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“Sorry, yes. I know, Ella.”
“Daddy was wrong. He should have known you better.”
“Well, he’s dead now. So it doesn’t matter.”
Did nothing matter? Could a person do anything they wanted because
we were all going to die one day anyway? Did all the scoreboards reset to
zero? Was the plan to outlive everyone else’s grudges and resentments and
drop dead with your own, alone but clean?
“I have to go,” I said, taking out my phone to call a car, which I did
before seeing Logan’s texts.
—Are you all right?—
—Where are you?—
He’d texted a few minutes after I’d left, then again.
—You’re not here—
—I’m fine. Go to bed—
—I need to know where you are—
—I’m going home—
“You’re perfectly welcome to stay,” Bianca said, coming up next to me.
“No. I need to be… hell is other people, right?” I pocketed the phone,
unable to look at her.
“You look upset. Will Logan be there when you get home?”
Yes, and that was a problem.
“Of course I’m…” I took a deep breath. “I’ll be fine. Thank you for
telling me. I know it looks like I’m running off mad, but I’m grateful for
what you did and… I don’t know. I have to figure out what it means.”
“Maybe it doesn’t mean anything.”
“It has to mean something.” I rubbed my temples to erase the impending
headache. “It can’t all be empty.”
“It’s not all empty.” She rubbed my arm. “But you have to fill the right
things.”
My phone chimed. The car was pulling up the block. Bianca went
outside and waited with me on the sidewalk.
“Did Daddy forgive you?” I asked as the Prius stopped at the curb. “For
the thing you didn’t do?”
“Who can say?”
No one could say whether or not he could hold a grudge against a
woman he’d professed to love, letting it eat at him for years, or if he’d let it
go. He didn’t talk about what was in his heart.