I drove to my father's house with the ship still in my clothes. The salt. The faint oil smell from the harbor. I hadn't changed. I hadn't done much of anything except sit in a hotel room and stare at the ceiling for two hours, and then get in my car.
I needed my father. That was the thought that kept me driving. I needed someone.
The Long mansion sat at the end of a private road lined with elm trees. I'd grown up running between those trees. I parked and walked straight to the front door and the housekeeper let me in without a word. She had that look people get when they know something is wrong but won't be the one to say it.
My father was in his study. Of course he was. Edmund Long spent his whole life in that room, behind that desk, with the world arranged in neat columns of assets and liabilities.
"Roselyn." He didn't stand. He looked at me over his reading glasses. "You look terrible."
"I found Deacon with someone," I said. "Antonella Perry. On the ship. She threw herself down the stairs and told him I pushed her. She said she was pregnant." My voice stayed flat. I had rehearsed this on the drive. "I want a divorce."
He took off his glasses. Set them on the desk.
He didn't say anything for a long moment. I watched his face move through things—not grief, not anger on my behalf. Something slower. Something that looked like math.
"The Shaw partnership closes in March," he said finally. "Do you understand what that means?"
"Dad—"
"Tens of millions, Roselyn." He said it quietly. The way you explain something to someone very slow. "The Shaw alliance is the most valuable thing this family has negotiated in twenty years."
I felt something go very still in my chest.
He stood. He walked to the side of his desk and opened the bottom drawer and took out his belt.
I had not seen that belt since I was twelve. But I knew it. I knew the sound the leather made when he doubled it over in his hand.
"Close the door," he said.
I didn't move.
He closed it himself.
The first one landed across my shoulders and I grabbed the arm of the chair in front of me and I did not make a sound. I had never made a sound in this house. Not when Presley pushed me into the pool and I went under and came up screaming and he stood at the edge and watched. Not during any of it.
I counted. I don't know why. It gave me something to do with my mind.
He spoke between each one. Low and measured. Like a lesson.
"You will go back to your husband." Three. "You will apologize." Six. "You will fix whatever you broke." Ten. "You are a Long. You do not walk away from things that are inconvenient." Fifteen.
My hands were shaking. I kept them locked on the chair.
"The Shaws chose you." Twenty. "That is worth more than your feelings about it." Twenty-five.
I pressed my forehead against the back of the chair. I breathed the way Dr. Hale taught me. In for four. Hold for four. Out for four.
Thirty.
He put the belt back in the drawer. He sat down. He picked up his glasses again.
"You can show yourself out," he said.
---
The hallway was dim. Late afternoon light came through the window at the far end and turned the carpet gold. I stood for a second with one hand against the wall because my back was on fire and my legs weren't fully reliable.
Presley was there.
She was leaning against the opposite wall like she'd been waiting. Her face arranged itself into something soft when she saw me. Eyes a little wide. Lips slightly parted. The performance of concern. She looked at me the way she always had—like I was a problem she was being generous enough to consider solving.
"Rosie," she said. "Oh. You don't look good."
I didn't say anything.
She pushed off the wall and tilted her head. "You know, I've been thinking. If you really can't handle it—the marriage, I mean—maybe it doesn't have to fall apart. Maybe there's just a different way to keep things together." A small, reasonable shrug. "I could step in. The family stays connected. Deacon gets someone who can manage things. It's practical."
I stared at her.
She looked back at me with the same expression she'd had at seven years old, watching me sink. Calm. Patient. Certain that whatever I had, she was owed.
I pushed off the wall. I walked past her without a word.
She called after me. "Think about it, Roselyn. I'm only trying to help."
I kept walking. My back burned with every step.
I did not look back.
