He doesn’t try to mask the disapproval in his voice, and I cower a little under it. I lower my gaze, but I don’t acknowledge it any more. That accident has taken up too much of my life.

“While I was at Lake Crest,” I say instead, wanting to talk about where I was, and why Emma couldn’t know.

“Yes,” he says, not even flinching.

His conviction causes me to look up, and our eyes lock again. We keep coming to the same civil standoff.

“I would have supported her…through that…her surgery? If I had known,” I say, swallowing hard. “I wrote her letters. I would have written her every day, tried to call…”

I stop when I see his face fall, his lips pursed, a hint of regret perhaps shadowing his expression.

“You know I wrote her letters. You…you never gave them to her,” I say, that sick feeling from when I stepped out of my car coming over me again in a wave. It’s quiet for almost a full minute, the only sound the papers shuffling back into the folder, the drawer being pulled open and Carl’s chair sliding back from the desk as he stands. I pull myself up to stand with him, following him back from the den toward the front of the house. He stops in the kitchen.

“Can I get you a water? I don’t have much, but…I have water,” he says.

I laugh once under my breath and look back to the room on one end of the hallway and the doorway to my car on the other. All of this—and I still don’t have the answers I needed, the closure I needed—I’m still the fuck-up from that family everybody talks about.

“Sure, I’ll take a water,” I sigh. He reaches in and pulls out a small bottle, wiping the condensation away with a towel on the counter before handing it to me. I hold it up, clutched in my hand, and smile tightly before whispering a sarcastic “Thanks.”

Carl pulls the top from his and guzzles about half down before setting the bottle on the counter behind him. I twist my cap off and move my bottle to my lips, my eyes meeting Carl’s in between drinks. I shuffle my feet, readying myself for Carl to show me out.

“I couldn’t lose them both,” he says. I startle a little, not expecting any more answers from him. I lower my brow, but wait for him to give me more. “I knew Kate was sick when we moved here. We were hoping for a better prognosis, and had been seeing new doctors in the city. But their answers were all the same.”

He relaxes into the counter behind him, his hands finding the edge and squeezing as he looks up to the ceiling. When his eyes fall back down to mine, they’re red and glassy. “I couldn’t lose them both, Andrew. And I was afraid if Emma stayed with you—”

“You were afraid I’d ruin her,” I finish for him. My eyes shut with the realization, with my delivery of the sentence and final act of what went wrong between me and Emma Burke.

“It’s not about your family, Andrew. I know what you’re thinking, and don’t. It isn’t about that—it never was,” he says.

My gut tells me he’s lying.

“When we got the call to pick her up that night at the police station, our world was rocked. She was this close…this close…to having a fresh start, to having a chance,” he says, his lips a hard line, the rest of what he wants to say only a breath away. I stare into his eyes and dare him. “You were drunk, and you were high, Andrew. Drunk…and high!”

I roll my shoulders and take his condemnation. I nod slowly, my lips forcing themselves into a defensive smile and eventually a chuckle. I look down to the side as I reach into my pocket for my keys.

“Says the Woodstock Town Police report,” I seethe.

“They convicted you, Andrew. A year in detention…”

“Ah…reform school,” I correct smugly, holding one finger up. I shake my head at him, my insides feeling as if I’ve just gone a round in the ring. I open my mouth, but I’m smart enough to know that whatever I say next, if I speak right now, it won’t be nice. So I close my lips instead and hold up my water to him. “I’m gonna take this with me, for the road, if that’s okay?”

I turn and move to the door, not expecting his steps behind me. He’s several paces back, and I know he’s relieved to know I’m leaving. My thoughts dart to so many possibilities—racing one minute to the lost opportunities I had with Emma then quickly to everything she was probably told. The questions boil fast, and before I reach for the latch on the screen, I stop.

“I just need to know…did you tell Emma that I was drunk and high? Or did you keep that to yourself, too?” His face is ghost white, a mix of shame and indignant self-righteousness. “You know what? Never mind…I’ll ask her myself.”