Only once, but hard enough to send me crashing sideways into the dresser, hard enough for the wood to slam into my hip and for the room to flash white for a second.
My cheek burned immediately. My ears rang. My hands went numb. I stared at him, too stunned even for fear, and he stared back like he hated me for making him visible.
Then, instead of apologizing, he said the sentence that split my life into before and after.
“Look what you made me do.”
That night I locked myself in the guest room with a bag of frozen peas pressed to my face and my body curled against a door that suddenly felt too thin.
I listened to him pacing outside for a while, muttering, cursing, then finally going quiet before returning to our bed like men do when they assume morning will restore the old order.
Around two in the morning, I stopped crying.
Around three, I made a plan.
At sunrise, I called the one person Caleb never imagined I would turn to, because he had spent years making sure I saw that man exactly the way he wanted me to.
His father.
Walter Mercer was not a warm man, at least not in any public or easy way. He was not soft. He was not sentimental. He was not the kind of man who fit neatly into holiday cards and family brunches.
He was a retired homicide lieutenant with a spine like steel cable, a jaw carved by disappointment, and a habit of listening so quietly that people often revealed more than they intended.
Caleb hated him.
