The Fragile World by Paula Treick DeBoard

Author:Paula Treick DeBoard
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2014-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

olivia

For the first few minutes the next morning, I felt a hundred pounds lighter than the day before, as if I’d shucked off my whole worrisome self. I woke to the sound of Dad showering, the water rushing powerfully through the pipes, and stretched happily.

And then I remembered: the bullets, but no gun. Daniel’s ashes, which should have been waiting on our mantel in Sacramento, along on this crazy road trip with us. Not to mention Dad’s portable memorial to Daniel, the dead son he never mentioned.

I tiptoed to the bathroom door and tried the knob, which was locked. Did Dad always lock the door when he showered? The four of us had shared a single bathroom in Sacramento, and occasionally Mom and Dad had popped in on each other, or Dad and Daniel, or Mom and me, but the opposite-gender parent-child privacy had been fully respected. For all I knew, Dad had always locked the bathroom door ever since it was just the two of us. But maybe the door was locked now for a different reason.

Acting quickly, I repeated the search Sam and I had conducted yesterday: in Dad’s suitcase, under the mattress, making sure everything was undisturbed by the time I heard the water stop.

“Liv? Are you up?” Dad called through the door.

“Yeah.”

“Feeling better this morning?”

“Fine,” I said, and sat on the bed to think.

If Dad had a gun, it was in the bathroom with him now, and he would be carrying it underneath his clothes when he came out. If Dad didn’t have a gun, I was an idiot. It wasn’t hard to believe in my own stupidity, and I wanted to, more than anything, but somehow, our conversation yesterday hadn’t completely reassured me. Dad had done it again—looked straight at me without seeing me at all; said one thing while his mind seemed to be moving in a completely different direction.

Since Sam had held out his hand yesterday afternoon and I’d seen the bullet, my mind had been whirling. I wasn’t any kind of mental health expert, and a few sessions with a family therapist didn’t qualify me to be a crisis counselor, either. After our search of the motel room, Sam suggested I come right out and ask Dad about the bullets. I’d turned the question over in my mind that afternoon as Dad and I watched TV, but couldn’t bring myself to ask. I was fairly sure he would lie, feigning surprise, becoming defensive. And where would that get me? On the other hand, I wasn’t sure I could face the truth.

But I knew what I had to do, had known it since the second I rounded the corner of the administration wing at Rio and saw my father on the cafeteria roof. I had to come clean to Mom. I had to tell her the whole sorry mess. I should have told her on the phone, when I’d announced we were coming to see her in Omaha, or during any

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