Heart racing, I quickly turned for the front door, only to halt with my hand on the doorknob when I heard Trish Chambers' familiar voice.

"Look what you've done. I told you to stay away from that girl and didn’t listen to me. Now look at our family!"

Freezing on the mortal spot, I held my breath when Daryl's voice boomed through my ears.

"Our family? You call this a family? This ain't no goddamn family, Mama. This house is a warzone, there's a battle line drawn right here in this very kitchen, and I'm the enemy – at least that's how you've allowed him to treat me."

"We are a family, Daryl," his mother continued to spit and wail. "I am doing my best to hold us together, and you piss all over that by taking up with that homewrecker's daughter!"

My heart stopped in my chest.

Homewrecker's daughter?

Was she talking about me?

No. I shook my head, refuting the notion.

My father wasn't a homewrecker.

"You're blaming me?" Daryl's voice rose right along with his outrage. "You're actually blaming me for the mess y'all are in?"

"You're trying to bring her back into our lives," his mother screamed back at him. "I can't have that girl in my life."

"Well, I can't not have her in mine! I. Love. Her. Do you get that? I'm in love with Molly, I always have been, and there ain't a damn thing you or Wren or Nick fucking Peterson can do about it."

They were talking about me.

This was about me.

About our relationship.

Go, Molly…

Leave now…

"You're crossing a line, boy," Wretched’s awful voice boomed through the air. "Back off. Now."

And then I heard Daryl speak the words that took the air from my lungs and turned the blood in my veins to ice.

"You call Molly's mother a homewrecker, but the only home she wrecked was her own," Daryl continued. "This piece of shit you call your husband? He's the one who wrecked your home, Mama. Not Mrs. Peterson. Wren! He ruined our home!"

No.

No.

No!

Gasping for air, I clutched my chest and leaned against the door at my back.

Mama didn't have an affair.

They were lying.

They were blaming my mama for something she would never do!

Shaking from head to toe, I forced my legs to march me into that kitchen, desperate to defend my dead mother's honor.

"I suppose you're going to blame your stepfather for the fire, too?" his mother choked out, as she sobbed into the sleeve of her cardigan.

I froze in the doorway, feeling like someone had shoved a piping hot branding iron down through my chest.

The fire?

Why were they talking about the fire?

"Jesus Christ, Mama," Daryl hissed, running a hand through his dark hair. "He got her pregnant, broke up her marriage, and had her leave her husband! And for what? A goddamn empty promise, that's what. The minute he got caught, he dropped Molly's mom, and that baby, like neither one of them was worth the dirt on his shoes. So, no, your precious Wren might not have been the one to spark the match that night, but he sure as shit poured the gasoline by pushing that woman beyond her breaking point!"