George grumbles. “No fair, Sophie. You’re a ringer.”

“Put up or shut up,” my mother and I say at the same time. Our eyes meet in surprise.

A smile breaks out across her face, and I can’t help but smile back. “You remember?” she asks.

“Of course,” I say. Running away to the beach was one of the best weekends of my life. We’d played cards by the pool, and when I’d gloated, she’d told me that adults could never beat a kid at Go Fish. “Go Fish is in my blood.”

That’s what I’d bragged six years ago. She laughs at the memory, and it hurts to see it. She’s beautiful. Much more so than I remembered. Age has changed her, but there’s a generosity to her features that I don’t recall. Then again, maybe I was too young to notice. The changes in her are like music missing the refrain. The song’s transformed, though what’s left remains familiar.

George squeezes my hand, and I squeeze back.

He’s right, in a way. I can’t run from her. The pain she caused won’t disappear if I stick my fingers in my ears and shut my eyes like a two-year-old throwing a tantrum.

George looks tired, and I think it’s time I got him back to his room. We wrap up the poker game, and I leap into the unknown, asking my mother, “Do you have time to grab a coffee?”

Before she can answer, her eyes round in a combination of shock and fear.

“What the hell are you doing here, Sophie?” my father asks.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Now I know why soldiers make a habit of always sitting with their back to the wall. That way you can’t be surprised by a bomb exploding behind you.

My father’s as furious as the day he returned home to find she’d left with his brother. His shoulders look broader, more muscled than ever. The fear in my mother’s expression makes sense, even though I know he would never hurt her. He’s too controlled for that.

I’m tempted to jump up between them, but George stays me with a hand on my arm and a swift shake of his head. I jut my chin forward. Did you invite him here? He shakes his head again. He had nothing to do with this.

I wonder how my father found out she was at the hospital. Then I notice the gift bag in his hand. Someone told him they were having a party for me today, and he came by to bring his gift.

My mother—never the coward—rises from her chair. “Cole.”

He ignores her greeting and asks again, “What are you doing here?”

“She’s my daughter. I have every right to be here.”

He snorts. “You gave that right up when you walked out and never looked back.”

“Do you really want to go there?” she challenges him.

Her dark tone makes him pause. A look flashes between them that I don’t understand.

She continues. “I’m done, Cole. I won’t stay away anymore. As long as Sophie wants me here, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Quinn,” he says, with a triumphant look. “She goes by Quinn now.”

His words hurt her. Worse, they hurt me. Everyone who’s stayed behind to play cards watches them argue, and I’m humiliated. My parents talk about me as if I’m not there. As if my opinion doesn’t matter.

George has had enough. He pushes his chair back from the table. “This is a celebration for your daughter’s birthday. Don’t you think you ought to talk about this privately?”

My father shifts his icy gaze to George. “Don’t tell me how to deal with my family. When I sent Quinn here, it was to keep her from getting into any more trouble. Bang-up job you’ve done with her, encouraging her to see her mother behind my back.”

I squeeze the armrests of my chair and grit my teeth. I won’t cry in front of all these people. Not even when my father reveals how much he hates me in front of everyone.

“Why, you couldn’t see who she is if you—”

George’s furious words are cut short by a hacking cough that sounds like it’s ripping his lungs apart. He collapses back in his chair, blood on his white lips, and my father rushes to yell for a nurse in the hall. It takes all of thirty seconds for the nurses to rush in, assess him, and push us out of the garden.

Everything spins when I’m standing in the hallway. Another few minutes and George rolls out of the atrium on a gurney, and I can’t tell if he’s asleep or unconscious. I touch George’s shoulder, and he shoots me a tired smile before they take him away.

My parents have been reunited for five minutes and already they’ve managed to destroy my world again.

Please, please be okay, George.

*   *   *

Why do I always come in last place for these two?

Things weren’t much different the last time I saw my parents together. I was ten, and my father was home on a six-week leave. Iraq had left its mark on him. Even as a kid, I could see that. Later I learned that my father had been in the thick of the first Iraq invasion. As Carey put it, my father must have seen some scary shit. My father didn’t talk about it, though. Not to me. Not to anyone, I suspected.

Instead, he brooded. A lot. And when he wasn’t brooding, he watched us, my mother and me, as if we were foreign invaders in his home. I tiptoed around him, but my mother smashed into him head-on.

They fought all the time: He didn’t give us enough attention. She demanded too much. He didn’t understand how hard it was for her to raise a kid alone. She had no idea what he’d gone through over there, and she didn’t appreciate how he was doing it for me. On and on, they circled each other, trading accusations for insults.