"Your daddy told me all about you."
The words hit me the way a hand would. Flat, open, right across the face.
My daddy. Not my father. Daddy. The familiar word, the intimate word, the word Dennis Halstead uses when he talks about the daughter he lost because he picked up a knife and made a choice.
This man is standing in a parking lot where I work, in the dark, in the cold, and he's using my father's language like a key he thinks will open me.
My keys are in my fist. The metal bites into my palm.
He unfolds his arms and takes a step forward.
One step. Small, measured, the step of a man who knows the difference between approaching and advancing and has chosen the version that doesn't look threatening on a security camera.
"I'm not here to scare you." He holds his palms up, the same mock-surrender gesture the man at the bar used when I told himnot to touch me. "Dennis asked me to check on you. Make sure you're doing okay. That's all."
That's all.
A man who did time with my father drove to my workplace at midnight, waited in the cold for my shift to end, andthat's all.
"I don't have anything to say to you." My voice comes out steady. The steadiness costs me everything I have left.
"You don't have to say anything." He takes another step.
The lot light catches his features clearly now. Broad nose, heavy brow, lines around his mouth carved deep by years of expressions I don't want to imagine.
"Dennis talks about you all the time. Your graduation. How smart you are. How proud he is."
Proud.
My father is proud of me from behind a concrete wall, and he sent this man—this stranger with a wave and a smile and the patience of a predator—to deliver the message.
"Stay away from me." I grip my keys tighter. "Stay away from my mother. Don't come back here."
His smile doesn't waver. Not even a flicker.
"I understand you're upset. But your daddy?—"
"My father stabbed a woman to death." The words leave my mouth before I can weigh them, sharp and hot and shaking. "And you did time with him. So whatever you think you know about me, whatever story he told you, I need you to hear this: I amnotinterested. Donotcome back."
The smile dims. Not gone, but the wattage drops, and what's underneath is colder. Flatter.
Behind me, another engine fires.
Rookie. He hasn't left yet.
The man's gaze shifts past my shoulder. His expression changes again—reading the situation, looking at the truck, the man getting out of his truck with a cut on.
He steps back and lifts his palms higher.
"I'm going." He opens his truck door.
He pauses with one foot on the running board. "But Saylor? Dennis isn't going to stop reaching out."
His expression softens into something rehearsed. "He loves you. A father's love doesn't have walls."
He gets in his truck, ripping the white bag off.
His engine turns over and headlights snap on.