He leans forward, crowding my space with his confidence. “Aw, what’s wrong, Mouse? Did you miss me?”
Dad murmurs a questioning, “Mouse?” before glancing between Kaiden and me. Neither of us offers an explanation on the nickname.
“Your eye,” I repeat.
“Had an accident,” he says plainly.
Something tells me it was no accident at all. Fists must have been involved based on the mark it left behind. Part of me wonders what the other guy looks like.
Cam tries drawing us back together, but the smile she offers is distant. “I ordered your favorite, Kaiden. I even asked them to put hot sauce on the side for the fajitas.”
Kaiden peels his gaze from me to his mother, lips pinched. “I wish you’d stop assuming I like the food here. Did you even ask Emery if she liked Mexican?”
While I appreciate his point, I don’t like being used as a means to verbally attack his mother. She’s trying. “It’s really—”
His eyes cut to mine. “Do you?”
Dad intervenes. “Emery loves Mexican food. She used to demand it all the time when she was little.”
My heart cracks when I realize he’s talking about Logan. She used to demand we order Mexican food. It was her who always wanted tacos for dinner and nachos for dessert.
“That was Lo,” I say quietly.
Kaiden snorts. “Who the hell is Lo, and what kind of ridiculous name is that?”
The crack in my heart expands a little wider. “Who’s…?” My eyes slowly lift to Dad’s in question, like I misheard Kaiden’s rude question regarding the existence of my other half.
Cam gasps. “Kaiden!”
“Dad?” I whisper brokenly.
His shoulders tense. “Emery…”
“Don’t you talk about her?”
“Em—”
“Why doesn’t it surprise me that you wouldn’t say anything about her?” Pushing back against the table, I go to stand right as Kaiden opens his big mouth again.
“What’s crawled up your ass?”
Cam covers her mouth with her palm and tears prick my eyes. Jerking the chair so it scrapes loudly against the floor and causes people to stare, I stand up.
Dad mimics me. “Sit down, Emery.”
“Don’t bother to start telling me what to do now just because your image looks bad. I mean, that’s probably why you left. Right? You were afraid what having a sick kid would do to the squeaky clean family-man reputation you have going on.”
“Emery,” Dad warns under his breath.
Cam reaches out. “Henry—”
I grab my phone from the table. “It must really suck that you weren’t happy stuck in an imperfect family. I wonder what your old coworkers thought when they found out Lo died. Did they know she was sick? You never took time off when the doctor appointments started. Mama told you something was wrong, and you always said you had to work like having a career meant more than having a daughter.”
Kaiden swears.
Anger bubbles through me. “You want to know how Mama is doing, Dad? She’s terrible. She hasn’t verbally spoken one word to me since I moved, which isn’t much different than how it was when I lived with her and Grandma. She wasn’t the same when we buried Logan. Whenever she sees me…”
She sees a dead girl.