“We’re moving?” Ellie echoed, her golden-brown eyes so wide I could see all the way around her irises. “You’re kidding, right?”

She had her mother’s eyes. Her long, straight black hair, too. She had my complexion and my dorsal bump, much to her chagrin. Two years of hormone blockers and changing nearly every other aspect of her appearance had admittedly been a lot to swallow, but I hoped that was the one thing she’d never change.

I just wanted her to love herself and be happy with what she saw when she looked in the mirror, and deep down, I knew that was all Franny wanted, too. We just had different philosophies on how that was going to happen. She saw transition as the death of our son, while I saw that every year we begged her to “just wait and see,” the closer we were to burying our daughter.

Given the choice between a dead kid and learning to accept the one we had, it was a no-brainer. Maybe my frustration with Francesca’s inability to see that was what had pushed her toward Nicolae. Maybe it was my fault she was dead. In trying to save our daughter’s life, I knew I had made my wife the enemy when I accused her of doing the very same thing.

There was so much I wished I could have done differently, so many words I wished I could have taken back and replaced with the ones I should have said, if I’d just waited a bit and spoken in love rather than in anger.

Either way, Francesca was gone now and if we didn’t get out, I was going to lose myself to the constant reminders of my failure as a husband, as a father, as a man.

“It’ll be good,” I said, taping up the bottom of another box I’d taken from the grocery store. “We could use a change of pace. Somewhere that actually has more than one stoplight and some decent restaurants. I hear Nashville’s got a great school system. You can join an actual art program instead of having to negotiate with your principal to get credit for sketching during study hall.”

She was looking at me like I was absolutely insane, her arms folded over the Oxford sweatshirt Franny had ordered online the day she first started showing an interest in college. When Ellie had gotten too old for bedtime stories, they’d kept their nightly routine alive with Francesca’s tales of all her world travels, and Oxford was part of that. They’d already planned out how Ellie would craft a brilliant essay that would get her into the MFA program.

Franny always clammed up when I asked her about her past, and she never gave Ellie details about the whos and whats, but she’d always get so animated when she started talking about the cathedrals in France and the mountain castles in her native Luxembourg.

Sometimes, I’d lean in the doorway just listening and Ellie would be so enraptured in her mother’s dramatic tales of ancient curses and mysterious beasts that lurked in the woods that neither of them would notice me. It was only in those moments, where I was on the outside, that I felt like we were the family I had always hoped we would just fall into. Sort of like iron shavings grouping together because we were made of the same stuff, and it was easier that way than being apart.

“But I already have a school,” she protested. “I’ll be a junior this fall, and you have a job.”

“The company already approved my transfer to Nashville. The pay’s better, and so is the standard of living,” I answered, taping up another box. We still hadn’t sold the house, and the market in Clarksville wasn’t exactly booming, but the pay difference would be enough to allow us to get a decent apartment in the city while we waited for it to sell. “As for your school, you really want to pass up the chance to go to Nashville for those ‘small-minded assclowns’?”

She scowled at me for using her words against her. “So they’re jerks, that still doesn’t mean I want to pick up and leave the only home I’ve ever known because you’re having a midlife crisis.”

“Hey,” I said, pointing at her. “I’m barely over thirty, this is a third-life crisis at best.”

She rolled her eyes. How did teenagers keep the damn things in their heads when they were always doing intracranial gymnastics? “Beside the point, dad. This is crazy. You know that, right?”

“What’s crazy,” I said, stopping just long enough to look at her, “is staying in a town where we’re treated like second-class citizens. Crazy is keeping you in a school my tax dollars pay to hire teachers who constantly misgender you and force you to use the bathroom in the goddamn teacher’s lounge.”

Her face went blank, but I knew my words were sinking in. For the last two years, Ellie had come home almost every night with tears in her eyes, and I knew the only reason she clammed up when I asked her why was because she knew it would start another fight. I felt like shit for not being able to protect her, for not being able to at least create a home that was a sanctuary for her when the outside world was so fucking needlessly cruel, but now we actually had a chance. I just had to make her understand that.

“This isn’t about school,” she said in a quiet, knowing tone. I was pretty sure every teenager in the history of humanity thought they were wiser than their parents, but when she got that look in her eyes, I actually found myself believing it. It was the same look Francesca had when she’d reach a point beyond stubbornness and bickering. A point where she seemed almost feral. There was something dangerous in that look, something inhuman that triggered a prey-like response in my mind that made zero sense, especially when it came to my own child. “It’s about Mom.”

My spine stiffened. “Ellie, don’t,” I warned.

“I know it is. I’m not a kid, I hear the things people say,” she muttered.

“People in this town are always saying shit. Doesn’t make any of it true,” I said, shoving our throw pillows into the box. They just filled back up with air, so I grabbed the wrought iron statue that Franny had always been obsessed with—a woman reaching out to touch a wolf’s head—and put it down on top of the pillows to weigh them down.

“So mom wasn’t having an affair with some foreign creep?”

Her words knocked the wind out of me. It took me a second to stuff down my initial response, a trait I had perfected a little too late to save my marriage. “Excuse me?”

“That’s what everyone is saying.” She looked somewhat less confident when I turned to face her, but I could see that stubbornness shining in her eyes. This one wasn’t going to be solved by telling her to go to her room. She swallowed hard. “Is it true?”

I could hear the plea laced into her question. The desperation. I could either lie to her, which was something I took a decent amount of pride in never having done, or tell her the truth and break her heart. The fact that I knew the revelation would hurt her far more than it had ever hurt me was just more proof that my marriage had died a long time before this “Nicolae” took part in it.

“Of course not.”

“Don’t lie to me!” Tears spilled down her cheeks, and that feral light shone in her eyes like the sun. “I’m not a child!”

“I’m telling the truth,” I said, shrugging. No amount of bitterness or betrayal would ever push me to the point where I was willing to taint Ellie’s memory of her mother, even if it was only with the truth. I’d tried to protect her from Franny’s harsher tirades about her transition, but this was the thing that would break her spirit. “People also say I killed her. You believe that, too?”

She frowned. “Of course not.”

“It’s just a rumor, El,” I said, handing her a fresh roll of packing tape. “Come Monday, we’re out of here. Start packing.”

She took the tape roller, staring down at it with what was probably the most malice anyone had ever shown a roll of clear store brand adhesive. “Why do all our boxes say L-Mart on them?” she grumbled.

“Because only schmucks actually pay for moving materials,” I answered without missing a beat. “Double up along the bottoms, that tape’s been sitting in the garage since before you were born.”

She sighed heavily and trudged up the stairs, but her door didn’t slam loud enough to shake the house, so I took it as a crisis averted. For the moment, anyway.

The fact that Ellie would learn the truth of her mother’s betrayal if we stayed in this town for long enough was all the confirmation I needed to get the fuck out. I knew Ben was only trying to get us out of his hair, but he was right. I wasn’t ready to give up on finding the bastard who’d killed Franny, but the answers sure as hell weren’t in Clarksville. Nothing was.

Not for us.