Page 32 of Life’s Too Short

God, the place was gross. Dad had always been a pack rat, but this was bad, even for him.

I wrinkled my nose at a bag of rotting trash by the front door that someone had pulled from the kitchen but never run to the curb. It was leaking from the bottom and sat in a putrid brown puddle. As usual there were stacks of random stuff everywhere. Shit he saw on the curb destined for the dump that he’d brought home with the grandiose plan of fixing it or using it somehow. It was ridiculous.

Normally I took off my shoes when I came into a house, but I wasn’t walking barefoot in here. “So, I see you’re shooting for a new personal best,” I said, stepping over a dirty, torn dog bed—which was interesting because Dad didn’t have any pets.

He spoke from the sofa like he was in pain. “Vanessa, I’m in an exceptional amount of discomfort. Your sister has relieved me of all my Percocet, and my back is killing me. I didn’t sleep a wink last night. If you’re going to give me a hard time, I’ll thank you to let yourself out.”

He’d injured his back last week tripping over something in the house. I told him to lock up the pills, which of course he didn’t do. I also told him to clean this place up, and he didn’t do that either.

I walked to the sofa and stood over him with my arms crossed. “Are you wondering why I’m here today?” I asked. When he didn’t bother to open his eyes or answer, I went on. “The police stopped by my apartment. Apparently they found your car wrapped around a tree this morning? Empty? Do you happen to know anything about that?”

He groaned and put an arm over his face.

“Are you injured?” I asked, irritated. “Do I need to take you to the hospital?”

“Fit as a fiddle,” he muttered.

“So you what? Just crashed it and ran?”

He didn’t answer me, and I kicked the footboard of the sofa. “Dad!”

He sat up slowly, wincing. “All right, all right. You have my attention. Happy?”

I glared at him.

“It wasn’t me,” he said. “It was Annabel. I wasn’t even there.”

I dropped my arms. “You lent her the car?” I stood there, my mouth agape. “Why the hell would you give it to her? She was probably high! And her license is suspended!”

“You don’t need that government-issued nonsense to drive,” he said, waving me off. “That’s just Big Brother’s way of making money off us for something a ten-year-old could do. What’s next? Mandatory GPS trackers in our brains that we’ll have the privilege of paying yearly fees for? Human barcodes? No thank you.”

I stared at him. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”

“Why would I be kidding? And I didn’t give her the car,” he said, rubbing his lower back. “She took it.”

“Without permission?”

He squinted up at me. “She’s a grown woman, Vanessa. She hardly needs my permission to leave the house—”

I gawked at him. “Wow. Just wow.” I shook my head, incredulous. “You know what? I’m done. You’re getting your shit together, Brent’s getting a job, and she’s going into rehab and not living here anymore until she does, do you understand me?” I jabbed a thumb into my chest. “I pay this mortgage. I make the payments on that car she just crashed. It’s registered under my name. I pay the insurance on it and the maintenance and now the repairs. And I do it so that you can get your life together and maybe Brent can have a way to get to a job if he ever decides to get one, not so Annabel can use it to endanger the general public. If you three think I’m going to enable this…this bullshit by continuing to fund it, you’ve lost your minds.”

I started snatching empty soda bottles off the coffee table and clutching them to my stomach. “She could have killed someone,” I said, fuming, bottles clinking against one another. “You’re lucky all she did was wrap it around a tree.” I stopped and glared at him. “Did she take money? And don’t lie to me.”

He looked indignant. “You cut her off. How else is she supposed to eat?”

“How much?” I demanded.

He waved a dismissive hand around. “Maybe a few twenties. And my phone,” he added. He bobbed his head. “And…”

I waited.

“Your mother’s wedding ring.”

Fucking fucking UGH!

I threw up my arm and stomped to the kitchen. I wanted to destroy something. Break a plate. Take a baseball bat to this whole fucking disgusting house.

He followed me as I dumped the bottles in the trash. “You know, it wouldn’t hurt you to have a little compassion for your sister,” he said to my back. “Addiction is a disease. And a mother deserves to see her child.”