“Talk about what?”
He licked his lips. “About us.”
“There is no us.”
His face twitched. “Kayla—”
“No. You don’t get to come back because your little performance fell apart.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
She looked at him with a fierceness that made even me straighten. “You told me I had expired.”
He looked away. “I was angry.”
“You were a self-centered jerk. You still are.”
Lydia crossed her arms, silent.
Dad tried again. “I just thought… I thought I could start over.”
Mom didn’t change expression. “You didn’t leave because I expired. You left because you thought you never would.”
The room went completely still.
For the first time in my life, I saw my father with nothing left—no script, no image, no angle. Just a small, foolish man sitting in the wreckage of his own vanity.
