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The question struck me straight in the back.
“I never should have brought you here,” I said, busting out my phone and staring at it rather than at Rosabel.
Her shoes scuffed on the sidewalk. The sound let me know she’d moved closer.
“To the house?”
I paused long enough to meet her gaze. Confusion lingered in her soft brown eyes. Confusion, frustration, and hurt. I wanted to smooth away each worry. Which only made this situation all the more agonizing because I knew—now, more than ever—that I never could.
“No, to Arkansas. I should have let you quit. I should have stayed out of your life.”
But I hadn’t. I’d brought her. I’d wanted her as close to me as I possibly could— —and for all I knew, she was going to pay for my mistakes.
NINETEEN
rosabel
Well,that was the most bizarre interaction I’d ever had with Duncan—and that was saying something.
Thunderclouds gathered in his gaze. He walked with his hand on his chest as though he’d just received some kind of sucker punch and hadn’t quite yet recovered. Every step he took was robotic; he moved toward me like he didn’t know he was.
My palms clammed. I wanted to say something, but honestly, I wasn’t sure what had just happened back there. And he was acting so comatose. So…detached.
He didn’t yell or rage, the way I’d heard him do so many times to others.
He only glowered at me and stormed past me to the car. But he didn’t get into the car. He kept right on going.
What else had they talked about after I’d left? I’d gone ahead because I’d sensed he wanted me to give them some privacy again, but now, I wished I hadn’t.
I didn’t know why he wanted the house so badly. I didn’t know what had just happened. Obviously, there was something more going on here.
Was that what bothered him so much? What was the pact the two of them argued about? Had Eudora thought Duncan and I were an item?
I wanted to deny it, the way I’d done for almost two years in defense against the rumors at the office. I was here because of Dad.
I waited for the resentment I’d held toward Duncan for the last year and a half to prick, to be as sharp as it used to be. But it wasn’t. Something had changed since coming here with him.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him.
He paced from the grassy side of the sidewalk to the curb and back again, and every step he took only deepened the furrow between his brows.
I’d told him to do an act of service, to try and see things from another’s point of view the way he never seemed to be able to before.
But this slump in his shoulders, this slackness to his mouth, had come from no act of service. Did whatever Eudora had said get him to see things—to seeme—differently? Was that why he was acting so strange?
Duncan stood on the curb and scowled at the cars on the road. Clive remained near the driver’s side door as if waiting for instructions, but he received none.
I waved him away. “Maybe give us just a minute, Clive,” I said.
He inclined his head. “Sure thing,” he said before opening the driver’s side door and lowering himself into the car once more.
Now that we were semi-alone, I approached Duncan. He kept his attention on the road, but his eyes shifted in my direction, letting me know he knew I was there.
“What was she talking about?” I asked. “What Pact?”
The side of his freshly shaven jaw ticked. “It’s nothing.”
I wasn’t going to let him brush this aside. It had been anything but nothing.
