My Cop Boyfriend Killed My Father

Chapter 6

After my grandfather's funeral, Ethan moved back in, and for a little while it felt like we'd gone back to how things used to be.

He even took some time off to come with me to my grandfather's house and clear it out.

I was gathering up my grandfather's clothes and everyday things, meaning to donate them.

Before I got far, I found a wooden chest pushed deep into the back of the closet. I opened it, and it was full of gifts, every one of them still wrapped. Some had sat there so long the paper had gone pale.

Ethan saw it too. He frowned a little. "Were these your grandfather's?"

I shook my head. "I've never seen them before."

I picked one up and found a shipping label on it. The sender line was blank, but the recipient line had my old nickname on it — Clara — written by hand.

And that handwriting. It was my father's. Arthur Smith. The man who'd walked out thirteen years ago.

I went completely still. I didn't know what to do with it.

My mother was a cop. She was killed on duty when I was six. My father raised me by himself after that, right up until I was twelve — and then one day he was just gone. No note, no trace. Thirteen years, and he never came back.

I'd spent all thirteen of them hating him.

Looking at the gifts in that chest, a memory came back to me from a long way off.

The first year after he disappeared.

On my birthday, my grandfather bought me a cake and asked me, careful about it, "If your dad ever came home — would that make you happy?"

"I don't have a dad," I'd told him.

So my father had sent me a birthday present every single year. And my grandfather had just quietly put them away, every time, so they wouldn't tear me open.

Something spread through my chest that I didn't have a word for.

Then the gift slipped gently out of my hands.

I came back to myself and saw Ethan holding it. He was staring at the handwriting on the label, and I couldn't read his face at all.

"Ethan. What is it?"

He glanced at me and handed it back. His voice was even. "Nothing. Let's keep going."

I nodded and went back to it.

When we were done, we went back to my grandfather's grave, left the things there for him, and finally went home.

Out on the balcony.

The hydrangeas were doing beautifully, and I turned around to call Ethan over to look at them.

Instead I caught him bent over his phone — locked in, serious, typing to someone.

Nothing like the way he was with me.

We'd been back together two days. I'd figured we'd slide right back into the way we used to be, easy and close.

I was wrong. I could feel him somewhere else. He was keeping something from me.

I pressed my lips together and drifted over, quiet, wanting to see who he was talking to.

But he was too sharp for that. Before I got close he locked the screen and looked up. "What's up?"

I opened my mouth, and then I didn't even know where to start.

So I made myself smile and shook my head. "Nothing. You... busy?"

"Yeah. Just some stuff at work."

He set the phone down. "I cut up some watermelon earlier — it's in the fridge. Let me get you some."

Ethan headed for the kitchen. I watched him go, and my eyes went down to his phone on their own.

The screen lit up again. Messages coming in one after another.

I couldn't see what they said. But I could see the name at the top. Grace Miller.

Something wrung my chest so hard I could barely breathe.

My head went to war with itself — pick up the phone and read them, or leave it alone.

Before I could land on either one, Ethan came back.

"Why are you just standing there?" His eyes ran over me, then went down to the phone.

"It keeps buzzing," I said. My voice came out tight. I watched his face, waiting for it to do something.

He just set the watermelon down, picked up the phone, and walked out onto the balcony, sliding the door shut behind him.

The glass cut his voice off completely. All I could do was watch the small curve come up at the corner of his mouth.

My heart went down fast, like something had torn open in it and let all the cold air rush in.

I could feel that Ethan loved me. And then sometimes I couldn't — like his heart had been cut clean down the middle, one half mine, the other half hers.

I made myself look away. I picked up a piece of that bright red watermelon and bit into it, and the tears came the second I did.

'He's such an i***t,' I thought. 'This watermelon he picked out — it's so bitter.'