AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I take my time putting the finishing touches on Mom before I settle her into bed. If my dad wants to drop in unannounced, the least he can do is wait patiently for me to kick him right back out.
By the time I’m walking to the front gate, I’m jittery. This confrontation has been brewing for months, and I wasn’t sure it would ever come to a head. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel when the time did eventually come. Now, I have my answer.
Feisty.
It’s raining, and I told Matvei I didn’t need an umbrella, but he trails just behind me with one anyway.
“Thanks, Matvei,” I say before I step through the side gate. “I can take it from here.”
“Miss Laila?—”
I hold up my hand. “Stay close by if you want. If he so much as touches me, feel free to haul him off. Deal?”
He glances around like he expects Arsen to swoop out of the shadows and fire him at any moment. “Deal.”
I pat him on the back and walk through the gate.
My father has become some hulking, shadowy monster in my mind, always lurking on the edge of things, waiting to strike. But as I turn the corner and see him, he looks so much smaller than I remember.
He’s wearing a thick coat that’s a size too big. His hair is graying at the temples and his cheeks are caved in enough that I wonder if he isn’t sick, too.
“Charles.” I mean it to come out calm and confident, but it emerges in a squeak instead.
He pulls his hands out of his soaking wet coat pockets and turns to me, not even glancing at my huge stomach. “They wouldn’t let me in.”
“You need special clearance to enter.”
“I’m your father. That should be all the special clearance I need.”
So many things about him are so familiar. The way he moves, the sound of his voice, the way my heart tugs just a little at the mere sight of him.
But none of it changes what he’s done. Who he is. Who he’s shown himself to be.
“No, you’re not,” I say quietly. “I’ve never had a father.”
His eyes narrow. “Don’t be like that.”
“Don’t pretend like we have a relationship.”
“I wrote.”
“A couple birthday cards where you misspelled my name. I wouldn’t pat yourself on the back for that.”
His jaw flexes. “I called.”
“To speak to Mom.”
His eyes flick past me towards the house. “Where is she? Is she in there? You can’t keep me from my own wife.”
The snort comes out through my nose. “Last I checked, you divorced her because she got into a car accident that left her—how did you put it?—‘hideously disfigured.’”
“Who told you that?”
He didn’t know I was listening in. Good—I hope he dies ashamed of himself.
“If you have any decency at all, you’ll crawl back into the hole you came out of and leave us the hell alone.”
He lifts his chin high into the air. “Marie will want to see me.”
