Page 8 of Salt in the Wound
My father’s gaze when he leveled it at me was intractable. “People trust us because we take care of their money, Isolde. There are certain necessary evils that come with that responsibility. Necessary evils that we must allow as a family.”
“But why should we? We’re called to be upright, to be salt of the world—”
“Save me your moralistic bullshit, Isolde. You area child, and you have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I was utterly stunned. My father might have been cool, he might have been distant and painfully exacting with my academic and social performances, but he never,everspoke to me like that. And hedefinitelynever would have before my mother died.
My father set down his fork and poured himself a full glass of wine, nearly to the brim. And then he drank the whole thing as if it were water.
I watched as he set the glass down a little too hard and then wiped his mouth with his napkin. “I didn’t want to have this conversation yet, but it’s just as well,” he said shortly. “It was no accident that you met Mark Trevena last night. You will be seeing much more of him over the coming months—and years.”
There was something in his tone—in his face—that made my skin prickle, my muscles tense. Danger. After years and years in the dojo, my body often recognized danger before my mind could catch up.
“I will?” I asked, unable to modulate the wariness in my voice.
“Yes,” my father said. “Because you are to marry him.”
four
Ilaughed. I actually laughed.
Because it was laughable. Because it was absurd.
Because it was the exact opposite of everything I wanted.
But my father didn’t laugh. He didn’t even smile. Instead, he poured himself another glass of wine and drank from it slowly, his eyes somewhere in the middle distance.
I stopped laughing. “You aren’t serious.”
“I suggest you accustom yourself to the idea,” he said tightly. “Because I am very serious.”
He was, I could see it all over him. As serious as he’d been about my grades, about me going to university. And an unpleasant feeling bloomed deep in the pit of my stomach. “Is this why you wouldn’t listen when I told you I wanted to take vows? Because you wanted me to marry some…some sex club owner?Why?”
“You are not taking any kind of vows, and I’m sick to death of hearing about it,” my father bit out. “I could kill Mortimer for filling your head with that nonsense. You are my only heir, the sole container in which all of my work and my father’s work and his father’s work before him will pour into, and it was never a question that you would carry on the bank in my stead once I retire. You can hardly do that with a vow of poverty, Isolde. You can hardly do anything interesting with your life if you choose to spend it mumbling prayers and scurrying about doing your uncle’s pointless little errands for a pointless, dying institution.”
Small trembles had accumulated under my skin. I knew my father didn’t want me to become a nun; I knew that as well as I knew his middle name or his birthday. But he’d never openly mocked me, never made my dreams sound stupid or gullible or small.
“It’s what I want to do,” I said, my nose stinging. I hated that I was so close to crying right now. I wanted to face my father with all my dignity armored around me, with logic and collectedness on my side. “It’s what I am called to do.”
“You are calledto be my daughter!” my father roared suddenly, slamming his fist onto the table and making all the dishes jump. “You are called to obeyme; you are called to heedme. And now I am telling you that you will marry Mark Trevena, and you will obey!”
“I will not,” I said and got to my feet. My voice was quivering, but I would not falter, I would not give in. Like Catherine of Siena, I knew my own destiny. “I’m eighteen. You can’t make me do anything I don’t want to do. You can cut me off from all your money, and I will thank you for making my vow of poverty even easier to take. You can kick me out, but I’ve already inherited Cashel House in Ireland, and I’ll go live there instead until I can find a monastery that will take me. There’s nothing you hold over me that can make me do this.”
I turned and left the room, my flats making a steady, even noise on the parquet wood of the penthouse floor.
I would not hurry or run. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
* * *
It wasnear midnight when I heard the knock at my door. It was a reluctant kind of sound—a tap instead of a rap—and it was only that small concession that made me say, “Come in.”
My father stepped in, his tie unknotted, his jacket off. His hair, normally aggressively smoothed, was sticking up at the top, as if he’d been running his fingers through it. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot. I suspected he’d been drinking this entire time.
He dropped himself in the chair by my desk. Though our penthouse was generous in its living space—by Manhattan standards, anyway—my room wasn’t spacious by any means. My father was close enough for me to smell his wine and sweat from where I sat against my headboard.
Father’s gaze found the picture on the edge of my desk—him, me, and Mum, smiling together at Disney World. We were all slightly sunburned and giddy with sugar, and behind us were balloons and castle spires and an unrelenting subtropical sky. I remembered knowing I was too old to do something like fall asleep on my mother’s shoulder during the Hall of Presidents show and doing it anyway, right in the middle of President Penley Luther’s speech. I remembered how it had felt to walk between them, all of us linking hands. I remembered thinking I had the best family in the world.
Three weeks after that, my mother had died in a car crash.
