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Finally, Dad’s eyes landed on me. He glanced down at my hands, shaking in my lap, before meeting my eyes again. “It’s your turn to chew me out.”
“So… you were in gambling debt to the tune of $2 million—”
“Vera.”
“—and you decided that your number one priority was to fund your girlfriend’s plastic surgery instead of paying your daughter’s tuition.”
I stared at him, stupidly waiting for an answer that would never come.
Finally, I stood and asked the question I’d been too scared to ask for years. “Do you hate me?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Vera,” he responded, voice clipped and filled with tension.
“I’m not being ridiculous. It’s a genuine question. Do you hate me?”
“I don’t hate you. I could never hate you.”
“But?”
He shook his head. “There is no but.”
“There has to be. You resent me at the very least.”
He clammed up—mouth pinching together tightly as he attempted to hold back whatever truth he’d been clinging to.
“I’m not doing this with you, Vera,” he said before walking off. I should’ve let him go, but I didn’t, because a deep, unhealed part of me felt I hadn’t been punished enough.
I found him pacing on the porch. “Just say it.”
He scrubbed his face as he paced. “Go pack your room, Vera.”
My throat gripped in anguish. “Tell me you hate me. Tell me you resent me. Hell, I don’t care, just tell me the fucking truth!”
His resistance cracked. “Fine! You want the truth, Vera?”
“I do,” I said painfully.
He stopped pacing long enough to jam a finger in my direction. “You’re the reason your mother’s dead, and I have spent years trying to get over it.”
For a moment, I thought hearing it would hurt more, but he hadn’t told me anything I hadn’t already told myself for the past seven years.
“You are a selfish, entitled brat who only thinks of herself. You wanted to be a superstar so badly that it took your mother away from us! She never wanted the industry life for you because she knew what could happen. She knew that someone as talented and beautiful as you would be taken advantage of. It didn’t matter if you were a fucking Gray. Bo wouldn’t be able to protect you from everything!” he exclaimed, throwing his hands out to the side.
I nodded and wiped away my tears.
“Your mother knew this! But no. You and Bo thought you knew best. And despite your mother’s fears and reservations, she didn’t try to dim your light. She just grew sick with worry as you became someone she didn’t recognize. When she looked at you, she no longer saw her teenage daughter. She saw an industry pawn.”
My breath caught in my throat.
Now… that hurt.
“She died because no one could tell Verydian Gray no. God could’ve told you no, and you would’ve lifted a middle finger to the sky. She told you she couldn’t make it to your show, and what did you do?” he asked, narrowing his eyes. “You guilt-tripped her so badly that she started questioning if she was a decent mom. She relented, and the next thing I knew, I received a phone call in the middle of the night that my wife was dead, Vera! A drunk driver killed her, and there wasn’t even enough of her remaining to put her in a casket.
“So, no, Vera. I don’t hate you, but—” He stopped, choking on his words. “But sometimes… I get so angry because you never stopped being you. You never gave up the fame; you just chased it from the shadows like a coward. You took your mother’s death and wrote all those fucked up songs that went Diamond and Platinum and earned you two Grammys.
“I don’t hate you. I hate myself for standing by and allowing your grandfather to mold you into his own musical Frankenstein. I hate the monster you’d become. I hate that you won’t even live in your truth because that means your mother’s death was for nothing.”
I nodded and wiped the snot from under my nose on the back of my hand. He stood there with a horrified expression, as if he wished he could take back every word. But there was no way to unring that bell.
