The Fixer (The Fixer #1)(90)

The door was cracked open. I pushed it inward. Ivy sat in the middle of the conference table, staring at the wall. There were three pictures hanging there: Judge Pierce, Major Bharani, and Damien Kostas.

“Ivy?” I announced my presence because she was staring at the pictures so hard that I wasn’t sure she’d marked my entrance to the room. Ivy turned to look at me. She blinked twice.

“Sometimes you look like him,” she said, a soft smile playing around the edges of her lips. “Your father.”

“You loved him.”

“I did.” She slid off the table and walked toward me. “Some days, I still do.” She tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear. I let her.

“You’re not my mother.” I softened those words as much as I could. “I don’t know if I can . . . I don’t know what you are.”

Ivy met my eyes. “I’m yours.”

It hurt a little less this time. It still cut to hear I mattered to her; inside I still bled—but this time, I didn’t pull back. “Adam said Gramps told you to go.” This wasn’t a conversation I’d ever planned on having with her—but it also wasn’t a conversation I’d believed I would ever again have the opportunity to have. “That summer, when I was thirteen, when you asked me to live with you—Adam said Gramps was the one who told you to go.”

Ivy nodded. I started to say something, but she cut me off. “He was right to tell me to go, Tess, and the rest of it? That’s not on Gramps. Not calling, not being there—that’s on me.” Ivy let out a long breath. “I couldn’t be your sister anymore, Tess, and that is on me. When I got back here after that visit, I threw myself into my work. I made enemies, and I told myself that you were safer if I kept my distance.”

I knew without asking who one of those enemies was. “William Keyes.”

If Ivy noticed the note of apprehension in my voice when I said that name, she gave no sign of it. “We had a disagreement. He went after someone I cared about. It didn’t end well, and I told myself that you would be safer if I stayed away.”

“You wanted to protect me.” From my own grandfather, I added silently. From the man I went to in order to save you.

“I wanted to protect you,” Ivy repeated, then she closed her eyes and bowed her head slightly. “That was what I told myself. I told myself that I was doing it to protect you, but God help me, Tess, if I’m honest—with myself, with you—I think I was really protecting me.” When she opened her eyes again, they were full of self-directed anger and grief. Whether or not I could forgive her, she’d never forgive herself for what she was about to say. “Seeing you, talking to you, loving you wrecked me. You said once that I didn’t know what it felt like to feel helpless, to have other people making my decisions—but I do, Tessie. Because I let Mom and Dad decide, I let Gramps decide, I let them take you—and I swore I would never let that happen to me again.”

Ivy was my age, I thought. She was my age when she met Tommy Keyes, my age when she got pregnant with me. I’d known that, objectively, but somehow, I’d never thought of Ivy as young or scared or fallible. She was Ivy Kendrick. She wasn’t supposed to be any of those things.

“I guess I always thought,” Ivy said softly, “that if I was strong enough, if I was formidable enough, if I was successful enough—I could be enough. For you. I thought that if I became this person who could take on the world, then I could take care of you.” She shook her head—at her past self, maybe, or to snap herself out of it. “When I came to Montana that summer, Tess, I thought I was ready. I really did. I was going to give you everything. But Gramps called me out, and he was right, Tessie. I wasn’t doing it for you. You were thriving. You were happy. And I . . .” The words got caught in her throat, but she forced them out. “I was your sister. I was never going to be strong enough or successful enough. There was never going to be a right time to tell you. You were happy. And you deserved to be happy.”

I’d never heard her sound as fierce as she did saying those words. You deserved to be happy.

“So you left me there,” I said, the emotion in my voice an echo of hers.

“I left you there, and it broke me. It shattered me, and I didn’t know how to go back.” Ivy was quiet for a moment, then forced herself to continue. “I left you there for you, but I stayed away for me. I have made so many mistakes, but that?” Ivy shook her head again. “That’s the one that never goes away. I thought, when I brought you here, that I could make up for it, that I could be whatever you needed me to be.”

That was my cue to say something. I was supposed to tell her that it was all right, that I understood, or that it wasn’t ever going to be all right, and that I was never going to understand.

“Right now,” I said instead, “all I need you to be is alive.”

I knew now why she’d left. Why she’d stayed away. Eventually, we’d have to deal with that—but not tonight. After the past few days, I didn’t have it in me to feel anything else. I was so sick of being sideswiped by emotions. Just this once, I needed something to be neat. I needed simple. I needed to just concentrate on the fact that she was alive. She was here.

I can’t do this with you right now, Ivy.

“I thought Adam might be my father,” I said abruptly. As far as subject changes went, that one was effective.