Lily glanced between me and my father, then jogged after her mother, climbing into the passenger side just as the car disappeared back into the fog.
Silence descended over the driveway.
My father remained where he was, near the porch steps. He stared down at Mom’s roses. Some of them were upright, petals unfurling bravely in the cold morning air. Others were leaning, their roots clearly disturbed, clumps of soil scattered around them.
“I never knew,” he said, his voice almost lost under the sound of the surf. “About the trust. About you coming up here. Victoria always said… she said you didn’t care. That you were moving on. That… that your mother had made things difficult with the house and it was better if we just… worked around it.”
“Victoria said a lot of things, Dad,” I replied softly. “Maybe it’s time you started questioning them.”
He looked up at me then, his eyes brimming with something that looked suspiciously like shame.
“Your mother would be proud of you,” he said. “Standing your ground like this. She was always telling me you had more of a spine than either of us.”
I swallowed around the tightness in my throat. “I learned from the best.”