We need to talk. He lied to both of us. — Rebecca
I stared at the message until the screen dimmed.
Then another text came in.
I have proof. And you need to know what he was saying about your father.
My suitcase lay open on the bed, black silk and toiletries and grief spilling into it.
I picked up the phone.
Because if I thought the worst of Grant was already on the table, Rebecca Thornton had just made it very clear I was still missing pieces.
Part 6
I didn’t answer Becca that night.
I packed. I showered. I changed into jeans and a soft gray sweater that still smelled faintly like the lavender detergent I bought in bulk because Grant said it made the sheets feel “expensive.” I deleted that thought as quickly as it arrived. Then I drove to Carmel with the windows cracked and the Pacific beside me like a dark, breathing animal.
I left Grant a note on the kitchen island. It said exactly this:
You have thirty days. Do not contact me except through Blackwood.
I thought about adding something vicious. Something about my dress. Something about funerals and parasites and basic human decency. But he wasn’t worth the extra ink.
The cottage sat on a narrow bluff behind a stand of wind-bent cypress trees. It was smaller than I expected, white clapboard with black shutters and a porch that faced the ocean. When I unlocked the door, the place smelled like salt, lemon wood polish, and a house that had waited to be lived in.
Dad had furnished it simply. Linen sofa. Weathered oak table. Built-in bookshelves with novels and sailing manuals and exactly four mismatched coffee mugs. One bedroom upstairs. One tiny office downstairs. Wool blankets folded in a basket beside the fireplace. Through the back windows, the ocean spread out in layers of slate and silver under the moon.
It was perfect.
And it broke me.
I set down my bag, leaned both hands on the kitchen counter, and cried so hard I had to sit on the floor. Not about Grant, not at first. About Dad. About the fact that even from a hospice bed he had been thinking ahead to my escape route. About the unbearable tenderness of a father buying his grown daughter a place to land before pushing off from the world himself.
When the crying passed, I made tea in one of the mismatched mugs and took it onto the porch wrapped in a blanket.