Grabbing the makeup bag he’d found in her bathroom, he upended it on the bed, spilling its contents over the snowy white duvet cover.
Her pretty face paled. “You went through my stuff?”
He rose to his feet, eliminating the space between them in two angry strides. “Is this what your boyfriend taught you?” he yelled, gesturing to the bloody washcloths and razor blades on the bed. “To cut drugs and wipe up cokehead nosebleeds?”
When she didn’t answer, he took her by the upper arms and shook her, trying to scare the truth out of her.
“It’s not what you think,” she stuttered.
“What is it, then?”
She stared down at the carpet, refusing to answer.
He released her, trying to maintain a semblance of control. It was impossible to describe the way he’d felt while searching her room. The scenarios he’d imagined and memories he’d relived. “When did it get so difficult for you to look me in the eye?” he asked quietly. “I tell you that I love you, and you act like it kills you. What the hell is going on with you, Carly?”
Closing her eyes, she leaned back against the door. “It’s not what you think,” she repeated in a whisper.
“We’re not leaving this room until you tell me.”
“Lisette and I were trying to give each other tattoos,” she said in a rush of inspiration. “In Cultural Studies, we learned about this tribe in New Zealand, and figured we could do the same thing they did, with pen ink and razor blades.”
“Bullshit,” was his succinct response.
“If I was into coke, don’t you think you’d find some white powder on that stuff?”
He glanced at the jagged pile of razors and stained washcloths. “That’s a lot of blood for amateur tattoos.”
“Yeah, well, we fucked up. It didn’t work.”
His eyes cruised over her warily. “Show me.”
“Show you what?”
“This tattoo shit.”
Trembling, she crossed her arms over her chest. “No.”
“Why not?”
“It’s on my chest.”
“So?”
“It’s on my boob, Dad.”
He wasn’t deterred by her display of modesty. “Show me now, or I’ll call Lisette’s parents and tell them what you just told me. At the very least, they can hear about the joints you two were toking Saturday.”
“Fine,” Carly grated, pulling her shirt up and the top of her bra down quickly, revealing a flash of crisscrossed scabs.
It was enough to send him over the edge.
Grabbing her by the arms again, he pushed aside the fabric, exposing a dozen raw-looking red lines. Some were partially healed, others fresh and ugly.
In an instant, he was murderous. “Lisette did this to you?”
She shook her head in denial, covering herself with her hands.
“This Matthew-Mark punk? I’ll fucking tear him apart.”
“No, Daddy,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “I did it. To myself.”
For a moment, he was so stunned he couldn’t breathe. He’d heard about self-mutilation before, but he’d never suspected his own daughter would resort to such measures. How could he not have known? And what else had she been doing while he’d had his head buried in the sand?
He sat down on her bed, shocked to the core. “You told me-no, you
She began to cry in earnest. “I don’t want to kill myself. Not really. I just get these feelings, and I can’t get rid of them, so I cut myself, and they go away.”
“I thought you were getting better,” he said, wrapping his hand around her thin wrist and pulling gently, urging her to sit down next to him. “You said group therapy was helping.”
“It is helping,” she said in a choked voice. “I’m just crazy.”
“You’re not crazy, Carly,” he said with the conviction of someone who loved her more than life itself. He put his arm around her. “But if you’re getting better, why are you cutting yourself?”
“I don’t know.” She wiped the tears from her face with the hem of her hooded sweatshirt. “It’s easier than feeling all tied up in knots.”
So was drinking, he knew from experience, and felt an ugly stab of guilt. He wracked his brain for some of the tenets of AA. “When you want to cut yourself, will you talk to me instead? I promise not to get mad. Maybe I can help you through it.”
“Maybe,” she replied with a noncommittal shrug.
“And you can work on that old rust-bucket in the garage. If you get it running, I suppose I’ll have to let you drive it around sometimes.” He cringed as soon as he made the statement, but she perked up visibly, so he couldn’t retract it. Carly was obsessed with sports cars-and wouldn’t you know it, he could afford whichever one she wanted. About a year ago she’d talked him into buying her an antique Corvette Stingray, a fixer-upper.
Determined to make it roadworthy, she’d taken two semesters of Auto Mechanics since then, and she was a whiz at it. Carly might be moody and spoiled, but she could also rebuild a carburetor like nobody’s business.
He could only imagine how dangerous she would be in the driver’s seat. His daughter was wild and reckless, just like Olivia. Just like him.
With parents like these, who needed enemies? Taking risks was in Carly’s genes.
She looked up at him through dark, wet-lashed eyes, the picture of her mother, achingly beautiful in the lamplight. Ben almost couldn’t bear the resemblance. Most of the time, the pain of losing Olivia was like a dull throb, an ache that receded more every year. Other times, like now, when they really needed her, it was so damned sharp…
Carly must have felt the same way, because she ducked her head, hiding the fresh tears that were swimming in her eyes.
He put a finger under her chin, tipping it up. “We’ll be okay. We’ll get through this. We can get through anything.”
“Yeah,” she said, trying on a wobbly smile.
He pulled her close, all but crushing her in a fierce embrace, then just held her for a long time as she cried.
“Did you find one yet?”
His dad’s sly, cantankerous voice rang out, startling James as he shut the door behind him. When he saw the dark thing in the corner of the living room, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.
Arlen Matthews was sitting back in his recliner, smoking. The cigarette smell and its glowing tip were the only indications of his presence.
“Maybe,” James mumbled, clenching the keys in his fist. For the millionth time, he wished he had the balls to stand up to his old man.
“What’s she look like? Big titties, I hope.”
“Nah,” he said, studying the dingy white shoelaces on his black canvas tennis shoes. “I mean, I couldn’t really tell.” Now, that was a blatant lie. His eyes had eaten up Carly Fortune’s lace-covered breasts like they were candy, and he knew their size and shape well enough to sculpt them from memory.
In fact, he’d probably be doing some inadvertent pillow-sculpting tonight, tossing and turning until he fell into a fitful sleep.
“Blond or brunette? Tall or short?”
“Blond,” he said, warming up to the idea of lying. He’d never bring Carly back here anyway, so the deception was a petty rebellion, a last-ditch form of self-preservation. The old man had a heavy hand and ready fists, but he couldn’t abuse everything. He couldn’t read James’ mind, or steal his dreams. “Not very tall. Short hair, too,” he
