I spend the rest of the day stressing over the message until the second I walk into my house. Then my worry over the text flies right out of the window.
My dad is sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and talking to Lynn about something while he reads over a piece of paper.
“Dad, you’re home,” I breathe in relief, wanting to get on my knees and kiss the ground.
Yes! I no longer have to do chores for Lynn and Hannah.
When he looks at me, though, my elation fizzles like flat soda.
“We need to have a talk.”
“What do you mean by we?” I ask. “You and me, or …?” I glance at Lynn.
She twists in her chair and smiles sweetly. “Your father, me, and you are all going to talk.” She pulls out a chair and pats the seat.
I hesitantly walk over to the table, dropping my bag on the floor before I take a seat in the chair farthest away from Lynn.
Her eyelids lower to slits, but she collects herself and reaches for the sugar dish in the middle of the table. “Your father and I are very worried about you, Isa.” She scoops up a spoonful of sugar and adds it to her coffee. “Ever since you went on that trip, you’ve been acting like a completely different person.”
“You wanted me to go on that trip,” I calmly remind her.
A shrill laugh escapes her lips. “I never agreed that you could go on that trip. I was under the impression that you were going to spend the summer at your grandmother’s, getting a job and working so we would no longer have to spend so much money on you.”
My fingers curl inward as I ball my hands into fists. “I pay for most of my stuff.” Which is the truth. Most of my pencils, sketchbooks, and clothes have come from money I’ve made doing part-time jobs here and there and from the cash my grandpa gave me.
“Stop lying.” She stirs her coffee, sitting in the chair with perfect posture, trying to appear like the calm, picture-perfect woman she’s not. “You’ve been doing too much of that lately.”
“I haven’t lied about anything,” I say, fighting to keep my temper under control.
She wipes the spoon clean on the brim of the cup before setting it down on the table. “Maybe lying isn’t the right word. But you’ve been keeping secrets from us.”
I sort through my thoughts, trying to figure out which secret she’s referring to.
“I’m talking about all the snooping you’ve been doing,” she says. “For the last couple of weeks, you’ve torn this house apart every time your father and I aren’t around.”
I glance at the paper my dad was looking at when I walked in. It looks like a receipt from a hotel in Virginia, which doesn’t make any sense since he was supposed to be in Florida.
“How do you know I was looking for something?”
My dad must notice I’m looking because he folds up the paper and stuffs it into his briefcase.
“I have my ways of finding out what you’ve been up to.” Lynn’s icy gaze warns me a storm is coming for me, and I’m not going to be able to get out of its path. “That doesn’t really matter. All that matters is that you found what you were looking for.”
“I didn’t find it.” I feel like I’m walking into a trap. “I’m pretty sure Hannah left it on my bed, but I think you already know that, don’t you?”
“Isabella, stop lying!” My dad suddenly explodes, slamming his fist onto the table.
I jump, my heart slamming against my chest. “Dad, I—”
“Don’t you dare make excuses!” he cuts me off, stabbing a trembling finger in my direction. “You had no right to look for your birth certificate. No right at all.”
“I do, too, have a right.” I suck back the tears, refusing to cry in front of them. “It’s my birth certificate. And when I turn eighteen in a few months, you would have had to give it to me anyway.”
His face reddens with anger. “You don’t even know what you’re getting into. Just because you found out about her”—he flinches, casting a panicked glance in Lynn’s direction—“you think you understand everything.”
“What I understand is that I was lied to for years. That the people I always thought were my family weren’t. That this place”—I flail my hand around at the kitchen—“wasn’t always my home. That all these damn years I spent here, feeling like a fucking outcast, could’ve been avoided if you would’ve just let Grandma raise me, instead of bringing me into a family who hates me!” I’m breathing ravenously by the time I’m finished. It feels so good to get it out.
The vein in my dad’s forehead bulges as he slides his hand across the table and clutches mine. “You will never talk to me that way again. Do you understand? I won’t let you turn into your mother. I won’t let you turn into that vile woman who ruined my life.”
His fingers dig so violently into my hand I’m pretty sure I’m going to have bruises. “From now on, you will do everything Lynn and I tell you.” He lets me go and pushes back from the table. “And as far as I’m concerned, she is your mother.” He looks at Lynn before storming out of the kitchen.
“What did you think was going to happen?” Lynn says as I work to get oxygen into my lungs. “That he was going to tell you he was sorry and that deep down he really loved your mother?”
She rolls her eyes at me when I say nothing.
“Your mother was a terrible person who did terrible things to people, and we’ve been trying to make it so you didn’t end up like her.” She scoots back from the table, looking at me with hatred as she grabs my hand and pulls me to my feet. “But from what I can see, you’re going to end up just like her—rotting in a grave that no one visits.” She drags me with her as she heads for the doorway. “Now, you’re going to come with me and paint over that god-awful painting you put up on that wall.”
I can barely breathe. Barely think. Barely make sense of what she says.
My mom was a bad person?
She did terrible things?
I’m going to end up just like her?
She’s dead?
I have to get out of here.
“No!” I shout, wrenching my hand from her hold. “I’m not going to paint that fucking wall. It’s my wall. And I like the painting.”
She doesn’t seem shocked by my outburst. If anything, she seems pleased, like she’s gotten everything she’s wanted.
“Just like your mother,” she says.
I shove her, not enough to do much, but it still shocks her. Then, before she can say anything, I run out of the kitchen and out the back door.
Outside, I find Hannah getting out of her car. The sight of her makes me just about lose it.
“You did this, didn’t you!” I shout as I head down the driveway toward her. “You left the birth certificate on my bed, and then told them I was looking for it. You set me up so they’d think I was the one who found it!” The closer I get to her, the angrier I get and the more words keep spilling from my lips. “And you’ve been sending me those texts. To mess with my head.”
She looks at me like I’m the lunatic as she opens the trunk of her car and grabs some shopping bags. “Look, I don’t know what your deal is, but I’ve never texted you.” She closes the trunk of her car then turns toward me. “I don’t even have your phone number programmed into my phone.”
“You’re such a liar,” I say through gritted teeth.
“No, I’m not.” Her lips twist into a grin. “Trust me; if I did set you up for something, I’d be bragging about it.”
With that, she walks up the driveway and disappears into the house, leaving me to stew in my confusion.
What if she’s telling the truth? What if it wasn’t her? Then who else could it be? Lynn? Quite possibly. And what about what Indigo said about my dad being behind all the text messages? Why would he do that, though? Does he hate me that much?
The truth crashes down on me. Yes, I think he really might hate me that much.
Tears start to spill from my eyes as I race down the sidewalk, trying to figure out what to do next. I think about running to town or texting Grandma Stephy or Indigo to come get me, but before I can get that far, Kai appears at the corner of the sidewalk.
He starts to turn away the moment he spots me then notices the tears in my eyes and rushes toward me. “What’s wrong?”
I shake my head. “I can’t …” I suck in a huge breath of air. “I can’t …” I start to sob hysterically and my legs buckle. “My mom’s dead.”
Kai catches me before I hit the ground and pulls me against his chest. I pull back, feeling moronic for having a meltdown in front of him, but he only presses me closer and lets me cry into his shirt.
“It’s going to be okay,” he says, smoothing his hand up and down my back. “I promise.”
I wish he was right. I wish this was all a bad dream or something that I could eventually get over. Maybe one day I will. Maybe one day it won’t hurt so badly. Right now, the pain is suffocating way more than the shell I used to live in, and I’m unsure how to make it go away or if it’ll ever go away completely.
So I do the only thing I can do for now. I cry as hard as I can, letting it all out, grateful Kai is there to keep me from falling down completely.