Harder (Caroline & West #2)(67)

“Can you get that?” I ask.

She glances at the screen as she hands it to me. “It’s your dad.”

“Oh.” My stomach sinks, and I’m hitting the answer button with my thumb when it occurs to me that the response has become ingrained.

When my dad calls, it’s because he wants to talk about the case, and talking about the case makes me queasy.

I drive to Des Moines and my pulse picks up on the interstate.

I walk past my attorney’s receptionist and start to sweat.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Hi,” he says. “I wanted to warn you, you’re going to get a call in the next day or two from a staffer at State Senator Carlisle’s office. They’re interested—”

“You guys want to get Chinese for dinner?” West has wandered in from the kitchen.

“I thought you were making Sloppy Joe’s,” Frankie says.

“We’re out of ketchup.”

“I hate Chinese.”

“You like those crispy things. Crab rangoon.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“You liked them last week.”

My dad’s still talking. “—bill might come out of it, and she thought—”

“Well, what do you want?” West asks.

“I want Sloppy Joe’s.”

“I already said we don’t have ketchup.”

“So go get some.”

“By the time I got back from the store, it’d be—”

“Sorry, can you hang on a second?” I slide out from under Frankie’s head and take my call into the bedroom.

As I pass by West, he finally notices the phone in my hand and mouths the word Sorry. I shake my head to indicate it’s no big deal. As I step into his bedroom, I can hear him and Frankie resume their bickering.

“—say she was talking on the phone?”

“I thought you saw.”

“Obviously I didn’t. Who’s she talking to?”

“Her dad.”

“Jesus, Franks, and you didn’t think maybe we should—”

The closing door cuts off the sound of their voices. I sit on the edge of the mattress.

“Okay,” I say. “Repeat that last thing you were telling me?”

“Where are you?” my dad asks.

“At West’s.”

“Again?”

“Again.” I scoot on the mattress until my back hits the wall, and then I stick my legs underneath the hideous comforter. I’ve slept here so many times now that it’s beginning to feel like my hideous comforter. My room. Cozy and familiar.

“Caroline.” My father packs a million admonitions into the three syllables of my name.

“Let’s not start this, okay?”

Some days, I wish I’d never told him I was back together with West, because he will not let it go. West has always been and apparently will always be “that boy” to my dad. As in, That boy is all wrong for you, That boy is trouble, That boy is going to break your heart, and, lately, That boy is a distraction you don’t need.

“The sister is there?” he asks.

“Her name is Frankie, Dad. She lives here.”

“I’m not comfortable with it.”

“You don’t actually have to be.”

“I was talking to Janelle, and—”

“Stop right there,” I tell him. “Return to the reason you called. Or I will hang up.”

That earns me another sigh, but it works.

Dad tells me there’s gossip on the judge grapevine that Senator Carlisle is looking at introducing a law to criminalize revenge porn. Someone told someone who told my dad that I might be contacted as an expert witness.

Expert witness. The phrase gives me goose bumps.

I want to be an expert witness.

“I know your instinct is going to be to help with this,” he says. “Normally, I’d support that, but we’re in a delicate position with the case, and any testimony you share even informally might come back to bite us in the ass. If they find out that the Jane Doe in the suit is you—”

“I get it.”

“Anything you say right now, Caroline—anything that might become public—” he warns.

“No, right, I get it. If they call, I’ll be careful.”

This is how lawsuits work: they limit your options, choke off your freedom to speak and act and be who you want, because you always have to be thinking about the jury in your future and how they might see your behavior.

“I’m not sure who gave them your name, even,” he says. “We have to be cautious about your profile. This issue’s starting to get a lot of attention, and if you become a spokesperson, get known as an activist, that affects our options down the road. We want to—”

“Dad, I get it. Thanks for the warning. You can stop now.”

I can see him in my mind’s eye. He’s in his study at home, I’m sure, feet propped up on his desk, fingertips pressing into one temple, forehead creased in a frown.

Sighing.

“Okay,” he says. “How’s everything going with your classes?”

“Classes are fine.”

“You have everything you need?”