“I remember!” The pain and panic in my own voice shocked me. “I saw you. You pushed her away and—”
“And she slipped and fell! She hit her head on the damn rocks! It was an accident, Samantha. I never meant for her to get hurt. She just wouldn’t listen to me!” He stepped back, moving his hands over his head, tugging on the ends of his hair. “From the day you brought her home from school, I knew she was going to be a problem. And I did everything to keep you two apart.”
Besides the few moments he’d mentioned not liking my friendship, I remembered now. How turned off he’d been by my new friend. Not allowing her to sleep over, arguing with Mom—poor, naive Mom—when she went behind him and let Cassie stay. How standoffish he’d been to Cassie over the years, outright avoiding her whenever she was in the house or any talk of her.
I was going to hurl.
“Sit down.”
My body locked up, and my eyes darted around the room frantically.
“Sit down, Samantha.” His voice brooked no room for argument, and I sat on the edge of my bed, trembling. “You need to listen to me. What happened to Cassie was an accident. You have to believe me, princess. I never wanted anyone to get hurt.”
Tears spilled over my cheeks. Thoughts raced together dizzily, and terror shuttled through my body. I needed to find a way out of this, and even though he was my dad, Cassie deserved justice. God, she deserved so much more than what her life had become.
He moved toward me but stopped when I recoiled. “I especially never meant for you to get hurt. I didn’t even know you were there until it was too late.”
I lifted my gaze, seeing the face of a true stranger. A man I never really knew, capable of leaving one daughter to die after he’d killed another. “She was my sister.”
“Your half sister,” he corrected vehemently. “One night, Samantha, one night with her mother doesn’t make her your sister.”
“But she was your daughter!”
He crouched in front of me, taking a deep breath. “You are my daughter. Cassie…Cassie was a mistake.”
I shook my head, scooting back from him.
A dark, terrible look flickered in his eyes. “Cate and I had agreed to keep our affair a secret. She understood how much I faced losing if your mother ever found out. She’d divorce me, and I’d lose everything, Samantha—my marriage, my job, everything I’ve worked for!”
One horrifying puzzle piece clicked into another after another. The prenup—no doubt they had a clause involving cheating, leaving the one having the affair with nothing. And Dad had nothing without Mom and her money.
“I don’t know how she discovered it,” he continued, standing slowly. My thoughts went to the music box and its hidden slot. “But she did. She wanted me to acknowledge that I was her father, but you know that. You were at the cliff that night. You heard it all.”
Cassie had begged him to love her—to be her father and give her everything that he’d given me while I’d hidden behind the tree, fixated on the drama unfolding. Thinking back, I hadn’t been afraid. Just so damn angry that my dad had cheated—cheated like Del—and Cassie once again had been the center of it all. Part of me had even been relieved when Dad had refused, pleading with her to understand that he would never go public with the fact that he was her father.
She hadn’t backed down, and maybe what happened had been an accident. The rocks had been slippery, and it’d been dark. Either way, I’d seen Dad push her, and she’d slipped. The rocks had run red with her blood, just like the very first memory I’d had. And the horror I’d felt then, seeing my dad kneel over her prone body, was now rushing through me again.
“She was dead,” Dad said, watching my expression. “I checked. Her skull…she was dead, and I panicked.”
I’d been rooted to my spot in shock. Not making my presence known until he’d picked up Cassie…Anger squashed some of the fear. “You threw her off the cliff like garbage and then covered your tracks!”
He flinched. “There was nothing I could do! It would just be better if everyone thought it was an accident. Which it was!” His feet crunched over glass as he moved to the side, blocking the door. “And then you came running out from behind those damn trees. I didn’t know you were there, didn’t expect that Cassie had planned for you to hear everything.” His voice cracked. “And you slipped on the damp rocks and her…”
“Her blood,” I whispered, remembering how I’d screamed her name and then the terror when my feet moved out from underneath me, the sky tumbling over, the ground reaching up to catch me.
“You fell over the edge.” His voice was hoarse.
“And you left me there to die.” The hurt ran so deep I thought I’d drown in it.
“No! No.” He came forward fast, grasping my shoulders and giving me a little shake. “I climbed down the cliff and I checked. I swear, I didn’t think you were breathing. I checked your pulse. I couldn’t feel one, and you didn’t seem like you were breathing, and there was so much blood. Baby, I thought you were dead.”
I shuddered. The night I’d found out that I’d been writing the notes—the nightmare that had woken me up had been a memory of Dad. “You could’ve called the police! You could’ve done something!”
“I panicked!” he roared, his fingers digging into my shoulders. “I thought you were dead, too. And I just panicked!”
I tried to shake off his grasp. His touch made my skin crawl. He was my father—flesh and blood, but he’d left me in a panic. “There wasn’t a single moment afterward that you didn’t consider calling the police? Not once while I was missing?”
He looked me straight in the eye. “I took your phone, and I couldn’t…”
“You...” It hit me then, and I cried out. It wasn’t that he couldn’t call the police after the panic had subsided. It was that he wouldn’t. The deeds had already been done, and the risk had been too great. The truth of his affair would have come out, and he would’ve lost everything—and been charged with Cassie’s accidental death.
Money was more important to him. A relationship with his own daughter hadn’t been enough, and neither had been my life.
“I’m going to be sick,” I whispered.
Dad fingers loosened. “I’m so sorry.”