Written with You (The Regret Duet #2)(29)

I clenched my teeth. I wasn’t being fair. But with all the shit about the mall and Malcom coming back up recently, I was once again struggling with the decision we’d made not to tell the police about the pictures I’d found that morning after the shooting.

But Trent was right. That maniac was dead.

He ended the call without so much as a goodbye.

As I set my phone down, I attempted a sigh of relief, but there was no solace to be found in any of this.

Hadley…Willow…whoever… That woman had no rights to my daughter. But for all intents and purposes, I’d taken away her last blood relative.

I should have been celebrating, not feeling like an asshole. But then again, guilt was my forte.

I’d taken off over a week from work to stay at home with Rosalee, and each and every day, she’d asked about Hadley. I’d put her off by telling her that Hadley was sick. Christ, I didn’t know how I was ever going to explain this to her. Alejandra had been badgering me to tell her the truth, but I didn’t have the right words. I wasn’t even sure the right words existed.

Our story was too complex. Too traumatic. Too depressing. Too much for me to handle, much less my four-year-old daughter.

But it was the betrayal that I couldn’t seem to get over. Given enough time to mull it over, I felt like a part of me understood why Willow had done it. I’d lie, cheat, and steal my way back to Rosalee if someone tried to keep her from me. But I couldn’t get over the fact that she’d done it to me. A person she claimed to love. What a load of bullshit. Lies upon lies upon lies until the truth became an abstract concept. I wasn’t sure I would ever get over that.

But then I looked at Rosalee. And I remembered the terrified and bleeding little girl who told me that she’d forgive me.

My father had killed her parents and she’d forgiven me.

And there I was, fuming because she wanted to know her niece.

But fuck, she had not handled it in the right way.

After hearing what Ian had to say about the journals, I’d been too big of a coward to read all of them.

But I’d read one.

One about Willow.

According to her sister, they had once been best friends. Willow was the smart one. The pretty one. The kind one. The honest one. She made friends wherever they went but preferred the quiet of being at home. After the shooting, she diligently went to therapy and tried to drag Hadley with her. In her own words, Hadley referred to herself as the bastard of the family despite being a few minutes older than Willow. She was bitter that Willow had “had it easy” during the shooting. Angry that she’d found “ways to deal with the aftermath of that day at the mall.” And resentful that Willow was able to carry on with her life while Hadley was still stuck in that cabinet for years to come.

And all of this was just on paper. I couldn’t imagine how often she’d taken her emotions out on Willow. Or how hard it must have been to fight for a survivor who didn’t want to survive.

I ached for them.

For both of them.

But most of all, I ached for…

“Daddy?” Rosalee called, trotting toward me.

“Right here, sweet girl.”

She snagged her towel off the chair beside me and then held it out to me in a silent order. I wrapped her like a burrito, only her wrinkly little toes sticking out, and then settled her in my lap.

Her bright, green eyes peered up at me as she asked, “Is Hadley coming over today?”

I flinched. With the ink drying on the paperwork, Hadley would never be coming over again. I pretended like that didn’t feel like a punch to the gut.

I needed to tell her. I needed to find words and break her heart—quick like a Band-Aid.

But she was four. She shouldn’t have to deal with this kind of bullshit. Her only concern should be rainbows and butterflies and how she was going to afford her llama farm one day.

That wasn’t her life though. That wasn’t any of our lives.

And it never would be.

I could give it to her easy. Offer her the bare minimum of facts and ease her into the cold, hard truth as she got older. Just my luck, the first of the five Ws was who.

“No, baby. She isn’t coming over anymore. Not today. Not ever again.”

“What?” she shrieked, fighting out of her towel. “Why not? Is she still sick? We should take her some soup. We should take her some of Ale’s soup. Hers is better than yours.”

Alejandra also had better parenting instincts than I did, because I now had to explain that Hadley had never actually been sick.

“She’s not sick.” I shifted her in my lap, her wet bottom soaking through the towel to my shorts. Okay. I’d started; now, I just had to keep going.

“Is Hadley dead?”

My back shot straight. “What? No!” Well, technically, yes. But… “Why would you ask that?”

“Because Jacob’s grandma got sick for a really long time and then she died. He said they planted her in the ground like a seed.” Her red brows furrowed. “Is Hadley going to be a flower?”

I made a mental note to bribe Jacob’s father to take a job out of the country before once again gathering my nerve. “No. She’s not dead. As far as I know, she’s at her house right now, painting pictures or doing whatever she does. But we still can’t see her. I need to explain to you a few things about that and I need you to really listen because it might be hard for you to understand, okay?”