Harder (Caroline & West #2)(49)

“I need to be around.”

She reaches out with a fingertip and hooks my sleeve. I watch her rub the cloth between her thumb and her finger like she wants to touch me but she can’t get close enough to do it.

“You should go,” I say. Never have I felt less like I deserved her loyalty.

She takes my hand.

I let her.

“Last year,” I say.

“What about last year?”

“I was pretending.”

“Which part?”

“The part where I had a life outside of taking care of Frankie.”

“But you did have a life here. It wasn’t imaginary.”

“Look what came from that, though.”

“You didn’t cause it. You didn’t make your mom get back with your dad, you didn’t kill him, you didn’t make it so Frankie had to see it.”

“She told you she saw it?” The knowledge sweeps through me, leaving me cold.

Of course she did.

My mother lied. My sister witnessed a murder.

She told Caroline, but she didn’t tell me.

“I’m sorry,” Caroline says. “I wasn’t sure if I should say anything, or when, or how to tell you—”

“I knew,” I interrupt. Because I did. I didn’t want to know, but I knew.

I think of Dr. Tomlinson then. Of terrible secrets that are never secrets. Not really.

“I’m supposed to keep her safe,” I say.

“You’re doing a good job. She’s a wonderful kid.”

“She’s f*cked-up.”

“West, everybody’s f*cked-up.”

“I don’t want Frankie to be like me.”

Caroline’s eyes glisten. Her throat works.

I pull her hand until her elbow’s against my side and I can put my other arm around her.

We stand there like that.

Past the parking lot, I can see the playground. They’ve got one of those spiral slides off by itself, and this huge play structure that has a climbing wall part, four different slides that branch off in different directions, a rope bridge, all kinds of shit.

There’s dried leaves gathered in the corners and against the fence—red and green and gold.

So much color at this school.

“I never had a counselor like him,” I say.

“Jeff?”

“Twenty-four years old. And that picture of his wife and his baby.”

“What about them?”

“You heard. He wants to see her settled in better. He wants her to reach her ‘full potential for achievement and happiness.’ ”

Maybe that’s a thing people say in Caroline’s world. She would’ve gone to a school like this, with school counselors and teachers and principals who wanted things for her. She has a father who wants the world for her. It’s such a foreign country to me.

Nobody ever talked to me about potential and achievement and happiness but Dr. T, and what I did to get what he was offering canceled out any part of me that might have deserved it.

She strokes my arm. “It’s good, right? It’s all good.”

I pull Caroline closer, position her in front of me, take her weight when she sags against me.

We watch my sister. She bends down and disappears, probably fishing around in her school bag. Takes something out of it, drops her head again. She’s writing.

“If Jeff was her dad, he’d know what she was writing,” I say.

“Probably not.”

“She wouldn’t have nightmares. She’d have daydreams. Horses and unicorns, princes and castles, all that shit girls her age draw in their notebooks—that’s what Frankie would have.”

Caroline turns in my arms and puts her cold hands against my cheeks. “That is such a mountain of crap.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Even if it were true—even if she’d had a different life up to now, some sheltered life with unicorns and rainbows—sooner or later she’d grow up, and she’d get hurt. There’s no way around it.”

“You didn’t see her when she was a baby. There was nothing to her.”

She strokes her hands down my neck. “You know who I wish I could’ve seen? You. I wish I’d seen you when she was born. How old were you, ten?”

I nod.

“I want a time machine,” Caroline says, “so I can see you when you were eleven or twelve and she took her first steps. I want to see when she was learning to talk, and when you taught her to read.”

“She taught herself to spell first,” I say. “Went right from the alphabet song to phonics to spelling everything out loud, and then once she could spell she picked up Fox in Socks and read it to me. Didn’t miss a single word.”

“I bet you were proud of her.”

I was. I always have been.

Caroline flattens her hands against my chest and leans back to look me in the eye.

“She doesn’t need another father,” she says. “She’s got you.”

“I’m just her brother.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I’m her guardian.”

“Jesus, you’re stubborn.” Caroline steps away, turns to face the car, and points at Frankie. “Look at her,” she says. “Look at that girl and tell me you don’t know every single thing about her.”