I couldn’t tell if she had any recollection of what happened other than drinking. Maybe the full memory would return to her, but what if it didn’t? I didn’t know what any of this meant. Should I tell her? Should I let her remain blissfully ignorant? It was uncharted territory that I had no idea how to navigate.

The truth felt like swallowing sand. All I knew was that I saw what I saw, I was the only person other than Ryan who knew what happened, and my sweet baby girl’s innocence had been stolen.

Unless Aria wasn’t so innocent. What if it hadn’t been her first time? A teenage girl was bound to keep secrets. It wouldn’t be the first time a mother discovered her daughter was living two different lives—one at school, one at home. What did I really know about my own child? Absolutely nothing. I only knew what she showed me, and last night I’d seen more than enough.

But that look on her face . . . the confusion and vacancy . . . it told me a story that I was afraid to read. A story that my daughter had no idea what had been done to her, and she couldn’t stop the ending even if she tried. The ending would be the same no matter what I did—my daughter’s soul would be broken.

Murderous rage bubbled up inside me. Maybe Daddy was right all along. Daddy said teenage boys were no good; that their brains were in their peckers and sex was all they thought about, the only thing they wanted. Well, I wanted to wrap my fingers around Ryan’s scrawny throat and squeeze the life out of him. And if I couldn’t follow through with killing the little shit, I knew someone who would.

Chapter 12

Robin

TUESDAY

I felt the crack in my heart splitting deep. A physical pinch in my chest. It had been two days. Two excruciating, torturous days holding in this suspicion. I couldn’t bury it any deeper, so I decided to unleash it on the one person I knew would listen and understand.

“Hope you don’t mind a visitor, Mac.” I stood on her front porch wearing Bermuda shorts, a V-neck T-shirt with PINK glittered across the front, and Collette on my hip. May in Pennsylvania was the perfect time of year, when the winter chill you thought would never end had finally thawed into balmy spring, but summer hadn’t scorched the grass brown just yet. Purple and pink hyacinths sprang up along the sidewalk, their sweet fragrance hanging in the air like fresh linen on a clothesline.

“Hey, Robin. What are you doing here?” Mackenzie looked less than happy to see me and barely opened the door.

“I need someone to talk to. Are you busy?”

“Um, kind of.”