The Watcher Girl(45)

“You and I are half sisters.” She studies me, wincing.

I lean back, soaking in her statement, examining her features and mentally overlapping them with mine.

We look similar, yes.

But lots of people do.

“How do you know this?” I ask.

“We share a father.” She checks her watch. “When I met Sutton . . . I was actually searching for you. His name kept coming up alongside yours because the two of you shared apartments in college. But by the time I was able to make contact with him, he said you’d ended the relationship and he didn’t know where you were.” Campbell glances at a passing car, silver like Sutton’s, but a Mazda. “We decided to look for you together. He was still in love with you, and I was hell-bent on finding a sister I’d only recently found out existed.” She lifts a shoulder, our eyes intersecting. “But we looked and we looked. And it was like you’d erased every piece of your existence from the internet. Your brother, Sebastian, gave us a number, but it was disconnected.”

The second I left Sutton, I sanitized every electronic trail that could ever possibly lead him back to me because I knew he’d try. I knew he’d want to talk me out of it. Everything I did was for him, so he could have the life he deserved.

“One thing led to another, I guess,” she continues, “and eventually we started dating. We told ourselves everything happened for a reason. That we were supposed to be together. That this was how it was always meant to be.”

Fair enough.

“Did you . . . name your daughter after me?” I ask, though saying it out loud paints me rather presumptive.

She hums through a sheepish smile. “We did. We wouldn’t have met if it hadn’t been for you, so we wanted to honor that.”

Words fail to reach my lips as I let the strangeness of that honor wash over me. It’s strange. It’s flattering. It validates my assumption. But more than all of that, it makes me uncomfortable—the idea of someone walking around as my namesake all because I broke her daddy’s heart once upon a time.

“Everything was amazing those first few years,” she continues, speaking to me but peering over my shoulder. “Shortly after we got married, though, he changed.”

Campbell checks the time again.

“Controlling. Obsessed. Angry,” she says. “So angry.” Clearing her throat, she adds, “He wasn’t like this before we moved here. Before Monarch Falls, he was . . . perfect.”

I’m inclined to believe her claims about him because that’s the way I left him, perfect.

But her claim about us being sisters? I’m hesitant to take her word for that. This world is full of liars and people who believe their own lies. I’m going to have to do the deepest digging before I buy this.

“I thought it was odd that out of all the cities in the world, he snagged a job in your hometown, but he told me it was here or Erie, Pennsylvania, and I didn’t want to be farther away from my family in Connecticut.” She slides her sunglasses over her nose. “I’m so sorry. I’m sure you have a million questions, but I have to get back to the center to pick up my daughter.”

She rises. I rise.

“You can’t just leave,” I say, though I know damn well she can. “Why won’t he let you talk to me? If he knows we’re sisters? He can’t keep you from your family.”

“You don’t know him.” She slips her bag over her hunched shoulder, voice defeated. “Not anymore.”

“So you’re just going to stay? With that monster?”

“I know it’s hard for you to understand,” she says. “But yes.”

“What about your daughter?” I think of myself at Gigi’s age, blissfully unaware that I was nothing more than a pawn.

“You don’t think I’ve thought about that a million times?” Her brows intersect, and her arms fold across her chest. Her stare is pointed, as if my question is out of line.

“You want her growing up thinking that’s normal?” I point at her. “You want her thinking it’s okay to be reduced to nothing more than a spineless domestic servant?”

The words glide from my mouth before I have a chance to stop them, but I manage to bite my tongue before I say something worse.

Apparently self-centered parenting is a trigger for me.

“Is that what you think of me?” Her tone softens and her face tilts. She reminds me of a helpless puppy with the saddest eyes, and I can’t help but wonder if she does this little trick to Sutton when he’s going off on her.

“Why’d you want to talk to me today, Campbell?” I change the subject. I will not be manipulated. I refuse to pity someone who willingly chooses to raise her daughter with someone like Sutton.

I don’t understand.

And I don’t know what it’ll take to get through to her, to make her see the danger of this situation. Does she want her daughter to grow up like me? To never know a loving marriage? To be nothing but a pawn between two dysfunctional human beings?

Without thinking, I shove the contents of our tabletop to the ground.

A cacophony of broken glass is followed by frigid water soaking through the top of my tennis shoe. Two ladies at the table behind us gasp. Campbell takes a step back.

I’m not okay.

Not that anyone is asking.