Free Broken Hearts, Fences and Other Things to Mend by Katie Finn Page B

straight into the main
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    building, the classrooms surrounded by offi ces that hugged the
    perimeter. I reached my dad’s door and saw that it was ajar. I
    pushed it open slightly, and stepped one foot inside the offi ce. I
    saw my dad and Karen, sitting across from each other at their
    desks, which were pushed together, Karen writing something,
    my dad reading.
    I felt myself let out a sigh of relief. Hallie had no idea what
    she was talking about. They were just working together, that was
    obvious—
    My dad reached across the table, picked up Karen’s hand, and
    kissed it.
    As I watched in horror, she smiled without looking up from
    her book. It was clear this wasn’t the fi rst time it had happened.
    I backed away from the offi ce, then turned and ran into the
    lobby and out the doors, not stopping until I reached my bike. I
    had the same feeling I’d gotten during the spring play, when one
    of Sophie’s dance moves had gone wild, and she’d accidentally
    punched me in the stomach. This felt the same way— like all the
    wind had been knocked out of me, leaving me confused and gasp-
    ing and trying to fi gure out what had just happened.
    I skipped dinner that night and went to bed early, even though
    I didn’t sleep a wink.
    I was hurt and angry— but mostly, I was humiliated. Hallie
    had known about this, and I hadn’t. It had been an open secret
    that everyone else was aware of except me, who stupidly believed
    that my dad and Karen were just good friends, and that was why
    she was always around, having dinner with us every night. It
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    seemed so obvious now, and I wondered how long Karen and
    Hallie had been laughing at me, the oblivious one who clearly
    didn’t know what was happening with her own father.
    Like a movie I didn’t want to see but couldn’t seem to turn off,
    images from the last month were fl ashing through my mind,
    things I should have noticed from the very fi rst day. Like the fact
    my dad’s writer’s block was totally gone, and he’d started work-
    ing on a new novel, all about fi nding second love later in life, with
    the love interest a woman named Kara. The way he’d light up
    whenever Karen called or stopped by, and the way that all of his
    sentences seemed to start with “Karen said” or “Karen did” or
    “Do you know what Karen told me?”
    There was the way that he’d started to act like he was Hallie’s
    dad, too. Like when I’d asked him to buy me a journal at South-
    ampton Stationery, he went ahead and bought an identical one
    for her, even though she wasn’t there and hadn’t asked for it.
    While Karen was a perfectly nice person— before fi nding out
    about this, I’d even liked her— that didn’t mean that I wanted her
    to be the reason my parents didn’t get back together. After all,
    they had told me in the beginning of the summer that they weren’t
    getting divorced, and this was just temporary . Which meant Karen
    was a defi nite obstacle to that. How could my dad do the serious
    thinking he and my mom both told me they’d be doing if he was
    dating Karen? I knew things between my parents might not be
    perfect or go back to normal right away, but I also knew that they
    would have no chance if Karen was still in the picture. Which
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    meant she needed to be removed from the picture.
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    I decided that something had to be done.
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    It was something that, under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t
    even have been able to imagine. But these weren’t normal cir-
    cumstances. Was I supposed to just sit by and watch Karen wreck
    any chance of my family staying together?
    I wouldn’t be able to do it. But someone who was the