“You’re my daughter, and I love you very much.” He looks at the floor.

“Why did you take me?” I ask, trying to understand how we got to this place.

“I never meant for it to get this far. You have to believe me.”

I wait for him to say more, but he remains stubborn with his silence.

I stare him down, but still he refuses to even look at me. According to Sheriff Gleason, Dad was chatty enough last night. Telling him and the FBI agent everything they needed to know. But me, his daughter, his “pride and joy,” the person he’s put in this mess? He won’t tell me a damn thing.

The chair beneath me makes a loud scratching noise as I stand. Dad finally looks up as I hover over him.

“I need you to tell me what happened. I need you to tell me why.”

He shuffles in his seat. “It’s complicated.”

“Well, no shit, Dad.”

“Language,” he scolds me.

I laugh bitterly. “Oh, no. No. You don’t get to lecture me on a single fucking thing ever again.”

He clenches his jaw shut.

“You know that this affects me, right? You did this. You are the reason this is happening. So I have every right to ask you a few questions. Do you even realize? I’m a child you took away from her mother. So you better start talking, and I only want to hear the truth. NOW!”

The door clicks open, and Officer Dash sticks his head in. “Everything okay in here?”

“Not if he doesn’t start talking.” I point at my father with the anger that had been simmering now boiling over.

“Okay, okay,” Dad relents.

“Then I guess we’re okay.” I sit back in my chair, cross my arms, and wait for Dad to speak.

Officer Dash pauses for a minute before shutting the door.

“Talk,” I command.

“Things weren’t going well with your mother.”

“How did you meet? Were you married?” I don’t know where the deceit begins, so I’m not sure if there’s even a shred of truth in what little I’ve been told about my parents.

“We met in a marketing class back in college, Florida State. But everything I told you about our marriage was true.”

“You went to college?” This entire time he’s made a fuss about me going since he never went. About how I’d be the first one in the family and how proud he’d be of me. Yeah, that’s what I was led to believe. Add it to the list of the BS he’s been spreading. “Why would you lie about that?”