The Watcher Girl(6)

I don’t blame Sarah for what happened to us—or for the self-serving choices my parents made. She happened to waltz into our life during a familial cataclysm of the inevitable. Life as we knew it ceased to exist the moment that woman stepped into our world.

Pure coincidence, I’m certain.

She just happened to be in the picture.

If it hadn’t been my parents destroying this family, it would’ve been me.

I was born with a darkness inside.

“Eyes like two empty black holes,” as my mother described me in Domestic Illusions. I was a “precocious child. Destructive. Hard to love.”

Hard to love.

I dig my thumbnail into the painted enamel of the perfect little teacup in my hand, leaving a noticeable scratch.

The urge to ruin all that is perfect is a sickness I’ve known my entire life, one I’ve yet to understand in my thirty years. And this sickness isn’t simply relegated to things—people fall into this category as well.

The more perfect they are, the more I want to destroy them.

Sutton was perfect.

I left before I could ruin him.

Rising from the patio table, I palm the damaged ceramic. “I’m sorry—can we catch up later? I’ve got a few deadlines I’m up against . . .”

“Of course,” Bliss answers for my father, waving her hand like she understands.

She couldn’t possibly.

He gives a tight-lipped nod. “You let me know if there’s anything you need. Just glad to have you home.”

“Actually . . . there’s one thing,” I say.

I hate asking favors. Hate. Needing other people for any reason is a third-degree burn to my ego. But this request is minor enough, so the sting shouldn’t last too long.

“Anything.” My father perks up, happy to help. It’s a desperate look for a man of his stature, but I appreciate it nonetheless.

“Can you give me a ride to the Enterprise in Valeria in a couple of hours?” I bite my lip. I should’ve grabbed a rental at the airport yesterday, but the never-ending lines wrapped and zigzagged, and I didn’t feel like waiting two hours. On top of that, another minute of being shoulder to shoulder with smelly, grouchy, traveling humans would’ve had me coming out of my skin.

He checks his diamond-and-sapphire-rimmed timepiece—an antique that once belonged to my grandfather, whom I never met as he passed when my father was a teenager. Supposedly this is why my father pushed so hard to start a family when he was fresh out of college, before my mother was ready.

“Well, shoot,” he says under his breath. That’s my father—the most helpful man on earth but only at his convenience.

Bliss pats his arm. “Sweetheart, I’ll do it. I’d be happy to.”

Sweetheart.

They’re like an old married couple, which is ironic given that my father doesn’t know the first thing about long-term commitment. Bliss doesn’t know it yet, but he’ll be trading her in a year from now.

Maybe sooner.

None of his coquetries have ever lasted more than a small handful of years.

I give Bliss a showy couple of thank-yous—mostly to spite my father but also to illustrate my gratitude—before heading upstairs to start my day. She didn’t hesitate to offer her assistance, unlike my father, who hemmed and hawed as he tried to come up with an excuse. I imagine he didn’t want to have to move a tee time or cancel a lunch reservation. And I get it. I showed up unannounced after years of radio silence. I can’t expect him to rearrange his schedule at the drop of a hat.

As soon as I wrap up a work email, I’ll shower and catch a ride to the Enterprise downtown, grab myself a car, and start scoping out Sutton’s life.

His real life.

His home, his work, his comings and goings. The things he does when he thinks no one’s looking. Mundane or not, these are the things that tell you everything you need to know about someone.

I’m not interested in the version of his life curated across the front page of his Instaface account, nor am I interested in the version of his life summarized by a handful of internet searches.

If I were to take those at face value, then that would mean he’s lost his mind. It would mean he actually moved to my hometown, married a woman with my uncanny likeness, and named his firstborn child after me.

I hope I’m wrong.

I pray to anyone who’ll listen that it’s all a freak misunderstanding, a handful of eerie coincidences with laughably logical explanations.

I lock my bathroom door, strip to nothing, and climb under the hot spray of a pristine shower that likely hasn’t been used since the last time I was home years ago.

My heart hammers beneath searing skin, the surrealness of this fading away as reality sets in.

Yesterday, I was three thousand miles away from the life I’d walked away from.

Now I’m back, elbow deep in Sutton’s world, and he hasn’t the slightest idea.

It would’ve been easier to call the man, to send him a letter or a message on social media as most people tend to do with ancient lovers.

But phone calls are easy to ignore, and messages are easy to miss, and the written word is easy to misconstrue.

I want him to know that I’m sorry, that he mattered to me—that he was the only one who ever mattered to me. And I want to see this with my own eyes—what I’ve done to him.