Tourmaline waited at the clubhouse steps with her phone in hand. She had to scroll way down the messages to find Anna May, sadness hitting the back of her throat when she saw how long it’d been since they’d talked. Her Fourth of July text was still unanswered. She flexed her thumbs, took a deep breath, and sighed.

It’s been a wild summer. Want to make a plan for brunch the day before I leave for school? I’ll buy!

She and Anna May wouldn’t be best friends. They might not even be friends. But their friendship wasn’t going to end the way it was trying to. It would go quietly and peacefully, with good feelings and great memories and goddamn brunch, if Tourmaline had anything to do with it.

Her dad’s bike roared into the clearing. “Tourmaline?” he asked, completely confused. “What are you doing here? How did you get here?”

She tilted her head and frowned. Was he joking? The only vehicle in the lot was the Shovelhead, and she had a helmet between her feet. Had he missed it or ignored it? She gestured to the bike. “Changed the oil.”

He looked between her and the bike. “So you’ve been riding it still?” he asked in a strangled voice. “I was thinking of selling it.”

“I’ll buy it.”

“You don’t want—”

“I know what I want,” Tourmaline interrupted. “I’ll buy it from you.”

He didn’t respond, sighing and rubbing his face. “What’s going on? Why are you here?”

The control was taking over his tone. The assurance. Strange to realize now that it was defensive.

She lifted her chin and forced herself to meet his eyes. “Where were you the other night?”

“What other night?”

“Two nights ago. The storms.”

“I told you. I went out. Did something happen?” He looked worried. “Did you see Wayne?”

It stabbed deeply inside Tourmaline’s chest to see that flicker of concern cross his expression. That concern not for her, but for maintaining his lies. The breeze stirred the pines, whispering in the space between them.

Her father stood with his shoulders squared and his chin high, the sun behind his shoulder.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she whispered.

“Tell you what?”

She closed her eyes and just sat there, the aching and weakness heavy in her bones. How could he have let her keep the burden of her mother’s imprisonment for so long? When all along, the law had only been after him. She dragged in a deep breath and forced her head up. “I thought people who lied to me would look different. I didn’t know you could love someone and hurt them as much at the same time. I know the truth. I know all of it.”

“All of what?”

She met his eyes then. His challenge. Her spine stilled to think of Wayne’s eye, fixed eternally on the darkness of the rafters. “I know what the Wardens are. I know what you do. I know the cops went after Mom when they were trying to get you. I know where you were the other night.” She leaned forward, determined. “I found his body when I went to take care of it myself.”

He froze. His eyes widened. The control faltered. “What?” he breathed.

“You ruined it,” she said. “No one was supposed to go to prison because of me again. I couldn’t live with that.”

“I told you to tell me,” he whisper-yelled, stepping closer. “You were supposed to come to me.”

“So you could do exactly what you did, and end up in prison?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Bullshit,” she snapped, eyes narrowed. “We both know that’s bullshit.”

He sighed again and rubbed his face. “It’s just the risk I take. The risk we all take.”

Finally, a truthful answer. Far too late. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why would I tell you?”

“It bled into everything, Dad. And you let it all fall on my hands and you never once helped me hold it or clean it off. You just let me stand there, with that weight all on me and no idea how to live with it. You could have told me. I would have been relieved. I needed it to understand where I was and what happened.”

“I would never lay that burden on a child.”

It was as if he were arguing with the paper girl. The daughter he’d drawn in the outline he’d expected her to always remain within. And he couldn’t hear that she wasn’t that. She stared at him, trying to find a way to reach him. To make him listen. “I never wanted to be protected from the world I live in. I can’t be shielded from the world I live in—not forever. What I wanted.” She shook her head, tightening her fingers on her legs. “What I needed was for you to teach me how to live in it. To show me how to see it for what it was and when to bend it to my will instead of always bending to it. You have so much power. You are so sure of your place in this world. Why wasn’t I worth teaching that to? Instead you’ve given it all to this.” She looked up at the clubhouse. Gestured to its door whose threshold she was not allowed to cross. “Brotherhood,” she spat.

“This isn’t about—”

“It is,” she interrupted, pointing her finger at him. “It is when you cut me off and gave it to them instead. That’s when you made me its enemy. This is my world. And you left me alone inside it.”

Her dad didn’t respond. His face remained firm. He wasn’t listening.

She bit her cheek, head pulsing with anger and helplessness. “They’re going to come for you,” she said.

He shrugged. “You worry too much.”

“I don’t worry. I know.”

He heard the authority in her voice. The knowledge. His eyes found hers, a flash of alarm running through them. He shrugged again. “I’ve always known they would. Let them come. You’re safe now.”

She rolled her eyes in frustration. She’d never been safe. He couldn’t protect her from the life she was already living. From the choices she’d already had to make. That was a lie he told himself. “I’m sorry,” she said. “For how this turned out. For how it’s going to turn out.”

“I don’t know what I would have done differently.” Her father’s voice seemed smaller. “I’m not sorry I tried to keep you safe.”

She sniffed and nodded, trying not to be hurt that he didn’t understand she was talking about something so much bigger. “I’m going to finish this.” Her voice caught. “I started this. I’m going to finish it.”

“That’s not your job,” he said. “It’s not your job to protect me. It’s my job to protect you.”

She turned away, staring at the grass. The wind tugged her hair and she lifted her face into it as her chest cracked open and its contents poured out, and she knew she’d keep on going.

Let the world around her keep on as it wished, it could not change what she did, and how she thought, and who she was. And with that knowledge, she could make paths anywhere her feet wanted to go. “I learned this world is mine,” she said, picking up her helmet and standing. He had not taught her.

But she had learned.

She left him standing by the steps.

The Shovelhead roared underneath her hands.