Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 100853 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100853 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
“I’m going to see if turning my phone off and back on again makes a difference,” I muttered, sitting on the edge of my bed and doing just that. Ford didn’t bother to point out that he’d just done the same to no effect. I watched him pound helplessly on the door, the strange, muted beats echoing back at me. My brain refused to accept what was happening—the plunging temperature, the SOS on my phone, the stuck door. I rebooted the phone. Still no signal. How?
“Can we go out the window?” I asked, dropping my phone on the bed and crossing the room to the window. I leaned over a console table to wrench it open. It didn’t budge a millimeter. It was as if it had been nailed shut from the outside.
“Does it usually open?” Ford asked.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I haven’t tried.”
“I don’t think we’re getting out of here for the moment,” he said grimly.
“Well, that sucks.” I pulled the blanket tighter around myself. “I’m going to freeze to death in my own bedroom.”
Ford picked the manila envelope up off the table by the door and sank back into the armchair in the sitting area. He leaned forward, bracing his forearms on his knees, turning the envelope over and over in his hands.
“It seems pretty hypocritical,” he said quietly, his eyes on the envelope, “to be so angry at you for lying after all the things I’ve done.”
I sat on the edge of my bed, kicked off my shoes, pulled my feet up, and curled into as tight a ball as I could to conserve body heat, fighting the shivers running through me. “I don’t know every mistake you’ve made, Ford, but you didn’t do anything bad to me,” I said softly, my voice trembling. “And I lied to you. Maybe not overtly, but I was still misleading you. I came here because of your mother.”
“You should have told us,” he said.
“I know,” I whispered. “I didn’t think it would matter. I didn’t think there’d be you. Or that I’d love your family so much. I was angry and grieving, and I thought I saw a chance to find my father, so I took it. And the funny thing is, you’re angry and I’m going to get fired, but I—” I shrugged under the blanket, unable to look at him. “I never even really looked for him. I asked around a little. It didn’t take long to learn that no one likes to talk about Sarah and…I’ve been happy here. It didn’t seem as important. And now I wish I’d…”
I shook my head, looking at the carpet, my vision blurring as tears rose in my eyes.
“Now I wish I’d left it all alone. Taken the job because Janice Smith recommended me, and just let it all go.” I forced myself to meet his eyes, unable to read anything in those cool green depths. “I’m sorry I wasn’t honest.”
“What makes you think you’re going to get fired?” Ford said without accepting my apology.
“Oh, come on,” I said, pulling the blanket tighter around me. “Griffen and Hawk are so tight on security, background checks. When they find out I misled them about who I was—that I took the position, in part, to use your family history to find my father? You know he’s going to fire me.” My throat tightened, words choking inside. I raised a hand to brush a tear off my cheek. “It’s fair. But I like being here. And I—” My voice caught again, and I choked the words out. “I like being with you, and I’m sorry I ruined everything.” I lowered my eyes. “And I’m even sorrier that I did it to find someone who never cared about me in the first place.”
It was the hard truth, one I hadn’t admitted to myself. But my father hadn’t cared about me. If he had, he would have come back. I wasn’t even sure what I had hoped to find out about him, now that the truth had come out. Did I want him to apologize? To love me? He’d made it clear he didn’t by staying away.
“Why did you need to find him so much?” Ford asked quietly.
I considered my words. I wanted to tell him the truth, even if it hurt. “I wanted to know where I come from, other than her. She hated me so much. I could never do anything right. It was always, ‘You’re just like him,’ ‘you’re a loser,’ and ‘you’re stupid and selfish,’ and whatever insult fit the moment. Everything bad about me was because of him. When I was a kid, I believed he must be a monster for her to hate him so much. And then I got older and saw that the hateful one was her. And I started to wonder—was he that bad? Or had he just escaped?” I swallowed hard. “But he didn’t take me with him. If he escaped, he left me there—with her. And I have to believe he knew what he was leaving me with. He knew, and he left anyway. And then I found that trunk, and she was gone, and I thought… Maybe I came from something better than her. If I could find him, I could understand why he left. I didn’t know your mom left you, too.”