44. Delaney
DELANEY
The gravel shifts under my boots as I step off the porch and keep walking.
If I stop, I’ll think, and if I think, I’ll break.
Samson follows me. “Delaney—”
“Don’t.” The word comes out sharper than I mean it to. I keep walking down the path and toward the car.
Anywhere but that porch.
“You’re not walking away from this,” he says.
I almost laugh.
Almost.
Because I’ve been walking away from this my entire life. I just didn’t call it that.
I reach the car and stop. Not because I want to, but because I have to. Samson has the key fob, and I’m not going to keep walking when I have no idea where I’m going.
The words.
The look on that man’s face.
You’ve got his eyes.
I grip the top of the car door.
Something I can hold onto.
“Look at me,” Samson says.
“No.”
“Delaney—”
I turn then. “You don’t get to push this right now,” I say. “Not like that.”
“Then tell me what’s going on.”
I can’t. I can’t tell him. Because I don’t have an answer that doesn’t change everything. And I know it.
I’ve always known it.
That’s the problem.
That’s always been the problem.
I look away, above the car, just for a second.
That’s all it takes.
The memory comes back.
The door.
Always the door.
Him standing outside it.
Never stepping in.
My mother’s voice, angry in a way she never was with anyone else.
Don’t come here.
Don’t ask questions.
“You knew him,” Samson says.
I shake my head. “No.”
That part is true.
“I didn’t know him.”
“Then why—”
“Stop.”
I close my eyes. No. Not now. I can’t slip up now.
Halstead is a name. A case. A man.
Nothing else.
That’s how I made it work.
If I thought about him as anything else, I wouldn’t have been able to do this. Wouldn’t have been able to look at files. At photos. At the way he died. At the way—
My stomach turns.
I swallow hard.
I open my eyes and look at him.
Really look at him.
The man who stood on that dock.
The man who didn’t hesitate.
The man who put his hands on me and didn’t stop.
The man I didn’t stop.
The man I chose.
And the man who killed him.
“You need to tell me,” Samson says. His voice is lower now.
I laugh, not because anything is funny. Because I don’t know what else to do. “Do you think this is about your brother?”
He wrinkles his forehead. “What?”
“That’s what you’re worried about, right? Nathaniel. The lawyer. What he knew. What he didn’t tell you.”
“That matters.”
“Not like this.”
“Then what—”
I cut him off with a gesture because I can’t hold it all in anymore. It’s already breaking. Because the second that man looked at me, said I had his eyes, it was over.
“I knew,” I say.
“What?”
I shake my head. “It wasn’t clear. Not something you say out loud.”
“Delaney, you’re not making sense.”
“I had pieces,” I continue. “Things that didn’t line up unless I let them.” My throat tightens but I force the words through anyway. “My mother wouldn’t talk about him. Wouldn’t let me ask. Ever. Not once.”
Samson doesn’t interrupt.
Good.
Because if he does I might stop and not be able to start again.
“There were visits,” I say. “Not many. Not obvious. Always outside. And only until I was about three or four.”
The memory hits again. The door. The line he never crossed.
“I thought—” I stop.
Swallow.
Try again.
“I thought he was someone she knew. Someone from before. Someone she didn’t want me asking about.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
I hold up my hand. I don’t need him finishing that thought. Because I’ve already lived in that space.
“I didn’t say it,” I continue. “Not once. Not in my head. Not out loud.”
“Why?”
“Because if I did, it changed everything. If I thought ‘my father,’ I became something else.”
His gaze locks on mine. “What?”
“A daughter,” I say. “And daughters don’t do this. They don’t build cases. They don’t stand over evidence. They don’t—” I gulp. “They’re supposed to grieve. I couldn’t afford that. I needed him to be simply Halstead. A name. A file.”
Samson doesn’t move.
Doesn’t speak.
He’s watching me like he’s seeing something he didn’t expect. Something he doesn’t know how to handle.
Good.
Now he knows how it feels.
“And now?” he asks, his voice low.
“Now,” I say, “I don’t get that choice anymore because everything has changed.”
He clears his throat. “What changed?”
“I slept with the man who killed him.”
There’s no walking that back. No softening it. No pretending it’s anything else.
“Delaney—”
“He was my father.”