Without waiting for him to respond, I spin on my heel, needing an escape. I will not let him leave here thinking he got to me in any way. I will not allow him to mistake my fury for sadness. He doesn’t get that.

Not now.

Not ever.

“If you aren’t gone in three minutes, I’m calling the police.” I keep my tone even as I throw that parting line over my shoulder, giving him exactly what he’s given me my entire life—not one fucking thing.

I’m walking to the front desk, ignoring the concerned looks of customers who overheard our lovely father-daughter reunion, when the front door swings open and the Dirty Birds start to filter in.

Freaking fabulous.

“Drew!” Mona shouts my name as soon as she sees me and hurries across the floor like she’s not a seventy-year-old woman in three-inch stilettos. “You’ll never guess—” She stops talking and her hazel eyes narrow on my face. I guess I didn’t do as well as I’d hoped at giving nothing. “What in the world? What’s wrong?”

Those words are like a homing signal to the rest of the ladies, who all scurry across the store and crowd around me like a bunch of mother hens—even Collette. Which is how I know I must look terrible.

In the combination of genetics from my Black mother and white father, I got my fabulous curls, full lips I was teased for in school by the same girls who are now overlining theirs and paying thousands for fillers, a great ass, and golden skin that still shows the red splotches that appear all over my face when I cry.

They’re all talking at once, trying to figure out what happened to me by talking to one another and not asking me anything, when Collette’s hoarse smoker’s voice rises above the rest.

“Well, shit. I guess we know the answer now.” She steps away from the group, no hesitation in her steps as she walks up to my dad, who is being led out by Connor and looking anything but happy. “What hole’d you crawl out of? Ignoring your poor ol’ ma wasn’t enough? Now you gotta come harass your daughter?”

He rolls his eyes and now I wonder if he has a death wish. “Nice to see you, too, Collette.”