The Paper Swan(88)

Each question tore deeper and deeper at Damian’s insides. Damian had grown up without a father and it killed him to think that his daughter was growing up without hers, too. Sierra obviously knew more about him than he did about her. What had Skye told her about him, apart from the fact that he was in prison? Had she ever asked to see him? Wondered why she never heard from him? What would she say if she knew the truth now? Would she be ashamed? Horrified? Would she shrink back from him?

It took Nick a few seconds to realize who Skye was staring at and why she was standing so still. When his eyes fell on Damian, he looked from Skye to Sierra and back at Damian again. His discomfort was clear. He didn’t know how to handle the situation any more than Skye or Damian. Sierra was arranging paper garlands on Warren’s grave, oblivious to the tension around her.

Damian saw the snuffed out candles in Skye’s hands, the bags of decorations by Nick’s feet, the stunned looks on their faces. He was the outsider, the wild card who had upset the balance of their perfect evening. He had been let out of prison a few months early but he wished he were still behind bars, so he could lock out the pain. Not knowing had been hell, but this, this was a completely different level of torment.

Damian got up, crushed marigolds sticking to his jeans, and turned into the swell of people surrounding them. He was thankful for the nameless, faceless sea of bodies around him. He imagined this was what it felt like to be dead among the living.

“Get me out of here,” he said, when he found Rafael. “Get me far, far away.”





I SKIMMED THE SURFACE BETWEEN sleep and wake, half submerged in wild, crazy dreams, where Sierra, Damian, and I were green iguanas, sunning ourselves on a deserted island. I was the one with the tail chopped off, but it didn’t matter because it was warm and beautiful. We were eating ice cream beans, and Sierra kept chewing on the seeds instead of discarding them.

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

“Don’t,” I mumbled, the sound of my voice nudging me awake.

It had been like that ever since I’d seen Damian at the cemetery two weeks ago—restless nights spent tossing and turning until the sheets ended up in a contorted pile at my feet. Seeing Damian again had set off tiny explosions that left me quaking in their wake. Learning he had bought Casa Paloma, and that Sierra had been spending time with him had come as a bigger aftershock. Being a single mum had always been a challenge, but now I felt both foolish and neglectful for thinking Sierra was going straight home after school, as instructed. The fact that there had been no sign of Damian since The Day of The Dead left me uneasy. On the outside it looked like I had it together, but on the inside I was a complete mess.

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

There it was again. That damn sound. Exactly like—

I bolted upright and turned on the bedside lamp.

Damian was sitting on a chair by the foot of my bed, watching me. He didn’t move when the light came on; he just continued tossing peanuts into his mouth. It was impossible to ignore how he owned the space, how he molded it to suit his presence, a palpitation-inducing silhouette from my past, all dressed in black. He might as well have been sitting there all along, all eight years that he was away, because he was there in my head, insinuated in the cracks of my heart. I saw him every day in Sierra’s face, in the strong, white crescents of her nails, in the ends of her hair, that curled up when she twisted her finger around them. I heard him in her bedtime voice, battled him in the stubbornness of her spirit, and felt him in the warmth of her hugs. But pieces of him were nothing compared to the man himself—whole, real and commanding, a thousand suns fused into one, scorching me with his gaze, with whatever emotions were broiling beneath his coal dark eyes.

I clutched the covers to my chest, as if the fabric would keep me from incinerating. I’d always known this day would come, this confrontation, and I’d dreaded it. If there was one thing I knew, it was that you never, ever lock horns with Damian. He had not forgiven my father for taking his mother away. What would he do to me, for keeping his daughter from him?

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He put away the paper cone of peanuts he was holding with such calm and precision that goosebumps raced across my skin. For the first time, I noticed the folder on his lap. He opened it, scanned the top sheet, and threw it at me. It fluttered through the air and landed beside me.

Damian didn’t give me the chance to pick it up. He flung another sheet at me, and then another and then another, until they were floating like feathers around me. I grabbed one of them and skimmed over the contents. From the private investigator’s logo on the top, it looked like a report on me: my address, financial records, marital status. I picked up another one. It was a copy of Sierra’s birth certificate. The next one outlined my job, my schedule, my work in Valdemoros. Where I’d been, what I’d done, where I’d lived, my credit card statements, magazine subscriptions—everything and anything pertaining to the last eight years was laid out before me in letter-sized black and white pages.