I laughed with him. It was true.

“Hey, mind if I use the bathroom?” I stood up.

“It’s right where you left it,” Dad said.

I slipped into the bathroom and peed eight hours’ worth of gas station coffee mixed with orange soda. As I washed my hands, I noticed a pill bottle on the sink. Picking it up, I read the very long drug name that stretched across the label:

Leuprolide Acetate

I grabbed my phone from my pocket and Googled the term. The very first result pulled up the National Cancer Institute website, along with a complex description of what the drug did. All I saw were the words prostate and cancer, and my heart sank. It was the same thing that killed his dad. Hereditary.

Carrying the bottle out of the bathroom with me, I held it up to Bennett.

“Care to explain this?”

He jumped up, the recliner wildly rocking behind him, and grabbed the bottle from me.

“There’s nothing to explain. I was sick, but I’m getting treatment and will be fine.”

“Do you have cancer? The same kind your dad had?”

Dad looked at the floor and shook his head…but it wasn’t a no. It was an apology. When he looked back up at me, his eyes were wet, but he refused to cry.

“I’m sorry, I should have told you, kiddo. But yeah. Prostate cancer. I didn’t want to worry you, being so far away. I’ll be fine. I’m seeing a good doctor. And they caught it early. I’m tough. I know I’ll beat it.”

Except our family never beat anything. My mother never beat her drug addiction. My dad couldn’t beat the waste of war. Bennett wasn’t beating his alcohol abuse. And I couldn’t beat my demons.

Chapter 40

Chapter 40

Marin

Five years ago…

The little girl swinging on the playground looked nothing like me. It was hard to believe we were biological sisters. She looked just like her father, while I looked like mine. My skin was hazelnut, hers cream. My inky black hair was wild and curly, hers dirty blonde and poker-straight. But our eyes, full of life and light, were the same. I saw our mother in them.

Even though my life and light had long ago faded.

Luckily for me, there weren’t many Felicity Portmans in the Pittsburgh area. Or anywhere, for that matter. A little online digging and social media stalking gave me the home address—if you could even call the mansion they lived in a home. A quick property records search showed a house so steeped in opulence and notoriety that it had its own name, the Execution Estate. Not the most welcome-home designation, but who cared when you had three stories of classical-meets-modern splendor?