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PROLOGUE ━━ ART OF FATHERHOOD
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The derelict cabin Matt McConnell called a home had somehow less character than the man who lived in it ━━ rather, if you asked Sydney, rotted in it.
He hadn't decorated since he bought it years ago. The peeling wallpaper was the exact same floral print as it was when he bought it off an old couple who went to retire in Paris with their pensions. Even some of the furniture had belonged to them ━━ including a broken grandfather clock, frozen in time, and the sofa that exhaled a puff of dust every time someone sat on it. The only real adjustments he'd make to the place was the mess it was marred with ━━ the empty beer bottles scattered about and stubs of cigarettes shoved between the couch cushions and craters in the drywall from God knows what.
That changed when Christine died, and Sydney had to move in. Chrissie was the district's attorney, so she had her fair share of money, and could afford a big fancy house in Loch Nora ━━ Matt wasn't so well off. He didn't have the money to pay the rent for Sydney's old place, so they had to sell it up and she had to live with him in of the decaying cabins by Lover's Lake. Which meant decorating. Which meant adjusting.
In the blink of an eye and the lowering of a coffin, Sydney went from a Queen-sized bed in Loch Nora, a vanity table and a walk-in wardrobe to a shoebox room that probably wasn't big enough for her old bed. Symbolic, really. Nothing fit into that room, because Sydney didn't. It was her own dad's place, but it took burying her mother to step foot in there. She felt like the colony of mould growing on his bathroom ceiling, or the spider spinning its web in the corner of 'her' room. She didn't belong here. Neither did any of her stuff she had to cram inside the thin, four walls of what Matt had previously used as a storage room for stuff like old trophy football trophies ━━ stuffed away so he didn't have to remember that he peaked in high school.
She sat on the single-bed in her new room. So hollow and plain it felt like a stomach eating her whole. This was all her life had been since Christine died ━━ sitting, waiting, sleeping, thinking. Cross-legged on a lumpy mattress, pulling at her threadbare cardigan and dulling out the scratching of the needle against her Rumours vinyl.
