“Hello, Sidney,” Finn said quietly.
“You’ve been watching the house.” Her voice was calm, but Ben could see the tension in her shoulders, the way her hands had curled into loose fists at her sides. “Ben spotted your SUV three days ago.”
“I know. I wasn’t trying particularly hard to hide.” Finn’s dark eyes never left his daughter’s face. They were almost hungry, as if he wanted to take in every detail, every line and curve of a face he hadn’t seen this close up for a very long time. “I was waiting for the right moment to approach.”
One eyebrow lifted. “And an earthquake seemed like the right moment?”
“The Dragon waking up seemed like I’d run out of time to wait.”
Sidney didn’t respond right away, only stood there in silence. Ben watched her face, trying to read what was happening behind those gray eyes, but she’d gone somewhere he couldn’t follow. Seventeen years of abandonment and silence, seventeen years of canceled checks and empty holidays, all compressed into this single moment on a cold October morning while the sky crawled with unnatural light.
“You’d better come inside,” she said at last. “We have a lot to talk about.”
She turned and walked back toward the house without waiting to see if they’d follow. Ben looked over at Finn, who was staring after his daughter with an expression of naked vulnerability.
“She’s angry,” he said.
“She has every right to be.”
“I know.” Finn pulled in a breath and seemed to gather himself. “But she’s also willing to listen. That’s more than I expected.”
“Don’t mistake willingness to listen for forgiveness,” Ben told him. “Sidney doesn’t give that easily. And neither do I.”
Without waiting for an answer, he followed Sidney toward the house, leaving Finn to trail behind them. The earth hummed beneath his feet, and overhead, the green lightning crawled through the clouds like something alive and searching.
The Dragon was awake. And Finn Lowell had finally come home.
Chapter Three
The house felt different with my father in it, somehow smaller, despite its nearly three thousand square feet, and more crowded, even though he was just one person. A tall man, sure, but he was just as slim as I remembered, didn’t seem to be one of those men who put on weight as they got older.
I led my father and Ben into the kitchen, since I didn’t know where else to go. Because I needed something to do with my hands. I went to the coffee maker — Ben’s coffee maker, sleek and modern on the counter — and started a fresh pot, even though none of us really needed any more caffeine.
“Sit down,” I said without turning around. “Both of you.”
I heard the scrape of chairs against the hardwood floor as they complied. Good. At least someone was listening to me.
The coffee maker gurgled and hissed, and I stared at it while I tried to organize my thoughts. There were so many things I wanted to say, so many questions I wanted to ask, that they all jammed together in my throat and refused to come out in any coherent order.
So I settled for the most pressing one.
“How long?” I asked, still facing the coffee maker. It seemed easier to open this conversation without having to look directly at him. “How long have you been watching?”
“Seventeen years.” My father’s voice was pitched low, almost soft. “Give or take.”
I turned around then, because I realized I needed to see his face when he said things like that. He sat at the kitchen table with his hands folded in front of him, and Ben was in the chair across from him, watching us both with that careful expression he got when he was trying to figure out the best way to help without making things worse.
“‘Seventeen years,’” I repeated. “You’ve been watching me for seventeen years, and you never once thought to, I don’t know, pick up a phone? Send an email? Show up for my high school graduation?”
“I couldn’t risk it.” My father’s dark eyes were steady on my face, pleading with me to understand. “Any direct contact would have compromised the perimeter I’d set up. If anyone was watching you — and believe me, people were watching — they would have seen me, and that would have led them straight to you.”
“That’s convenient.”
“It’s the truth.”
I laughed, and the sound was harsh and ugly even to my own ears. “You want to talk about the truth? Fine. Let’s talk about the truth.” I stalked out of the kitchen and down the hall to the office. Neither my father nor Ben got up to follow me, which led me to believe that they knew it was better to stay put.
The file cabinet looked innocent enough, dark wood to match the antiques in the rest of the room. But it wasn’t the file cabinet that was the problem.