“Could you, if you were in my position? If you just found out your father was someone you’ve never met, wouldn’t you want to know who he was? Please, just a name. I promise I won’t do anything without talking to you first. I just want to know his name.”

I couldn’t deny him this request. Ryan was persistent, if anything. I first discovered that about him when he was five years old and he attempted to hitchhike to the North Pole to find out for himself if Santa Claus was real. It was a terrible, horrible decision, but I spoke the name I hadn’t uttered for years: “Geoffrey Faust.”

A flash of Geoffrey’s face collided with the name on my tongue, but I willed it away.

“But don’t forget your promise, Ryan. Don’t go contacting him without talking to me first. Anything we do, we’ll do together. And I want your father’s input too. He’d be really hurt if he knew you were looking up that sperm donor asshole without talking to him about it.”

“I promise, Mom.”

But if there was one thing our family was good at, it was breaking promises.

Chapter 19

Willow

TUESDAY NIGHT

Willow might have been young, but she wasn’t as naïve and innocent as her family seemed to think she was. At twelve years old, she knew how to read the room. The averted gazes. The whispers. The unexplained tears. The many secrets. Everything was falling apart around her, and she didn’t know what to do.

She hadn’t forgotten what she had seen Sunday night, or what she heard tonight. Should she tell Mom that she caught Dad kissing Aunt Lily in the pantry? Or ask Dad why they kept Ryan’s biological father a secret all these years? It wasn’t fair that her family had to be so messed up when everyone else’s was normal. It simply wasn’t fair.

Korn’s “Falling Away from Me” thrummed against Ryan’s closed bedroom door where Willow stood tapping with her knuckle. He wouldn’t hear her over the cacophony of guitars, so she tested the doorknob—it wasn’t locked—then peeked inside.

“Ry?” Her voice was a hum lost in the apocalyptic power chords and suicidal lyrics.

Ryan lay on his bed tossing a ball in the air. He glanced over at the movement by the door, then aimed the ball at an empty garbage can near his desk, missed the shot, and sat up.

“Hey, Will. Turn that down, would ya?”

Willow searched for the volume button on his stereo and adjusted it to the low drone of background noise. She stood there motionless, unable to put words to thoughts.

“What’s on your mind, sis?”

Ryan had always doted on Willow. For the last six years, as far back as her memory went, he’d been her protector, her hero. If a kid at school made her cry, he’d take care of it. If she got in a fight with Mom or Dad, Ryan came to her defense. They had a special bond that nothing could break . . . until now. Now it felt like her whole world was breaking, and her brother was soon to be swallowed up with it.