When Emme’s solo ends, the crowd rises to a standing ovation. Dax whistles and claps, maybe louder than anyone else in the room, and I hope like hell the information I’ve come across is going to be enough to end this battle with his aunt.

He picks up a huge bouquet of flowers and we wait as everyone files out of the auditorium. We’re seated close to the front, so we’re last to leave. I can feel Dax behind me, and I have the urge to reach back and find his fingers, to lace us together. I want to force him to listen to me and understand that what we have—had—was never about me making partner and everything about falling in love with him and Emme.

But I doubt he’s going to give me airtime for that, and I have a much more pressing issue I need to alert him about.

“I really need to talk to you,” I throw over my shoulder.

“I’m taking Emme out to celebrate. It’s not a good time.”

It’s too loud and there are too many people around to find privacy. When we finally escape the auditorium, Emme’s already waiting in the foyer, bouncing excitedly. She throws herself into my arms, wrapping me up in a huge hug with her skinny arms.

“You were amazing up there.”

“I missed you,” she mumbles into my hair.

“I missed you, too, sweetie, so much.” I hold her tighter, fighting another wave of emotion and losing the battle.

When we finally let go, I have to brush away the fresh tears. Dax stands off to the side, his expression unreadable until his sister turns to him, and then his smile lights up a black sky like fireworks.

My chest aches, hollowness eating at me because I know they’re not mine the way I want them to be, and I made it that way.

He holds out the bouquet, and her happy shriek is a sound I want to hear more of.

Emme turns to me. “We’re going out for something to eat, can you come?”

I glance at Dax. His mouth flattens into a line. “I think Dax probably wants a little time with you.”

Emme’s smile falls. “But I haven’t seen you in forever. Please, Kailyn? She can come, can’t she, Dax?”

Emme sends an imploring look her brother’s way. His cheek tics, but he forces a smile. “Of course Kailyn’s welcome to join us. It’s your night.”

“Yay!” Emme throws her arms around me again. “Can I ride with Kailyn? Can we go to the diner down the street? I was too nervous to eat before the performance, and now I’m starving!”

Thank you, I mouth to Dax as she drags me toward the door.

He nods, but his smile has vanished again.

The diner is busy, full of other students and their parents who had the exact same idea we did. Emme sits beside me in the booth and chatters away. Once we’ve ordered she’s dragged off to sit with a few of her friends. “I’ll be back in a few minutes!”

“She seems like she’s doing well.”

“She has really good days. This is one of them.” Dax arranges his silverware, but doesn’t look at me. “You had something you needed to talk to me about.”

I look around the diner. “It’s about Linda.” I reach into my purse and pull out the emails I printed off.

Dax leans back in his seat and crosses his arms over his chest, regarding me coldly. “What about her?”

“I overheard a conversation with someone before the assembly and it sounded rather suspect, so I recorded it. I also found this.” I push the printed sheets toward him.

“What is this?”

“An email chain between Linda and a principal at a private school.”

“What?” Dax skims it. “How’d you get this?”

“She left her email open on a laptop in the library.” I set my phone on the table between us. “I haven’t had a chance to listen to it, so I have no idea if I caught anything helpful or not.”

“Helpful how?”

“In building your case to keep Emme with you.”

“Emme keeps earbuds in the front pocket.” Dax points to her backpack.

I unzip the compartment and smile when I find the little pouch I gave her to keep her girl supplies in when it’s that time of the month. Tucked in beside them are earbuds. I slip the jack in and pass Dax one bud, pushing the other in my ear. He leans forward, forearms on the table, head down and inches from mine as I cue the recording. I turn the volume all the way up, cross my fingers, and hit Play.

It’s not the clearest recording, and the noise in the diner makes it hard to hear. I pass Dax the other earbud and he listens again, and then again, eyes on mine as his expression hardens. He yanks them out. “What kind of person wants custody of a grieving teenage girl so they can cash in on her trust allowance?”

