Season of Change(112)

                Grace followed at a slower pace, surveying the situation. A splotch of ice cream had fallen onto her blouse.

                Evy stared from one to the other. “Girls, get your things and bring them to the car. We’re leaving.”

                “No,” Grace replied calmly. She came to stand next to Slade, catching his free hand in her smaller one.

                Now he had two defenders. But for how long? And at what risk to their hearts?

                Faith stood between her two parents, clearly torn.

                Christine switched the hand she held him with to the left and draped her right arm over Grace. “What’s this about?”

                Evy stormed forward, a lioness about to pounce on prey. “Girls, I told you not to listen to anything your dad said. I told you to use your defenses.”

                “What defenses?” Slade felt the first spiky stirrings of anger.

                “And look at you. He got to you, didn’t he? You talked!”

                “You told them not to talk to me?” Anger solidified into a brittle, icy voice he barely recognized as his own.

                “Of course I did. Don’t look at him for permission.” Evy snapped at Faith, who was staring apologetically at Slade. “I said get your things.”

                “Don’t move, Faith.” Slade had let his lawyer fight this battle for too long. Evy had instructed their girls to keep their distance? He’d instruct them to stay. “Your mother has some explaining to do.”

                “You want an explanation?” Evy’s stance shifted toward a new target. Him. “I knew I shouldn’t have left them with you. I knew you’d brainwash them, just like your father did to you.” She glared at their daughters. Her voice rose to operalike hysteria. “Did he try to make you hurt yourself? Did he?”

                He’d made a tactical error, assuming she’d told the girls how to behave around him out of some vendetta. Evy thought she was protecting the girls. She viewed him as a threat to their safety. Slade saw what was coming, saw it playing out in grisly detail. “Evy, please.”

                But his ex was past the point of reason. She looked across the drive at Slade’s friends, at his neighbors, and then back to Christine. “He’s not who you think he is.”

                That got a shift in the crowd.

                “Evy, don’t.” Slade felt Grace’s grip and Christine’s tighten on his hands, but his body was already starting to feel numb.

                “Where did he tell you that scar came from? The one he hides? A mugger?” Evy laughed bitterly as she stalked toward them, her heels clicking on the pavement. “The day his father tried to kill himself, Slade tried to hang himself, too.”

                The crowd at Takata’s was eerily silent.

                Flynn broke away from the pack, shaking his head.

                Christine squeezed Slade’s hand tighter.

                Faith and Grace? Faith looked as if she was going to cry. Grace stood her ground.

                They know.

                Those first few days when they got here, not talking, the wary looks. It wasn’t just their mother telling them to give him the silent treatment to make him suffer. “You told them?” Slade felt as unstable as if the earth was shifting beneath his feet. “You told the girls what happened?”