LOGINRose’s memories served her right, especially when she remembered how Sienna wanted to ship her off to boarding house."Tristan already asked me that," Rose said, looking at her father with the thoughtful, considering expression of someone who had already turned this question over before today. "He asked if I wanted to come live with them." She paused, watching as her father stared at her with a rare form of eagerness. "I said no."A sigh of relief escaped him as she continued to study his face with those clear, serious purple eyes. "Daddy Frank is a good daddy. But I love my bad daddy." She said it simply, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "I'll stay with you."Frederick felt the tear before he knew it was coming, a single, slow thing that made its way down his face while the rest of him sat completely still.He had lost almost everything. He understood that now in a way he hadn't been able to let himself understand before. Bu
Rose's mouth had just begun to form an answer when Julius appeared from the hallway behind them, and the look on his face made absolutely no effort to conceal what he thought of what he'd just walked in on."I genuinely cannot believe what I'm watching right now." His voice was flat with disgust. "You're actually sitting there trying to use your seven-year-old daughter to get your ex-wife back. Do you even understand what marriage is?"Julius was young, just sixteen, but at least, he had learned from his parents’ marriage.No man should put asunder what God had joined together. After learning about how happy Cassie was, he knew that she and Frederick were never meant to be.And yet, Frederick was still trying to steal the happiness Cassie found with Franklin after suffering with Frederick for seven long years. What a monster?Did he think that life revolved all around him and that Cassie would jump because he said so? Julius could not afford to be
The mention of Sienna never coming back didn't land the way Frederick had expected it to.Instead of lighting something up in Rose's face, it pulled a shadow across it, a small, uncertain cloud moving behind her eyes as she turned the idea over in the way that children do when something doesn't add up for them.Rose had memories of her mother in the back of her mind, but they were bad, as compared to that of Sienna.With Sienna, her father would light up and was always bubbly. Rose loved to see her father that way, though she hated her mother’s sadness."Does that mean I won't get to see you as much?" she asked, and her eyes had gone glassy at the edges, not quite crying yet but close enough that Frederick's arms tightened around her instinctively where she sat on his lap."Of course not. Why would you think that?"Rose turned to look at him fully, wiping at the corner of one eye with the back of her hand with the matter-of-fact efficiency o
Frederick’s parents' house felt different when he arrived, or maybe he was the one who felt different, walking through a door he hadn't come through in weeks with the particular tension of a man who knows he hasn't behaved well and hasn't yet figured out what to do about it. Julius was there too, apparently home for vacation, which made the whole thing slightly more complicated.Frederick gave them all the cold shoulder with a thoroughness that left no room for misinterpretation, his eyes moving through the house with one purpose. "Where's Rose?"His mother looked at him with the measured patience of a woman who had raised him and therefore had no illusions about who he was capable of being. "You could try being appreciative. Ask properly."His teeth pressed together. "Mom. Please. Where is my daughter?""Much better," Corrine said, as though the exchange had been entirely reasonable, and went to find her.Rose came in from the backyard still wearing the evidence of however she'd spe
The past few weeks had sat on Frederick like something he couldn't put down and couldn't get comfortable carrying.He hadn't gone to see Rose. Hadn't called his parents — not since that night with the alcohol and the phone and his father's voice on the other end of a conversation he still couldn't think about clearly. The pain and regret had taken up permanent residence somewhere behind his sternum, and the desperation to find his way back to Cassie moved underneath everything else like a current that never stopped pulling.He started where he could. He filed for divorce.Sienna, it turned out, had done something overnight that resembled wisdom, whether it had grown from genuine change or simply from the accumulated weight of every humiliation she'd absorbed, he couldn't say with certainty. When they sat down together to work through the terms, her conditions were quieter than he'd expected."Fred, I don't want this," she said, her hands folded on the table between them. "But if you
Cassie opened her mouth to speak but suddenly remembered something important and clamped it shut. "I can't give you the details just yet," she said, meaning it in the most practical possible way. "We'll talk about it later."Victoria looked like she wanted the answer immediately and in full, but she recognized a closed door when she saw one and let it go. For now.Cassie made her way back to her office, pushed the door open, and stopped.Jonathan and Franklin were seated on opposite sides of her desk with the relaxed, entirely unbothered energy of two men who had known each other long enough to be comfortable anywhere, both of them holding glasses of something that absolutely had no business being in a professional office at this hour. She didn't even want to know where it had come from."What exactly are we celebrating?" she asked, looking between them with the particular expression of a woman who has learned to pick her battles."Jonathan made progress," Franklin said, the picture o
“Uncle Frank! Did you buy me more princess dresses?” Rose’s voice rang through the house from upstairs, bright and unrestrained, carrying the innocent excitement only a child could possess.She came racing down the steps a second later, her laughter unguarded, two tiny gaps in her smile where baby
Frederick’s eyes were sharp, his posture taut with a mix of defiance and disbelief. He had always valued honesty above everything else, and he had never doubted that Franklin would do the same. That made this revelation cut deeper than he expected.“You’ve been seeing a woman and you didn’t tell me
It wasn’t just Genevieve who had heard the commotion. Tristan had too. He was on a call with his father when the shouting erupted, and he hung up abruptly.“Dad, I’ll have to call you back,” he said, voice sharp with urgency. “Someone’s screaming in the
Earlier, right after Genevieve pushed back her chair and excused herself from the table, Franklin didn’t even wait for the echoes of her heels to fade before turning to Cassie.His shoulders slumped, like he’d been holding up something heavy the entire meal and had only just been allowed to set it







