He opens his mouth, then closes it again.

It’s like all the blood has gone to my head. It pounds in my ears so terribly, rushing in and out, in and out with the beat of my heart. I take a seat without being asked because being rude is less embarrassing than fainting.

The office is barely larger than a closet. It’s difficult to find a pathway to the chair that isn’t blocked with teetering stacks of books and loose paper.

The room smells like chalk dust and stale coffee. What little light comes through the small window high above the bookshelf is made even dimmer by the sheer amount of dust caked over the glass.

“I—” He looks like he means to protest, to tell me that I’m mistaken. But he takes a moment to stare at my face and thinks better of it. He must see it too, our identical noses. His hair is graying at the temples, but the rest of it is the exact shade of brown as mine, as William’s, too, once upon a time. His eyes are blue like my brother’s were. If I squint, I can imagine him as the young man he once was. The man who wrote my mother love notes in secret and convinced her to run away from Haxahaven with him.

“Are you truly—” he asks.

Truly what? I want to say. The daughter you abandoned?

“Here?” is what he settles on. “Are you truly here?”

He looks so stupid, sitting at his overcrowded desk in a moth-eaten sweater, confused at the sight of his own child. If I didn’t need answers from him so desperately, I would pick up the ceramic mug of old coffee and smash it. Then I’d use both my arms to sweep the books and papers off his desk and onto the ground. I’d scream until my voice was hoarse and he was forced to explain why he left us.

But the world doesn’t respond to rage. The world wants sweet girls and fathers want sweet daughters, even if they did everything in their power to make them bitter and broken.

So I swallow my rage until I am choking on it. I unfurrow the tension between my eyebrows. And I pretend.

“Yes. Got in from New York a few days ago.”

“Wow.” He shakes his head in disbelief. “It’s been so long since I’ve been to New York. What a fantastic city.”

I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t this. I clench my jaw. “I’m aware.”

“Frances! My darling girl!” He’s so excited, like this is a heartwarming family reunion instead of a confrontation. “You must be what, fourteen now?”

He has to be joking, so I laugh. He doesn’t laugh along with me.