“She was mentally unstable. Suicide was probably only a matter of time. Last way to screw with us and all that.” I was babbling. Couldn’t shut up. Couldn’t stop myself. “I was getting a little too big to keep dragging to the emergency room, so she upped and killed herself instead. After planning the biggest funeral the town had ever seen, of course. Oh, the roses she demanded for the event. The mounds and mounds of fucking roses …”

My hands fisted at my sides. I stared at my husband. Dared him to call me a freak, an ungrateful daughter, a white trash piece of shit. Look at me, I wanted to cry. My mother lived and I hated her. She died and I hated her more. I am not normal.

“I understand,” he said.

“Afterward, I thought I would be happy. I thought, finally, my father and I could live in peace.”

Jason was studying me intently now. “When you first met me, you said you wanted to get away, never look back. You weren’t kidding, were you? All these years later, you’ve never called your father, never told him where we live, never let him know about Ree.”

“No.”

“You hate him that much?”

“All that and more.”

“You think he loved your mother more than you,” Jason stated. “He didn’t protect you. Instead, he covered for her. And you’ve never forgiven him for it.”

I didn’t answer right away. Because at that moment, I was picturing my father again, his charming smile, the crinkle lines that appeared at the corners of his bright blue eyes, the way he could make you feel as if you were the center of the universe just by touching your shoulder. And I was so filled with rage, I could barely speak.

I know something you don’t know. I know something you don’t know….

She had been right. She had been so fucking right.

“You said we’re different,” I whispered hoarsely. “You said we know better, that the monsters aren’t all under the bed.”

Jason nodded.

“Promise me, then: If you ever see my father, if he should ever show up at our front door, you’ll kill him first, and ask questions later. He’ll never touch Ree. Promise me that, Jason.”

My husband looked me in the eye. He said, “Consider it done.”

Ree fell asleep in her booster seat before Jason even pulled out of the parking lot. Mr. Smith was curled up in the passenger’s seat now, licking his paw, rubbing his cheek, licking his paw, rubbing his cheek. Jason drove aimlessly toward the interstate, not sure what to do.