The Watcher Girl(47)

The pit of my stomach hollows with nausea.

I’ve done everything I can do. I’ve crossed boundaries, blown through a chunk of my personal savings, and broken laws. I’ve done things I’m not proud of, and it’s all been for nothing.

These people don’t want help.

And they especially don’t want my help.

I splash cold water on my face before making my way downstairs, tilting the family portrait ever so slightly on my way. The house is quieter than it was a half hour ago. Dark with dusk.

“Hello?” I call out when I hear someone’s voice—female. “Bliss?”

No answer.

“Rose?” I ask, louder.

A million seconds later, someone calls my name. “Grace? Is that you?”

I release a held breath. It’s only my sister.

“In the family room,” she adds.

“Where’s everyone else?” I ask when I find her flipping through a home and garden magazine, illuminated by lamplight. “And what are you doing here? Where’s Evan?”

“Dad is having drinks with some of his friends downtown. I don’t know where Bliss is. Evan’s prepping some online summer class he’s teaching. Now that we’re having the baby, he thinks he needs to take on some extra courses.” She rolls her eyes and flips to a new page. “You still leaving this weekend?”

“Yeah.” I take a seat.

“That’s too bad.” She offers a smile, half-sad, half-apologetic. “It’s been nice having you around.”

“You can come visit me in Portland anytime.” I don’t mention that my lease expires in three months. That I don’t have a guest room or pullout couch. Or that the idea of being in extreme close quarters with anyone else is so suffocating it almost makes me hyperventilate in anticipation.

But I’d suffer through it for her.

“You don’t look so hot,” she says. “You okay?”

Rose has asked me that question more in the past couple of weeks than anyone’s asked me in the past eight years. The only other person who used to ask me that on a regular basis was Sutton, and I never had to answer him because he always knew the answer. He could take one look at me and know, and while it always freaked me out, it comforted me at the same time.

No one’s been able to do that since.

Except maybe Rose.

She folds her magazine and returns it to the coffee table. “Talk. Tell me what’s on your mind.”

I think of the used books with the cracked spines. I think of the worn pages smudged with fingerprints. And I think of how many people have shared those stories, the experiences between the pages, the depths and the highs and the lows and the joys and the pains . . . and I decide maybe I’ve been missing the point all along.

“How much time do you have?” I ask.

Rose’s pink lips curl in the corners, and she pulls her knees against her still-flat stomach. “For you? All the time in the world.”

I retrieve a bottle of water for Rose and pour myself a glass of wine and settle back in, telling my sister everything, from the moment I left Sutton eight years ago to my conversation with Campbell at the café when she confessed to being my half sister.

“Do you believe her?” Rose asks.

“I don’t really believe anyone about anything,” I say with a sniff and a smirk. “But what would it benefit her to lie? What’s in it for her?”

Rose shrugs, wide-eyed as if she’s seeing me in a whole new light. And she is. I’ve never opened up like this to anyone, least of all her.

“Do you look like your dad?” she asks. “Your biological dad, I mean?”

I shake my head. “I can’t tell. There was just the one picture.”

I don’t like her referring to him as my “biological dad.” It doesn’t fit. Not in my mind. And until there’s scientific proof . . .

Sure, the Beckwiths are from Connecticut and my biological mom grew up in Connecticut, but other than that, it’s going to take some thesis-level research to unearth a definitive connection, and even then . . .

It’s not like I can call up my biological grandparents—whom I’ve never spoken to in my life and who are still likely grieving their missing daughter—and get them to confess that their sweet Autumn was impregnated by some older man. The fact that they sent her away to have the baby means they wanted to hide the truth. Thirty years later, I doubt that’s changed.

Sliding my phone from my pocket, I pull up Campbell’s Instaface account and scroll through her profile pictures until I find the “RIP DAD!” photo.

“His name is Anthony Beckwith.” It’s strange to say his name out loud, though I’m not sure why. He’s nothing more than a dead stranger and a possibility.

Rose leans close, taking my cell and zooming in on the image. Her pale eyes dart from the image to me and back. “That’s tough. I don’t know. Genetics are weird, though. Sebastian looks like Dad’s twin. Can’t even tell Mom was a part of that equation. Maybe you look more like your mom than your dad?”

“If he’s even my dad . . .”

“You’ll have to do a DNA test, compare it to her,” Rose says. “That’s the only way you’ll know for sure.”

“I don’t see that happening.” I don’t feel like explaining all the potential ways DNA testing can ruin a person’s life. In certain circles, it’s akin to discussing UFO conspiracy theories. Only this isn’t a conspiracy theory. I’ve witnessed firsthand how nefarious government intelligence agencies can be and exactly whose hands that information can land in for the right price.