It was the “shitty girl” that got me. He didn’t even hear himself say it. I kept my voice calm and repeated, “You have to face it.”

He came back toward me, fast, looming over me, and in his icy glare I understood that tearing up those pictures had not banished her. Lexie was here. She was in me; I was her. A shitty girl from Eastern Jesus, Georgia, who grew up in a tiny ranch house. A shitty girl who never would have earned his second glance. A girl Coral had recognized as one of her own. I put my hands up, defensive, scared. He stopped short, bare inches from me, breathing hard.

“I’m done,” he said. He swiped a furious hand at the tattered pictures sprinkled across our area rug. “Clean this up. Burn those goddamn pieces. I don’t want our nosy, innocent daughters playing jigsaw puzzle with them.”

His fury was a wall. On the other side of that wall I stood, a truth he would not face. I could feel it between us, implacable and unbreachable. He would not look. His whole life had made it easy not to look. No one had ever asked him to before.

Lexie had changed him. He’d distanced himself from Spencer, married Maura. He’d been done with “shitty girls” forever. He was still done, staring me down like I was one of them.

“That’s the last time you threaten to leave me, Bree. If you love me so little, trust me so little, then pack a bag. See how that goes for you.” He said it cool and furious, with all the weight of his family money and his name, and then he stood looking down at me, waiting to see what I would say.

I couldn’t speak. Tears welled in my eyes. My whole body was shaking, love and fear and sorrow all at war. He seemed to see all that. It seemed to soften him. He walked away toward the bathroom door, rubbing at his forehead.