Lights inside the Brown home flickered on in the back bedroom.

Jo rolled down her window, ignored the drizzle falling from the sky, and heard Blaze crying.

Jo straightened up in her car when the front door opened and Zanya stepped out of the home with Blaze in her arms. Dressed in a bathrobe, she bounced a cranky Blaze around in what appeared to be an effort to calm him down. She spoke to him in a quiet voice with words Jo couldn’t make out.

When the door opened a second time, Jo’s hand was on the car door handle, ready to step out.

Sheryl’s head peeked out, along with her hand, which held a bottle.

Zanya took the bottle, popped it in Blaze’s mouth, and turned to walk back in.

That was when Sheryl looked above her daughter’s head, and her gaze caught Jo’s.

Jo was lifting her hand to wave when Sheryl’s expression shifted from surprise to annoyance.

Zanya glanced over her shoulder and offered a weak smile before Sheryl pushed her through the door and closed it.

“Shit,” Jo cussed at the universe. The division in the family was already in full swing. The adults would take sides, leaving some with Ziggy and some on the street.

A curtain on the back bedroom shifted enough to know that someone was looking out.

Instead of driving off, she decided to hold out until Zoe showed up.

Jo knew her friend wasn’t sleeping in.

No, Zoe would be picking her words carefully and figuring out the best time to show up and confront the whole sordid mess.

Chapter Seventeen

Zoe watched the trees as they drove closer to the house. Each one felt like a countdown, a ticking clock to doom. It was just after ten in the morning. Early enough to ensure that everyone would be home, and late enough to know she hadn’t pulled anyone out of bed.

The thought of her mother sleeping beside her father made her physically ill. She silently prayed to find evidence of someone bunking on the broken-down couch.

The last quarter mile to the house, her head lifted, and she saw Jo’s squad car off the side of the road.

She attempted a smile.

Luke pulled alongside Jo and stopped.

Jo lowered her wire-rimmed sunglasses as she spoke. “You ready for this?”

“No.”

“You don’t have to—”

“We both know I do.” Zoe stared at the double-wide and felt like it was foreign to her. It might have stopped being her residence a decade ago, but now it didn’t even feel like a place she was welcome. And she’d yet to breach the front door.

“Do you want me to go in with you?”

Zoe shook her head. “Luke is coming in.” She wasn’t about to go in alone.

Bringing Jo in might prove grounds for all kinds of confrontation simply because of her uniform.

“I’m right out here.”

Zoe’s gaze skirted away from the house and to Jo. The weak smile on Jo’s face matched hers. She placed her hand on Luke’s thigh. “Let’s get this over with.”

The rain had let up, but clouds still filled the sky, and fog closed in the edges of the property. Fog always had a way of making the place look cleaner than it was.

Why that thought sprang into Zoe’s head as she stepped out of the car, she didn’t know.

Luke walked around the front of the truck and reached for her hand. She took it with more force than she expected.

“I’m right here.”

They walked up the steps in slow motion. She hesitated before knocking on the door. Before that moment in her life, a knock would always be followed by letting herself in.

Not today.

The curtains to the right of the door moved before she heard the doorknob rattle.

Zoe held her breath.

Zanya answered in silence. Zoe would have liked to say she saw something, some kind of communication in her sister’s eyes, but there was nothing.

Behind her baby sister, on the sofa that was older than dirt, Zoe’s eyes collided with her father.

Her heart skipped a beat, and physical pain threatened to cripple her knees.

The desire to hit the man ran side by side with her desire to turn and walk back out.

She didn’t do either.

Her mom stood at the edge of the couch in worn blue jeans and a white T-shirt. “You don’t have to knock,” she told her.

Zoe couldn’t look at her mom. Instead, she took in the man who stood as the poster child for deadbeat dad. He looked like the devil to her, but to the unknowing observer, he appeared handsome. Prison had given him gray hair and a trimmed beard. The lines on his face were soft as he stared, his eyes occasionally shifting to Luke. He’d stayed in shape in prison, not surprising when he had nothing better to do while locked away. He hadn’t aged. In fact, he looked healthier than when she’d last seen him. Forced sobriety was probably to blame. In contrast, her mother looked just this side of homeless. Hard living with no sure way of making it better had done that to Sheryl.

“Why are you here?” She directed the question to Ziggy.

“Well hello to you, too, sweet pea.”

Zoe swallowed hard, narrowed her focus. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“Zoe!” her mom warned.

Ziggy sat back, placed an arm on the back of the couch. “This is where I live.”

“Not in over seventeen years.”

“That’s part of my past, little girl. I’m a changed man.” He opened his arms. “Now come here and give me a proper greeting.”

Zoe stepped closer to Luke’s side and finally looked away. “What is he doing here, Mom? Help me understand.”