Chapter 2

I would've kept them somewhere safe if I could.

But Mom seemed to have forgotten.

The tiny room they'd given me had nothing but a sliding door that didn't even lock. My desk was an old dining table they'd repurposed.

There wasn't a single place in that room where I could lock away anything important.

I looked at the three of them gathered protectively around Brie. Then I turned away, numb.

"Fine. I don't blame any of you."

I opened the door and stepped alone into the suffocating heat. The high temperature had turned the dumpster into a festering mess that reeked of sour, rotting garbage.

By the faint glow of a streetlight, I fought back my nausea and dug through it with my bare hands.

A sharp wooden takeout skewer sliced my finger, and blood immediately welled from the cut. Ignoring the pain, I kept digging until I reached the very bottom.

Finally, I found the manila envelope, smeared with grease. When I saw that the documents inside were still intact, I breathed a sigh of relief.

Back in my room, I sent Dr. Herring my final answer.

[I'm sure. I'll leave in three days.]

The project in Redstone was classified at the highest level. In addition to signing my own confidentiality agreement, I needed an immediate family member to sign an acknowledgment form.

The next afternoon, I came home with the form.

Dad was looking over a car purchase agreement.

Brie leaned against him, pointing to several lines on the page. "Dad, I don't really understand this part about the maintenance plan."

Dad leaned closer to the contract. His finger moved patiently over the dense fine print as he explained in a gentle voice, "Take your time. We need to go through these terms carefully. We can't let the dealership slip anything past us."

He scrutinized every word, determined to make sure Brie wasn't taken advantage of.

"Dad, I need a family member to sign something for a school project." I cleared my throat and held out the form.

Dad looked up from the car contract, and the warmth vanished from his face. "Can't you see I'm busy? Brie's car costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. What happens if I miss something important in the contract?"

He rubbed between his brows impatiently. "What kind of project needs my signature, anyway? My eyes are bothering me right now. Just tell me where to sign."

I pointed to the blank space in the bottom right corner.

Dad grabbed a pen from the table. Without so much as glancing at the title, he scribbled his signature across the page.

His careless movement knocked over a half-full cup of coffee on the coffee table. Coffee spilled everywhere, soaking more than half of my form.

"Oh!" Brie let out a startled cry.

Dad reacted instantly. He snatched up some tissues and carefully blotted the coffee from Brie's car contract. Then he casually set the cup down in the middle of my soaked document to hold it in place.

"Your form should still be fine even if it got a little wet, right? I'm getting older. My eyesight isn't what it used to be." His voice was flat, almost dismissive, just like it had been during my sophomore year of high school.

One night, during a severe storm, I was walking home after an evening study session when an electric scooter ran a light and hit me. My ankle was broken. The pain was so intense I couldn't even stand.

I texted Dad for help and sent him my location. I waited in the pouring rain for two full hours before a stranger finally called an ambulance for me.

Dad's explanation that time had been simple.

"I've been so busy lately that my eyes were blurry. I couldn't read the location you sent me, so I went the wrong way and lost time."

Only later did I find out what had really happened.

That night, Brie had told him she was afraid of the thunder. Dad had driven clear across the city to her favorite aromatherapy store to buy her a box of calming candles.

Dad finished drying Brie's car contract, then seemed to remember something.

"Oh, right. Your academic advisor texted yesterday asking me to confirm something about some kind of placement.

"My vision was blurry, so I thought it was one of those automated spam messages and deleted it. You'll have to explain it to the school yourself."

My hand froze in midair.

My university had a strict confirmation process for guaranteed admission to its graduate program. If a parent failed to respond within forty-eight hours, the system automatically treated it as a rejection of the offer.

With one casual tap of the delete button, Dad had turned years of my hard work into a joke.

"Corinne, don't be mad at Dad," Brie said cautiously. "How about we put my car contract aside for now and let Dad focus on fixing the issue with your graduate school offer?"

"No need." I pulled the coffee-soaked document out from under the cup.

Dad's signature in the bottom right corner was still barely legible.

Gregory Lewis.

That was all I needed.

"I don't need that graduate school offer anymore."

I turned and went back to my room, then slipped the stained acknowledgment form into my document folder.

My phone vibrated in my pocket.

Dr. Herring had sent confirmation.

[All paperwork has been reviewed and approved. Your car will arrive to pick you up at eight tomorrow night.]

I looked out at the blazing afternoon sun and replied with a simple acknowledgment.

Then I opened my closet and dragged my suitcase out from the very bottom.