‘Who’s that?’ Millie mouthed.

I shrugged, keeping my finger at my lips.

My mother dropped her voice again, and the words that reached me this time were disjointed, plucked out of sentences so I couldn’t find their meaning.

‘… since that night … normal … the truth … promise when I thought … any more.’ I got up and crossed to the door, easing it open a notch. I still had to strain, but the words came together now, and I held my breath so I could hear them all.

‘… not fair on either of us. I have to.’

I peeked out. My mother was standing in the hallway. She was leaning against the bathroom door, one hand twined in her hair, the other clutching the phone. ‘Fine!’ she hissed. ‘But it’s not right. I don’t think it’s right!’ She dropped her head and brought her hand to her eyes, rubbing them. ‘I’ll send her,’ she said. ‘But we’re not done talking about this. Not even close.’

By the time she had hung up, I was standing in the hallway, my eyes burning holes in the back of her head. She turned around and instead of surprise, there was defeat in her reaction.

‘Sophie.’ Her arms fell limply to her sides. ‘Oh, Sophie, I’m so tired.’

I took a cautious step towards her. ‘Was that Jack?’

She blinked dumbly. ‘That was your father. He wants you to go see him tomorrow.’

Surprise bubbled in my mind. ‘Why?’

‘Because he knows what happened with the Falcones,’ she answered flatly, frown lines rippling along her forehead as she conceded, ‘I told him.’

‘Why?’ My horror seeped through my voice. Why would she do that, knowing there was nothing he could do to change it? Why worry him needlessly when she was so worried herself? And then I pinched myself as guilt wrapped around me. She wasn’t coping, that was why. And once upon a time, he had been her rock. Maybe he still was, even though animosity lingered between them. Maybe she still needed him just as much as I needed her.

She raked her hair away from her face. Her defences were down and she was too tired to put them back up. ‘Because I wanted to make him see.’

‘See what?’

Her gaze shifted past me to where the sun was pushing through the hall window. ‘That everything isn’t OK,’ she told me plainly. ‘That it hasn’t been OK for a long time.’

‘No,’ I said, quietly, feeling a strange sense of relief at unveiling the truth we had been so carefully avoiding. I didn’t realize how badly I had been craving it. ‘No, everything isn’t OK.’

But, why, I wondered, did he want to see me and not her? I studied my mother’s slumped frame, and saw in her what he probably had heard in her voice – weakness. It’s me, I thought. I’m the one who has to fix this.

As if a switch had flicked inside her, my mother snapped her head up and her gaze became hard and shining. ‘You know, despite everything that’s happened, I love your father very much,’ she said, her words woven through a heavy sigh. ‘I love the life he built for us. I love the daughter he gave me. I love our family.’

‘That’s good …’ I ventured, ineptly. She hadn’t spoken so openly or tenderly about him in a long time. The words were warm, but there was something beneath them … a barb, a sadness.

‘I miss him, Sophie,’ she admitted. ‘I miss him every day.’

Tears spiked behind my eyes, her sudden candour jarring. ‘Me too, Mom. I miss him too.’ I miss us. I miss our family.

‘But sometimes …’ She shook her head, slowly, her gaze drawn to the ground between us, to another time and place, to something I couldn’t access. ‘Sometimes I feel like I might just explode.’

She turned from me abruptly and stalked through the kitchen and into the garden, where she disappeared into her flowers.

I watched her go. I had come to know that feeling all too well.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

PRISON

The bus to Stateville Correctional Center was airless, the seats dank with years of enmeshed body odour. I curled up by a window near the back and flicked through the playlists on my iPod. I listened to Joshua Radin and watched Chicago fade into remoteness.

I arrived early in the afternoon. My hair was flat against my head where I had leant against the window to sleep. I wound it into a ponytail. My clothes were sticky. The humidity hadn’t broken yet and the heat outside was stifling. The sky was overcast, a thick blanket of blinding white pressing down on me. The air was charged, the ends of my hair floating with static.

A storm was coming.

Inside Stateville, the meeting room smelt like disinfectant. Three prison guards lined the walls, watching with glazed indifference. I tried not to catch their eyes, afraid they might see through me and find out the things I knew.

My father shuffled in to meet me. He was a little slumped over, like the act of keeping his head up required too much energy. He was still wiry and thin, with greying hair that flicked out behind his ears and dipped into big, grey eyes. They used to be bluer, like the ocean.

He lifted his head and his smile lit up his features. For a passing moment, he could transform himself into the father I used to know outside of these walls. ‘Sophie, it’s so good to see you.’

I wasn’t allowed to hug him, so I struggled with what to do with my hands. I settled on an awkward wave/salute.

We sat down. I was studying his face, his neck, his hands – any part of him that I could see – searching for signs of injury. He was studying me just as closely. It threw me a little. The bruises on my face had gone now, and the swelling around my nose had disappeared. I was paler than usual, but other than that, my injuries no longer marked me. Still, he knew about them now, so it made sense that he would try and search them out.