Page 37 of Claimed By my Father's Enemies
If it was a question you could’ve said no. This way is safer :)
I laugh. Out loud, alone and genuine.
I'm already typing yes when I remember. I can’t on Friday. I have a situation with Green Guerrilla that can’t be canceled.
I have a thing on Friday. Can we reschedule to Saturday?
The reply comes before I've set the phone down.
It's a date!
I put the phone down on the pillow beside me. I need a moment to gather my thoughts. And my racing heart.
And then the phone rings. I pick it up, without thinking, just wanting to hear Adrian’s teasing voice—
"We need to settle this inheritance thing once and for all." Paula's voice brings the cold with it and the smile dies in my lips.
Something in my stomach pulls tight and doesn't release.
"There's nothing to settle." I force my voice to sound firm. "I already told you my conditions. Have your lawyer draw up the document and I'll sign over everything." I take a deep breath in. "Unless you're having trouble finding one who puts up with you."
I know I'm being mean. But, right now, I can’t find the strength to care.
"You little—"
She stops.
One breath. Two. When she comes back her voice has gone honey-sweet, the shift so fast and so complete that the effect is worse than the usual screeching.
"I have a buyer for the house," she says. "Ready to go, cash, no waiting period. The number he is offering for it is significant. If you are reasonable we can split it."
"The house isn't negotiable." I sit up in bed. "You can have everything else. I don't care about the money."
The sweetness drops.
"You were always such a bitch." No pause, no wind-up. "Even as a kid. Snotty little thing. You never came back after you left. You deserve nothing for the way you treated your father. Not even coming to his funeral. What kind of daughter—"
"I don't owe you an explanation." My voice raises. I’ve given up trying to control it. "I don't owe you anything."
I stop.
I breathe.
My fingers are so clenched tight holding my phone that I can feel my pulse in them.
"You knew," I accuse. "You said nothing. You did nothing." One more breath, slow and deliberate. "That's what you get from me now. Nothing."
I hang up.
My heart is going too fast and my lungs aren't working correctly, too much air or not enough, I can't tell which. I try to stay in the present. The sheets under my hands. The morning light through the curtains.
I try not to go there.
I can't stop it.
The sound of leather. That specific crack, the one I heard so many times my body learned to tighten before it landed. Copper taste in my mouth. The sour smell of whiskey breath and the heavy silence before it started. The silence was somehow always the worst part.
I learned not to cry. Crying would please him. So I didn’t. I learned to make myself go somewhere else inside my head, to keep my body still, to produce no sound at all and to wait for it to be over.
