Just as I knew this would happen. Just as I feared.
My father, after all this time, has finally found us.
31
Sabrina
I’ve always known it would come to this.
I always knew he would find us.
It was never a matter of if. It was only a matter of when.
My mind instantly reels, trying to find the moment when I messed up, the moment I inadvertently led him straight to us. But then my gaze lands on my mother, and it all falls into place.
“Hi sweetheart,” mom says, a shaking smile spreading across her face as she looks up at me through a bruised and swelling eye. She’s holding a napkin up to her nose to soak up the blood gushing from one nostril. “Look who’s come to visit.”
The long hours at the nursing home. The extra shifts. The sudden way she urged me to spend more time with my new friends. It was him all along. He didn’t just find us. She invited him back.
After everything.
Still, it’s not her that I’m focusing on. It’s him.
My father stands next to her, stretching out his knuckles as if he’s only just now realized how inconvenient the swelling is going to be. He stares down at the purple color blooming beneath the surface of his skin, and then up to me. The sound of my name on his lips makes my blood curdle.
“Sabrina,” he says, his lips curling up in a sad imitation of a smile, “oh how I’ve looked forward to seeing you again.”
“What are you doing here?” I ask, knowing full-well that this is no little ‘visit’. He didn’t come here to check on us. He came here to take us back.
I can’t bring myself to look at my mother again. This is her doing.
Our undoing.
“I couldn’t go long without my two best girls,” my father says, the sarcasm in his voice so thick it sickens me. I’d vomit if I didn’t know that’d instantly put me at a disadvantage.
A disadvantage … a disadvantage to what?
My father, as if reading my thoughts, paces a step to the side, partially obscuring the bloodied sight of my mother from me. As he does, something about his smile changes. He takes on a manic glint in his eye.
“It’s been too long, too long for us to play any more games. For me to pretend I’m here for anything else.”
I feel my breath shorten. “And what’s that, Dad?”
Dad. The word sounds like a swear on my tongue, a fact my father notices.
The last of his smile fades. “I’m here to get you, but I think you already know that don’t you?”
Even though I’ve known this was coming, known even before he showed up … it still makes my stomach sink like lead. All the other times, we were always one step ahead. Sure, sometimes it was close … but it was always like running away from a shadow before. Now that he’s here, really here, it doesn’t feel real.
But maybe that’s why I don’t shrink back.
“We aren’t going anywhere with you,” I snarl. I finally shoot a look at my mom. “What did he tell you? You know it’s a lie, right? Whatever he said … it’s not true. Nothing’s going to change.”
“Sabrina,” Mom says in that same way that she tried to tell me her last nosebleed was caused from walking into a door, “we should just go with him, honey,”
I take a slow step backward toward the still-open door. My head cocks to one side as I take her in, doing nothing to hide the disbelief spreading across my face.
This can’t be happening. Not now. Not the one time the boys aren’t here to protect me. The one time they don’t insist on walking me home.