be wrong . . . or you can be Lydia Chass.”

Forty-Four

Eight Months Later

Bristal is working over her punching bag when I pull into the driveway behind her Neon. She gives me a little wave and yanks her gloves off with her teeth as I get out of the car, scooping the skirt of my graduation party dress out of the way so it doesn’t get shut in the door. I join Bristal on the picnic table as she starts to unroll her wrist wraps, leaving the tails hanging loose as she reaches for her vape pen.

“Good party?” she asks, wiping sweat from her brow as she sits beside me.

“Okay,” I say, shrugging. “Kind of hard to know how many people would show, with everything going on.”

“You’re leaving it all behind, though,” she says. “Saw in the paper you committed to Columbia. Was it hard to pick?”

“Kind of,” I admit. “All the best schools were offering me a free ride, on account of my journalistic integrity.”

“Right, but what they mean is you shot your dad.”

“Could you stop putting it that way?” I ask, turning to her. “You make it sound so—”

“Violent?” she asks, both hands up in the air. “It was, Lydia. Shit got intense out there.”

“I know,” I say. “I can’t forget it.”

We’re quiet for a moment as a gust of wind picks up, sending some empty off-brand beer cans scuttling into her driveway from under the trailer next door.