“I access the internet all the time, asshole,” Bristol replied in her typically snooty way. All big sister bossiness and the suggestion, right there beneath her words, that Indy was wasting her life. It was oddly comforting today. “And yet, oddly enough, it’s not the tabloid newspapers I look for when I do.”
“Well, good news, then,” Indy said brightly. “You look amazing. What else matters?”
Bristol let out her trademark longsuffering sigh, but Indy could hear that her out-of-character adventure was already changing her. Because Bristol was doing the exact opposite of the things she normally did. She was celebrating finishing up her doctorate and not knowing exactly what to do with the rest of her life by doing something completely outside her normal range. That was how she’d ended up on the arm of Lachlan Drummond, one of the most eligible billionaires in the world.
She even sounded happy.
And as Indy sat there glaring at the river after the call ended, that felt like yet another jolting sort of indictment inside her.
Stefan’s breakdown of what she was going to do once she walked away from him seemed to simmer inside her, taunting her, because she knew he was right. Wasn’t that what she always did when she found herself on her own? Maybe after a long night. Maybe after an adventure where she’d lost track of her companions. She could walk into any bar, anywhere. She often didn’t even have to walk into a bar. A few suggestive glances and she was sure that she could have a man eating out of her palm no matter where she was. But to what end?
She could hear Stefan’s voice in her head. Those empty sugar-high orgasms you like so much, he’d said, and she was very much afraid he’d ruined them for her. Because who wanted hollow junk-food sex when there was...him?
Meanwhile, despite her Bristol-ness, her sister had sounded happy.
Happy.
And for all that Indy had spent her life pursuing fun at all costs, had she remembered to make sure that she was happy while she was doing it?
Do you even know what happy is? asked another voice inside, this one sounding a whole lot like her father.
She called home, smiling when she heard her father’s grumpy voice on the other end.
“Do you know what time it is here?” he asked, instead of saying hello. “Don’t tell me you forgot to look at the time change. I think we both know you do it deliberately.”
“Hi, Dad,” she said, affection for him racing through her and warming her. “You sound deeply stressed out. Isn’t it a Saturday?”
She heard his laugh and could picture him easily, back in that house where she’d grown up. It was a little after six o’clock in the morning, Ohio time, but she knew perfectly well he hadn’t been asleep. Margie liked an extra few hours to catch up on her beauty sleep every weekend, but not Bill. He worked all week, as he liked to say, and therefore liked to be up and at it on the weekends to squeeze out every drip of leisure time available.
“It’s a fine Saturday,” her father said. “I have big plans. The hardware store, a little project in your mother’s vegetable garden, and I’m going to fire up the grill for dinner. Did you call to hear my itinerary? You’re not normally the itinerary sort, are you, Bean?”
Bean. She couldn’t remember why he’d started calling her that, only that he always had. And that something inside her would break forever if he ever stopped.
“I want to ask you a life question, Dad,” she said, and though her voice was pleasant enough, her heart still hurt. Walking down from Stefan’s hillside villa hadn’t helped at all.
“You’re the one gadding about in Europe. Mysteriously. Seems you have it figured out.”
She hadn’t told him—or anyone—where, precisely, in Europe she was. Because everything concerning Stefan had seemed too private. Too personal.
And because if she told them what she was doing, she would have to tell them why. Which could only lead to explaining things better left unexplained. Or, worse, coming back after a night or two and having to explain that instead.
Better not to risk any of that. “What is gadding anyway?” she asked. “No one ever says, oh, I think I’m up for a gad. Come join me in some gadding.”
“Is this one of your internet games?” She heard sounds she recognized. Her father puttering around in the kitchen. The cabinets and the fridge opening and closing as he made himself the English muffin he liked to eat every morning, getting out the honey and butter to use when the toaster made it the exact shade of tan he preferred. “You know I don’t like being recorded.”
“That was only the one time. I told you I wouldn’t do it again. And besides, you were amazing. You still have fans on my page.”
“Then my life is complete,” Bill said dryly. “Every man needs fans on a webpage.”
“Are you happy, Dad?” Indy asked before she lost her nerve. “I mean truly happy?”
There was a small pause, and Indy screwed her eyes shut. But when she did, all she could see was her dad at the kitchen window half a world away, staring out at the backyard and the woods, his brow furrowed in thought.
“Are you in trouble, Bean?” her father asked, his gruff, joking tone changed to something quieter that made the knots in her seem to swell to twice their size. “Because you know that all you have to do is say the word and your mother and I will be on the next plane. No matter where you are. Or what you’re doing.”
And something flooded her then, bright and sweet, because she knew he meant that. Her parents, who had always seemed so deeply content to be exactly where they were—who didn’t take the kind of trips their daughters did, or