“Not a very good one.”

He scrubs his face with his palm. “She can’t get custody of Emme. There’s no way.”

I glance over my shoulder, checking on Emme, who’s still engaged in conversation with her friends. She’s actually sitting beside a boy who seems to be hanging on her every word. I wonder if that’s Clark. Or Liam. Or Jimmy. She has quite the fan club.

“Come sit on this side.” Dax slides over a few more inches and I move into the space beside him. I quickly pull the rest of the emails between the private school administrator and Linda. He stops at the one about boarding options. “She plans to send her to San Francisco? When has she had time to plan all this?”

I tap the time stamp. “It looks like she started as soon as she filed for custody.”

“Can I keep this?”

“All of it is yours. I just want Emme to be safe and with someone who loves her and wants what’s best for her. I didn’t want to hurt her, or you. Whatever else I can do to help, I will.”

He places his hand over mine and squeezes, eyes soft. “Thank you.”

It’s not forgiveness, but it’s a step in the right direction.

chapter twenty-five

FORGIVENESS

Dax

Emme is beat when we get home, so she heads to her room, too tired for TV or anything else. Thankfully tomorrow is Friday, and I’m assuming the performance tonight will mean an easy day at school.

I’m hopped up on adrenaline, and my head is spinning, so once she’s in bed, I grab a beer from the fridge and head down the hall to the office with the folder of printed emails Kailyn gave me.

I drop into the leather executive chair with a sigh. Kailyn. I don’t know what to think. She seems to have gone to a lot of trouble to get this information for me, but why? Does she genuinely want to help? I hate not knowing what parts of our relationship were real and what was contrived to further her career. I don’t think anyone can fake the kind of chemistry we have, but even that I can’t be sure of. And now I’m questioning it all over again, because she came to the performance for Emme.

I massage the space between my eyes as I boot up my father’s desktop. Since the funeral, I’ve put off dealing with the majority of the financial stuff that wasn’t directly related to Emme. There are accounts that need to be managed, savings to be transferred, and bank statements to be reviewed. But none of it has seemed pressing since Linda sued for custody of Emme. While I wait, I rifle through the emails from Kailyn, organizing them by date. The first email to the private school was sent the day after Linda filed for custody. She is unfucking-believable.

The screen on my father’s desktop finally registers a login and I punch in his password, which is stuck to the corner of the display with a Post-it. I’m not sure what I’m looking for, other than something that will explain why Linda needs this money so badly, and why she feels it’s rightly hers.

The folders with my father’s documents are neatly labeled and organized, as was normal for my parents. I scroll through them, noting one with my name, one with Emme’s, and lower down is Linda’s, which would make sense as she was supposed to be Emme’s legal guardian until about six months ago. I click on Linda’s, and several subfolders pop up. I pause when I reach one labeled Loans. Clicking again I’m met with at least twenty separate documents, each individually dated, going as far back as fifteen years ago. I open the most recent, dated not long before my parents passed.

Apparently, Linda borrowed five thousand dollars from my parents. I open the next one down, dated several months earlier, and find yet another loan, this time for seven thousand dollars. Another one, dated a few months before my thirtieth birthday, is substantially larger, at fifteen thousand dollars.

There seems to be a lull, a period of two years in which no loans were issued, but before that my parents sporadically lent Linda money. Sometimes it was a few thousand dollars, but more than once they were in excess of ten thousand.

I’m sure if I went back through my parents’ bank records I’d be able to track all the money they loaned her over the years, which is a lot.

Before I think too much about what I’m doing, I pick up my cell and call Kailyn. It doesn’t even finish ringing once before she answers.

“Hey. Is everything all right? How are you?”

“I’m . . . okay.” That’s not really true right now, but it’s an automatic response. “How are you?”

“Happy to hear your voice,” she says softly.

Her honesty pulls my attention back to her. “What’re you doing right now?”