Glancing at the clock on the nightstand, I saw that it was barely after midnight. Annabelle had gone to bed just after ten and Mieke hadn’t been far behind her. Tomorrow was Thursday and my daughter needed to go to school, especially since she’d missed so much of it by going out to California. I’d kissed Mieke goodnight and then gone into the room Annabelle had so graciously given me. I knew how lucky I was that she had let me stay with her. She could have told me to fuck off and get a hotel room, but thankfully she hadn’t. I didn’t know if it was because of Mieke…or if maybe she wanted me around, too.

A man could hope.

A quick shower and then I’d flopped down on the comfortable mattress. I hadn’t moved since. Just lain there staring at the ceiling as so many thoughts ran through my head.

Wanting to see Michelle’s grave was the one that stuck out the most. Maybe put some flowers on my grandparents’, too, while I was there. I wanted to tell them and my baby girl how sorry I was that I hadn’t been strong enough to face my mistakes and beg Annabelle for forgiveness—beg for another chance after fucking up so badly seventeen years ago. I wanted Michelle to know that even though I hadn’t gotten to hold her—fuck, I wished I’d gotten the chance to hold her just once—that I loved her just as much as I did her sister.

I wanted to tell my gram that I was sorry I hadn’t been the man she and Gramps had raised me to be. I wanted to beg her for forgiveness for all the things I’d done to mess up so many innocent lives. But what I really wanted was for her to hug me one last time and tell me that even though I’d screwed up, that she still loved me.

My chest started to tighten to the point that I could barely draw in a breath. Tears stung my nose and eyes, but I blinked them away. My OCD was suddenly going off-the-charts crazy, and without realizing it, I started tapping my fingers on my chest. Fourteen. Fourteen. Four-fucking-teen. Why did it have to be fourteen? Why couldn’t it have been three? Why couldn’t it have been nothing? Fuck, I just wanted it to stop. Nothing had ever helped. Not the meds that I’d been given as a kid, not the therapist I’d tried when everything felt like it was so fucking out of control.

The only thing that had ever helped was Annabelle. For seventeen years I’d been without her and suffered through one out -of -control -OCD episode after another. The world probably thought I was insane. I’d have to agree with them.

Gasping for breath, I jerked out of bed and stumbled across the room. With shaking fingers I managed to open the door and went straight to the closed door of Annabelle’s bedroom. I didn’t knock. There was no time. I needed her. Now.

As soon as I was inside her room, the scent that was so uniquely her own filled my nose and some of the tightness eased in my chest. Not nearly enough to calm me. Moving forward, I headed straight for her bed in the middle of the room.

Before I could reach it, Annabelle gasped and pushed herself up on the bed. Reaching for the lamp on her nightstand, she quickly snapped it on, her eyes searching the room frantically until they landed on mine. “Z?” Her voice was overflowing with concern and I fell to my knees beside her bed. I buried my face in the comforter, hiding the tears that I could no longer keep at bay. My hands clenched her covers and I swallowed back one sob after another.

Soft, soothing hands stroked through my hair. “Z, what’s wrong?” she whispered. “You’re scaring me.”

That was the last thing I wanted to do. Lifting my head, I let her see my tears as I tried to find my voice to tell her what I needed. “I want… No, I need to see Michelle’s grave.”

Her eyes widened. “Now?”

My throat was closing up again so I nodded. Annabelle’s hand moved from my hair to cup my jaw, scruffy with a day’s worth of beard. “Are you sure?” I nodded again and her eyes filled with understanding. “Okay. Let’s go. Get dressed and meet me downstairs.”

Scrubbing the back of one hand over my face, I stood on shaky legs and hurried back to my room. I grabbed the first thing I saw, jeans and a white tank. It was probably chilly out, but I didn’t waste time by looking for a jacket in my luggage. I pulled my boots on without bothering with socks and then quietly descended the stairs.

Annabelle was already waiting there. She was in sweats and a hoodie with a large throw folded and draped over her arm. She had her keys in her other hand and her purse tossed over her shoulder. She lifted a finger to her lips as soon as I reached her. “Mieke will be okay while we’re gone, but if she wakes up before we leave she’s going to want to go with us. It’s always harder on me to visit Michelle when Mieke is with me,” she murmured quietly.

I nodded and followed her into the garage. A new red Tahoe was parked beside a cute, girly Jeep that I knew was Mieke’s. She’d told me Noah had bought it for her for her sixteenth birthday. Guilt and something else—pure, agonizing jealousy—churned in my stomach. It should have been me who had given Mieke her first vehicle. It should have been me buying her everything she needed, wanted, and spoiling her rotten.

Annabelle climbed behind the wheel of the Tahoe and opened the garage door, and then started the large SUV. I climbed in on the passenger side and she shot me a grim smile before backing out. Once she was on the street, she hit the button to close the garage and turned in the direction of West Bridge.

Neither of us spoke for the longest time, but with each minute I didn’t say anything, I saw her tense a little more. Blowing out a sigh, she glanced at me once before turning her eyes back to the nearly empty road. “I sold your old truck. It broke down on the highway one day when I was on my way to one of my doctor’s appointments. So I had Noah sell it to some junk yard that used it for parts.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that, and I didn’t think she really wanted me to. She just needed to talk, so I let her. All the way down to West Bridge she talked about random things. Like how Mieke had dared her to put the hot-pink streaks in her hair, but the joke had been on Mieke when Annabelle realized she liked the streaks and continued to get them touched up every month.

I was so enthralled with what she was saying that I was surprised when Annabelle pulled to a stop in a church parking lot. Reluctantly I turned my eyes away from Annabelle’s profile and looked out the windshield at the graveyard just beyond the church. I knew this place well. I remembered standing here, holding Annabelle’s hand when she buried her father, and her doing the same when my mother had died of breast cancer. I remembered coming here and watching as my grandmother had been lowered into the ground beside her daughter and doing the same just a few weeks later with my gramps.

Somewhere out there in that graveyard was my baby girl.

I closed my eyes and sucked in several deep breaths. When the passenger-side door opened, I snapped my eyes open and found Annabelle standing there, holding out her hand to me. Her eyes were so sad, glazed with tears that mirrored my own. “They say the first time is always the hardest,” she assured me. “And I wish I could tell you that each time gets a little easier, but honestly for me, it never has.” She lowered her eyes to the blanket draped over her arm, but still held out her hand, waiting for me to take it. “I usually bring a blanket and spread it on the ground beside her headstone. I lie there and put my hand over where I think she is resting and pretend I’m rubbing her back.”

A tear spilled from her right eye and the sight unglued me. I jumped down from the SUV and wrapped my arms around her. I hugged her against me, wanting to take away all the pain that I’d seen in her blue eyes. Quietly I closed the door and lifted her into my arms, tucking her head against my chest. I remembered where her father was buried, and since she’d told me she’d put Michelle next to him, that was the direction I started walking.