“Juliet Lauren, I didn’t raise you like that.”

My dad’s voice thunders over me, drawing out an instinctive flinch before I can stop it. He’s shouting, his voice trembling with rage, and I take an involuntary step backward toward the door of his suite. I got here in thirty-five minutes. It was the fastest trip to Forest Hills I’ve ever taken, my heart working overtime every single minute we were on the road. I couldn’t answer Dave’s soft questions about my dad, about Overbrook. The man did his best to distract me, but my mind whirled with all the possibilities of what I might find when I got here.

Rachael, the night manager, had been tense and clipped on the phone. “He’s beside himself, Juliet, and demanding to see you.” She’d hesitated. “I don’t want to resort to any drastic measures. I don’t think that would improve the situation. But I do think it would be best if you came here as quickly as possible.”

So I’d come. I’d come with my mind stuffed with the worst possibilities—a tantrum on an apocalyptic level that would end the arrangement with Overbrook, a sudden loss of memory that would be the start of a faster deterioration, that he’d somehow harmed himself or one of the staff. Those are all things Rachael could have told me over the phone, but it made my heart sink, over and over again, to think of how she didn’t. Maybe it’s only news that can be delivered in person. I’d swung wildly between despair and anger, and stepped into my father’s room bracing for the worst.

It never occurred to me that I was the problem.

I take in a deep breath. He’s in his bathrobe, perched on the edge of his bed, his hands balled up into fists in his lap. He’s practically vibrating with fury, and his eyes are red, like he’s been up for far too long. It’s past midnight. Of course he has. “Dad, I’m not sure what you’re talking about.” I keep my voice as even and steady as possible, but there’s a shake that I can’t quite force out of it.

“I didn’t raise you to be some kind of leech.” He grits his teeth so hard that they grind together. “I didn’t raise you to be a…a gold-digger.”

A stab of pain bolts through my heart from his acid tone. “What are you saying? I don’t understand.”

He sneers at me. It’s the first time I can ever remember him directing this kind of expression at me or anyone else. “Oh, you don’t?”

“No.”

“You don’t know how you suddenly got the money to hire that bitch?”

He’s out of control, and that means I can’t be. Rachael is waiting outside the door with one of the staff members in case he gets violent, but right now, all I can do is stand in the middle of the raging storm. I take another deep breath, willing myself to keep my chin up. “Are you talking about your new aide?” Her name escapes me right now, but Darla assured me that she was a lovely woman, skilled with dementia patients, and had experience with the aftermath of head trauma. When she called two days ago, everything seemed to be going fine.

“I hate her,” my dad snarls, his gray hair sticking up in every direction. “I hate her, and I know you could never have afforded to hire her to harass me all fucking day.”

My heart drops right to the floor. I don’t recognize this man—this man who stood next to me on the carousel when I was too young to ride by myself, this man who taught me to fish with his hands covering mine. Someone must have said something to him about Weston. I don’t know who, and I don’t know what, but that has to be what this is about. My entire chest throbs. The truth. I have to tell him the truth. That’s all there is to tell, all that I can think of. “No, Dad, I couldn’t. I was working out a plan with Darla, though, and we were—”

He narrows his eyes, his glare sending a shiver down my spine. “And then you brought in that man to take care of everything. How’d you get him to do that, Juliet? Is he some kind of client from that club you’ve been working at? Is that what kind of club it is?”

I hold up both hands. “You know that’s not what the Rose is. I really—” My voice is trembling. “I see that you’re angry, Dad, and I get it—”

He rolls his eyes. “Nice. Nice, Juliet. That’s nice.” I shake my head. I don’t know what to say. “You didn’t learn? How could you not have learned?”

It comes back to me then, a hazy memory from when I was in elementary school—a friend of my father’s. Some kind of investment scheme. Their retirement funds, gone and never quite recovered, to the extent that my mother’s hospital bills and his emptied all the accounts until there was nothing left. “This isn’t like—this isn’t like what happened with your friend.”

He slams one fist against his other open palm, and it takes everything I have to stand my ground. I don’t want to have to call out to Darla, but I’ve never seen my dad this irate before. Not once. “You don’t know the first thing about what Martin Keller did to me. You obviously don’t know a single damn thing, because if you did, you wouldn’t be whoring yourself out to the first man in a nice suit who comes by the club.”

I shake my head again, but the movement just makes him more enraged, his face turning purple. “Dad—”

“You shut the hell up, Juliet.” My chin is quivering and I can’t stop it. I can’t do anything to stop it. “Martin Keller—” He practically spits the name onto the tile floor and grinds his shoe in it. “That bastard. I hate the taste of his name in my mouth. I hate it, Juliet. And it’s because we had a deal. He took your mother’s retirement savings and mine right out of my hands, and then, oh, come to find out, we ended up paying him back for it. For years. Years!” He holds his hands up in front of him, his trembling hands. They look like an old man’s hands, not my dad’s. “I worked hundreds of extra hours at the plant to pay him back, and now look at me.”

I step toward him, just one step, but he can’t contain himself.

“Look at me!” 

The anguished howl coming from his mouth is what brings Darla in, along with Michael, a staff member with wiry muscles and enough strength in them to stand in the way of anyone, including my father. Michael goes right to his bedside, and Darla is at my side, her hand on my arm. “I’m sorry, Juliet,” she says. “This was a mistake, and it’s my fault.” I’m rooted to the spot, watching Michael give my father some kind of sedative, talking soothingly into his ear, my chin still trembling. “You should go, honey. I’m sorry.”

I don’t dare approach him. I don’t dare do anything except turn on my heel and head toward the door. 

I’m almost through it when my father’s voice cuts through the air again. He’s not yelling, but the acid tone is another body blow.

“Your mother would be so disappointed, Juliet. She would be crushed.”