I Wanted You to Need Me

We end up alone on the dock while Nico's people clone the camera drive. Dawn is trying to happen over Mercer Lake, pale and dishonest. Tessa leans on the rail with the north wind pulling at her borrowed coat. I stand beside her because some conversations should happen where the first lie began.

"I hated you when you married him," she says without preface.

"I know."

"Not because you stole my place. Because you made my absence useful."

The sentence should force defense. Instead it drags one out of me anyway. "I wanted someone to choose me without me having to outrun you first," I say. "I wanted a house that stayed warm at night. I wanted Poppy to need me. And yes, I wanted the life that grief opened because I was too tired to keep living like the second daughter in every room."

Tessa looks at me then, really looks. "There you are."

"Don't make honesty sound like a reveal you won."

"It isn't. It's just the first thing you've said in years that wasn't arranged for effect."

I laugh, ugly and short. "Says the woman who staged her resurrection at a memorial."

"Fair." She runs a hand through her hair. "I didn't stay gone only because of them, Sloane. I stayed gone because part of me wanted you to feel what it was like to live inside a choice you couldn't take back."

The truth of that hurts less than the softer version would have. The lake slaps the dock posts below us like applause nobody asked for. At last I say, "If we get Poppy back, she doesn't become payment for either of our wounds."

Tessa nods once. "Agreed."

Nico calls from the shoreline. "You both need to see this. Offshore wires from Harbor House start in Nassau and end in a shell you haven't named yet."