Chapter 6

The memory was still raw, and my eyes were stinging again —

My phone rang.

I thought it was Leo calling from the other room. I answered without looking.

On the other end of the line, Ethan's voice came through, hoarse and strange.

"Anna... why are they telling me... Dad is gone?"

His voice was choked off. Shaking. The question itself was almost absurd.

I didn't say anything.

My fingers had gone bloodless on the edge of the phone.

Seven years. And he genuinely hadn't known?

Or — what right did he have to sound this wounded, this ambushed, this innocent?

"Anna... who's gone? What are they — what are you saying — is Dad still mad at me? Did you tell them to say that—"

He wasn't making sense.

I kept my voice flat.

"Ethan. Charles Bennett Harrington. Our father. Seven years ago, February 23rd, at 11:17 in the morning. In the ER at Boston Memorial. Cause of death: acute hypertensive hemorrhagic stroke with multiple organ failure."

"I signed the death certificate. I authorized the cremation. I chose the cemetery. I designed the headstone."

I said it all in one breath.

There was a choking sound on the other end. Then something muffled and low that might have been a sob.

"Now," I said, "you know."

"This is what happened the day you hung up on me during your wedding."

"That's impossible—"

His voice was fragmenting.

"They said he was sick. Said he was hospitalized. Said he was recovering at home. Said not to bother him. Vivienne said — her father said—"

Vivienne.

The name went in like a needle.

"So who do you believe? Them, or me?"

Exhaustion hit me all at once.

"Or is it that you don't believe anyone. You just believe whatever you need to believe at the time."

"Ethan. Seven years. If you had ever actually cared, you could have called one neighbor on our old street. You could have pulled a single public record. You could have driven to Mount Hope Cemetery and looked. You didn't. That's why you're finding out today."

"I—"

He had nothing.

"Anything else?" I asked.

"I need to go look after my son."

"Wait—"

He was almost shouting. There was something desperate in it now, something close to panic.

"Anna, where are you? I need to see you. Now. I need to know — I need to know everything—"

"No."

I cut him off, clean.

"What difference does it make now? Are you going to bring him back?"

"Ethan. We're nothing to each other anymore. You showing up just drags my actual life into the mud. Don't call again."

I hung up.

I blocked the number.

My hand was trembling, but it wasn't grief. It was something that had been locked down for seven years finding its first crack, and escaping.

I was still wound tight when Daniel came out of the kitchen with a plate of sliced apples.

"Him again?"

"Mm." I took the plate. "He said he didn't know Dad was dead."

Daniel thought about it. "Maybe he really didn't, Anna. If the Sterlings—"

"It doesn't matter anymore."

I cut him off and slid a piece of apple into Leo's open mouth.

"All that matters is the result. The result is that Dad is gone, and Ethan was absent for seven years. Him knowing now — all that does is add new resentment on top of old. It doesn't fix anything."

Daniel took my hand. His palm was warm.

"You're right. We focus on us."

I assumed that would be the end of it. I assumed Ethan, if he had any dignity at all, would know to back off.

I underestimated his obsessiveness. Or maybe I underestimated what a man looks like when the whole world he thought he was living in collapses under him.