Chapter 2

Leah’s POV

“What did he tell you?” I asked.

Ava wrapped her arms around herself and looked past me toward the doorway.

“He said you both understood that the first few months should be just for us. For him and his daughter. He also said…” She hesitated. “He said he’d never really been a father before.”

Ivy’s shoulders went rigid.

Mark came outside, walking quickly toward us.

“Ava, you don’t have to explain anything. Tonight was supposed to be for you, but they’re determined to make you feel guilty.”

“Stop speaking for her,” I said, stepping between them. “Let her answer.”

Ava didn’t look at me.

“Before I came, I asked if I would be disrupting your family. He said no. He said everyone had already agreed to the arrangement.”

“What arrangement?” Ivy asked.

Mark sighed as though she were forcing him to explain something obvious.

“I’m trying to make up for the years Ava lost. She missed nineteen years with me. You’ve already had so much.”

Ivy turned to face him.

“Then what were those twelve years?”

Mark opened his mouth. Ava waited for his answer too.

“Of course they mattered,” he said. “But it’s different. Ava is my biological daughter.”

After that, Ivy became strangely calm.

“So I only got to call you Dad because your real daughter hadn’t shown up yet?”

“Don’t twist my words,” Mark snapped. “You’re seventeen, Ivy. You can’t compete with Ava over everything.”

“She isn’t competing with me,” Ava said. “And I never asked you to give me her place.”

Mark’s face hardened.

“You just got here. You don’t understand how this family works.”

Ava didn’t defend herself again.

She stepped back toward the door, as if she had finally realized that Mark had planned more than a dinner tonight.

He had already decided what all three of us were supposed to say—and what each of us was expected to surrender.

I opened the passenger door for Ivy.

Mark followed us to the car.

“Where are you going?”

“A hotel. For two nights.”

“Over what she calls me?”

“So Ivy doesn’t have to spend the rest of the night listening to you calculate which daughter’s pain matters more.”

He gripped the edge of the car door, refusing to let me close it.

“If you take her away now, Ava will think she destroyed this family.”

“Then that’s another burden you’ve handed her.”

I waited until he let go before shutting the door.

Ivy stared out the window as I drove away. Two intersections passed before she spoke.

“I don’t blame Ava.”

I tightened my hands around the steering wheel.

“I know.”

“It doesn’t hurt because she came back,” Ivy said. “It hurts because Mark made those twelve years sound like practice. Now that his biological daughter is here, he doesn’t need me to play along anymore.”

I wanted to tell her she had never been anyone’s practice. But those words couldn’t undo what Mark had said tonight.

At the red light, Ivy held out her phone.

A message from Mark filled the screen. He had sent it that afternoon.

Sunday’s driving lesson is canceled. I’m taking Ava to do the things fathers and daughters are supposed to do together. You’ve already waited this long. One more week won’t hurt.

Sunday was Ivy’s last chance to practice before her driving test.