“What I don’t want to do is put up with any of your bullshit anymore,” I say. “My wife is dead. Your daughter is dead. I don’t need to hang out with you and Helen just to make her feel good. I loved Sophie enough to put up with you, but I don’t have to anymore, Frank. I don’t have to put up with you for one more second. I could tell you right now that you’ll never see Aubrey again, and you know what? She’s three. She’d forget about you just like she’ll forget about Sophie.”

I let those words hang in the air before finishing. He lets me.

“Maybe not seeing you anymore would be the best thing for her,” I say.

“You’re out of your mind,” he says, which is a short retort from the likes of Frank Flynn.

“No,” I spit back. “You’re out of time, Frank. When you marry a girl, you’re stuck with her family. Now that she’s gone, I’m goddamn free of you. Now, get your wife and go.”

Frank stands there facing me and finally gives me his best—what he came to say, I suspect.

“You killed Sophie,” he says.

He thinks it will hurt me, but it doesn’t. I stand my ground with a man who seemed to have only one quest in life: to diminish everyone around him. Not me. Not Sophie. Not Aubrey. Not anymore.

He can do whatever he wants with Helen. She may be brainwashed, but she can get the hell out if she wants to.

“Just keep saying that,” I tell him. “Every time you piss me off, I’ll erase another visit for you and Aubrey.”

Helen emerges from the hall. I’m unsure how much she’s actually heard. Enough, I hope.

I don’t get up. I’m done pretending that I ever liked these people. That they ever gave me any reason to show any kind of respect. He is a bully. She is the soggiest of milquetoasts.

“Adam, please don’t keep Aubrey away from us,” Helen says.

I ignore her.

“I put some of Sophie’s things in a carton by the front door,” I say to neither one of them in particular. “Do me a favor and take it with you.”

The house feels lighter when the door closes. I can hear Frank cursing at Helen as they go down the steps to their car, but it doesn’t bother me in the least. I head down the hall to Aubrey’s bedroom. She’s already in bed waiting. She’s like a little angel, and while I have no idea how things will turn out for her, I think that less time with the monsters that raised her mother is a very good thing.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

LEE