Page 74 of The Burning
“Same as Austin, world peace,” I said, mentally only half there, half in the past reliving every battle I’d ever had with my dad.
Sometimes I would argue with him over simple things like using the dishwasher on the wrong setting, but other times, there would be an explosion, like what happened with Kael. One thing never changed: whatever the fight or war was about, my brother would inevitably get a lesser punishment and better treatment than I would, no matter the circumstances. But for the last couple years, I had been a dutiful daughter, showing up like clockwork every single Tuesday for family dinner. Until recently when Kael encouraged me to set boundaries with my dad. Kael, Kael, Kael. If Kael had been here, he would have taken me out of this torturous room full of fake words and even phonier smiles.
“Did you make this cake?” Austin asked Estelle. He took a huge bite and crumbs fell from his lips.
“I wish!” She laughed, serving my father second to last. A highly unusual sequence. “It’s from a bakery just outside of post. Owned by an Army wife. Everything there is spectacular.”
“Yeah, this is good,” Austin agreed, speaking with his mouth still full.
My brother’s phone rang from the other room. He popped up and went into the living room to grab and answer it. His voice carried back into the quiet dining room.
“Yo, I’m almost done.” He paused. “Yeah, I’m here. You can come inside for a minute. I’m eating my birthday cake, but I’m almost done. Just come in for a sec.”
While my brother finished his call with whomever he had just invited in, I dug my fork into the icing, coating it, and almost took a bite until I smelled the citrus.
“Is this lemon cake?” I used my fork to poke the cream-colored dough with yellow speckles throughout. I could smell that it was.
Estelle nodded proudly, beaming. “Your father’s favorite.”
Of course, neither of them had remembered or cared that I not only hated lemon cake, but it made my throat itch and nose run. Though it was my birthday, none of that mattered since it was my dad’s favorite.
Austin looked at me when he put the phone down and took his seat at the table. I somehow knew who it was before he said it.
“It’s Martin.”
I looked to my dad, whose face hadn’t changed. I thought about my dad and Kael screaming at each other in my house, their words flying around my head as I began to slightly panic. I wondered again how much my brother really knew about Kael and my dad’s history. We all seemed to be talking around it, but avoiding the issue. The conflict.
Was Kael really going to come inside my father’s house? My dad appeared to be unmoved, but I wondered how he would react when Kael walked in. Would the smooth general sitting at the head of a big table stay unbothered, or would he turn into the shouting, unhinged man who was in my living room just weeks ago?
It wasn’t lost on me that he was eating the slice that happened to have my name written in neat green frosting. He tore into it, chomping with his mouth half open, crumbs falling from his thin lips onto his orange T-shirt.
Gross.
Kael’s impending arrival was having an effect on the way my father took up space in the room. His presence was shrinking and I felt more powerful, knowing that Kael wasn’t afraid of my him the way the rest of us were. I had no idea what would happen when Kael walked through my father’s front door.
A roaring noise interrupted the room, and everyone’s heads turned toward the living room window, where Kael’s rumbling Bronco could be seen pulling up.
“That’s him.” My brother looked at me. “We’ve got plenty of cake left,” he said, avoiding eye contact with our dad. From the little he knew about my father and Kael’s altercation, Austin had to be uneasy. I certainly was—I wanted to warn Kael, to rush outside and stop him from coming in, but I sat still, wanting to see just how long my father would continue to ignore the situation and pretend that the two of them didn’t have a screaming match in my living room just a few weeks ago.
I shot a glance at my father. “Yeah, we do have a lot of cake left. Don’t we, Dad?” I purposely poked at his faux calm.
The expressionif looks could killwas the only way to explain the way my father was glaring at me.
He wiped his mouth with his napkin, but missed a smear of bright-green frosting just below his lips.
He didn’t look away from me as he said, “Yes, we sure do.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Kael
“Fuck.” I tossed my phone onto the leather of the empty passenger seat.
Why wasn’t Fischer ready to come outside when he knew I was picking him up at nine and that I was never late? The agreement we’d made for the ride was that he would be waiting on the sidewalk when I pulled up. Joining their dysfunctional family birthday celebration was not a part of the plan, and Fischer knew I would not want to go in that damn house. He was the one who texted me before he even got there saying the wanted to get the hell out as early as he could. I instantly felt guilty for not texting Karina that I would be here. Now that we were back to talking regularly, I should have warned her that I would be stopping by, even if I hadn’t planned to come inside.
It annoyed the shit out of me that Karina was back here for a family dinner, but I knew it was to celebrate their birthdays. One thing about Fischer that I hoped the Army would kick out of him was his lack of consideration for other people. He wasn’t malicious about it; he was just fucking clueless at times. I’d die before I admitted it, but sometimes I wished I could be a little more like him and not carry the burden of always worrying about everyone else before myself. I had instinctively done that for as long as I could remember, and it was only becoming more of an issue the older I became.
Fischer didn’t know the gritty details of what went down with their dad and me, but he had to know that his sister and father had a strained dynamic, to put it lightly. Based on that alone he shouldn’t have asked me to come in—especially not if he knew that Mendoza’s mind and soul had been smashed by his own father; that would have devastated him. I knew how much Fischer loved Mendoza, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him.
