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Her head drops and she sucks in her lower lip again.
“What would you do?” she finally asks, looking at me with those big glossy eyes.
“My family and I aren’t you and your family. I have different feelings when it comes to… well everything,” I sigh, sliding my hand away from her face to take her hand. I look to the side before looking at her hard again. “But still, family is family. Despite all the shit we have to deal with in this convoluted world of ours.”
She hiccups out a laugh. “After I tried so hard to get away from him, I find it hard to think I will ever be going back willingly again. When my apartment got broken into… I was terrified it was him.”
I shake my head. “It wasn’t though, was it?”
“No, apparently it was a burglar in the area. He got caught somewhere else later and confessed,” she smiles sardonically. “One less thing to worry about.”
“One less thing,” I mimic, cementing that in her head so that the positive takes root. “So you won’t go see him because he pushed you away and because you ran away.”
I tap my free hand against the table.
“That’s putting it simply but it’s about right,” she says with a nod. “I ran away. I let him win but I also put that barrier there between us. Hell, I put a whole ocean between us. I ran away so hard they couldn’t find a way to easily contact me unless it was through third-party channels.”
She waves the letter that had been written by their lawyer.
“I even planned to change my name in the long run,” she whispers in horror. “It’s like… I never wanted to see them again. No, it isn’t just like that. It’s exactly that. I didn’t want to see or talk to them again. But now that choice is possibly taken out of my hands forever.”
She shakes her head.
“It’s fine, you don’t need to explain. I get it. Families like ours are… special,” I say dryly, causing Amelia to snort in amusement.
“That’s something they definitely are,” she whispers, that broken tone creeping back into her speech. “There was a specific situation….”
And I begin to see into a part of Amelia’s life that I know she has never shown anyone else.
CHAPTER 14
AMELIA
Ten years ago.
Dinner tonight is quiet, just the clink of silverware against the good China plateware as we supposedly celebrate my graduation. It doesn’t feel like a celebration though. I’m eighteen, too young to feel this apprehensive and worried about the things my father is spewing off about.
I don’t want to hear these talks of university that are already coming from my father’s mouth. I don’t want to see my mother nodding along even though I know she isn’t listening. She sips her wine lazily as she reads something under the table, like a fucking child hoping to avoid paying attention in class.
Papa doesn’t let me try to make conversation, he doesn’t let me cut him off and speak my mind. He never has, never will. My father isn’t one who listens to others’ needs. I begin to pick at my food, tired of sitting here being lectured on my own life. I don’t need him to tell me what I will be doing as an adult. He doesn’t have any right!
Eighteen years of repressed emotions burst from my body, and I slam down my fork. “Oh, shut up!”
He blinks in surprise. It isn’t the first time we have argued about school or my inability to do as he says. But it is the first time I’ve ever yelled at him like this. He places his silverware down slowly and leans back, resting his arms on his stomach waiting for me to continue.
“Do you even hear yourself talking?” I snarl. “You’re telling me what my life can be? What right do you have to do that?”
“I’m your father,” he says slowly, coldly, a tone I’ve grown used to over time. “I am telling you what you can be because I’ve laid down the bricks already.”
“Well fucking shove those bricks!” I spit and my mother gasps, finally looking up at the use of my foul language. “Who says I even want to follow you? Who says I even want to go to university? I’m eighteen! The most I know is that I want to go somewhere with a good art program.”
“You will not! You will not be wasted away at some useless art school when I need you to go to somewhere with prestige and use. That way your future husband will have a useful wife,” he stands to meet the volume of my fury.
“That’s the thing, Papa. You say you need me to go, you don’t even consider what I want. I don’t want to get married right out of university. I don’t want to get married in university either. Hell, I haven’t even dated yet!” I thrust my plate away, spilling some of the watered-down wine and storming off to my room.
The slam of my bedroom door echoes through the house, the house that’s always too big, always too quiet. The house that doesn’t feel love and has many servants, but everyone keeps their head bowed. No smiles pass the faces here.
I know my father has my future planned, that I will have no choice, so I do the only thing I’ve ever planned to do. I pull up the loose floorboard and draw out the fat wad of cash I’ve been hoarding, Money is the one thing I’m given by family every year. The only thing I’ve ever gotten from them that I view as useful. I press my lips together as I pull out a bag next.
