The Helford Trials (Helford #3)

Chapter Nine

The last several months had been nothing short of chaotic. The second that a young woman named Nina Abraham walked into my life, it had been gone into a tailspin of buildings sent crumbling and Caitie Alastair rising from the ashes. But there had been more that occurred in those days, more than all the things I wished I'd said to Parker or the moment Operation Geronimo ceased to be a rumor.

Caitie didn't always do the kind thing, but she always did the right thing. When I saw my father again in Cannes after a year of silence, I hadn't thought it kind-it had felt like rubbing salt into a wound. But, now, I understood that she was right.

Caitie knew what my relationship with my father had been, and she must have known that I sometimes craved even the ghost of it. Even so, with all the chaos, it didn't feel like I'd had a real conversation with him since our reunion.

When I found him sitting on a bench outside of the hotel the night after the Changelings, I almost walked away. And then, I thought about Caitie, and I didn't.

He heard my footsteps, heavy with my own caution and half a mind to turn tail and run, and he looked up. I nearly expected his face to fall, the same way it did lately when he looked at me, but it didn't. He just met my eyes and turned away, looking toward the sleepy back street.

"Sometimes I wonder when this life will ever stop surprising me," my father said even after I didn't make a move to claim the seat next to his. His eyes were distant, but his grip on the arm of the bench was very grounded. He let out a humorless laugh. "I thought it was all over when Rebekkah left them. I don't know how both of us had been in such deep denial to actually believe that we were free."

"It's easier, I think," I murmured, still hovering uncertainly a few feet away. "You would have been too paranoid to live if you hadn't."

"Maybe," Alexander allowed. "But then I wouldn't have made so many mistakes."

"That's hard to say."

He glanced back to me, eyes haunted. "Take a seat, will you? Can you just not stand there like you're about to take off?"

I moved slowly to his other side, lowering myself onto the bench. I leaned forward so my elbows were on my knees, my hands clasped in front of me like I was begging, or praying. My father turned his head to look at me, but I did not look back at him.

"Sometimes it's like you grew up when my back was turned," he murmured sadly. "One day you were just a normal kid finishing up school, and the next you were chasing a ghost, and then you were shell-shocked standing in the middle of a double funeral."

"I had to grow up fast. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have made it this far."

My father laughed like it tasted bitter. "We've had a discussion like this what had to be hundreds of times, only this time we aren't screaming at each other."

"Yet," I added, and smiled.

Alexander snorted, a small smile breaking onto his face. I turned to face the street, watching as a jogger paused at the opposite street corner to stretch out one leg, life moving as usual.

"It used to make me angry, how much you cared about Caitie," my father told me, voice thoughtful but also reluctant. "It took me a long time to see her as someone other than someone who came to murder you, or Naomi's daughter. The other day, about a week after the funeral, I spent a long time thinking about that. I hated her for being a murderer, but that was Rebekkah too. I hated her for destroying you, but Rebekkah was the reason I was destroyed too. I think I've spent too long thinking of Rebekkah as a victim and too long thinking of Caitie as a demon, although they suffered the same thing. I idealized Rebekkah because she was saved, and demonized Caitie because no one ever tried to save her. I wanted to apologize to you for that."