“Well, I sure don’t trust Camden, and I’m not sure I can trust you, either,” Dad said, his gaze sliding to me. “Taking his side after everything that boy has done.”

“I hardly think petty vandalism and a few fistfights make him untrustworthy.”

“You call setting fire to the bunkhouse petty vandalism? That building survived a hundred and thirty years before Cam destroyed it.”

“That fire was ruled accidental, and you know it,” I snapped.

“You almost died.”

Smoke filled my memories, acrid and harsh in my throat. “Cam saved my life.”

“After he put it in danger in the first place. It may have been ruled accidental, but we all know what really happened. He set it on fire just because he could. That boy has always been destructive and dangerous.”

“He was a kid, Dad. An entire decade has gone by, and he’s spent it serving his country and finishing his education. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?” I searched my father’s face, looking for a drop of compassion, a crack in his steel-enforced moral code.

“It means that the boy who was prone to violence went and found himself a career where he could continue that violence, and they decorated him as a hero for it. People change in very small ways, Willow. We change our decision-making and even our actions, but we don’t change who we are here.” He tapped his chest.

“A career where he could continue that violence,” I repeated. “That’s not what you said when Sullivan enlisted. You told him how proud you were, how he was a man to admire for serving his country just like his father and brothers had. Why is Cam’s choice any less honorable?” They had made the same decision, so how was it that Sullivan was applauded while Cam had been sneered at?

Dad sucked in a breath, his posture going straighter than the supports on the bench he loved to sit behind. “I thought the military was good for Camden and told Art exactly that. The boy needed some discipline.”

“And he’s now an engineer, Dad. This town needs him, and yet you tried to run him off, not because it was the rule but because you don’t like him.” I shook my head. “I’ve never seen you step outside your little black-and-white code and bring your own bias into a decision like that.”

“This town needed Sullivan more. You needed Sullivan more.” The skin between his brows wrinkled, and pain filled his eyes for a second before he blinked it away.

I didn’t examine the truth or the lie in his statement.