“But we aren’t.” She waved a hand around the room. “Look at us. Look how broken we still are.” She choked on a sob. “I wanted us all back together because somehow I thought that meant I didn’t have anything to be sorry for. Somehow if you would just be friends again, if we could all put things back to the way we were, that made all of my choices okay. Maggie wanted us put back together too, but she wanted it for the right reasons. See, she had a secret. She never held a grudge. She forgave quickly and completely. She said she didn’t want bitterness taking up space in her heart when she had so much love to give.” Louisa scoffed softly. “I was so naive.”

There was a long pause—a heart-wrenching silence in which nobody said a word, nobody shifted in their seat, nobody even seemed to breathe.

Louisa wished she could take it all back. It was futile—every attempt she’d made so far to repair what was broken had ended in disaster. Why would Maggie’s death change that?

She stood. “I need to get some air.” She was walking toward the door, anxious to be alone with her thoughts, when she heard her father clear his throat from behind her.

“Louisa.” His tone was commanding—always—but now it seemed filled with something other than control. It was filled with regret.

Was this when Warren Chambers finally came clean? Was this where he confessed to an affair with his best friend’s wife, who also happened to be the former best friend of his own wife? Louisa froze in place.

“Wait a minute.”

She turned and found her father standing. He wore a pair of khakis and a light-blue button-down, sleeves rolled to the elbows. He was tan and handsome, and she wanted to remember him in this moment, the moment before he broke everyone’s hearts. Because she had a feeling that after what he was about to say, she’d never look at him the same way again.

“Warren?” JoEllen gave his hand a tug, and he turned to her, tears pooling in his eyes.

“I’m sorry, Joey,” he said.

JoEllen’s face fell as if she knew what was coming—as if he were about to speak aloud her greatest fear, humiliating her in one single sentence.

“Don’t,” she said, her voice pleading.

He shook his head, then looked at Marissa. “I knew the moment I saw you today that it was time to stop running.”

Louisa’s heart clenched as if it had been slipped inside a vise that tightened a little more with every second that ticked by.

“Warren, please.” Louisa’s mother was crying, a horrifying desperation clear in her voice.

Louisa dared a glance at Cody, who looked on with a mix of confusion and fear. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe the truth would only make things worse.

“Dad—”