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Then she walked out his door before he had a chance to tell her that she was worth everything to him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
VIVIAN CAME HOME from work on Monday, exhausted from a busy day, and checked her email. Among the “buy now” spam from stores, a couple of “hey, you” emails from friends and a note from her aunt Kitty, was a message from her father.
After their last conversation, he’d gone to ground and she’d assumed she wasn’t going to hear from him until he needed money—and he knew she had some to provide. He was either desperate for whatever spare pennies she might have, or…
Or Vivian wasn’t sure what else. As a child, she’d idolized her father and looked forward to all of their games. Then she’d realized what he was and had never really been able to go back to that wide-eyed adoration. But, sadly, neither had she been able to pull herself away from him entirely.
She contemplated the complete break she could make from him now, while hidden away in Chicago. Then, as all the other times she had contemplated ending their relationship, she thought about how much fun they’d had decorating their house for Christmas one year with playing cards on string. The mouse hovered over the delete button, then moved to the subject line and she clicked.
Her father had written the usual nonsense about how this job would be different, how he would be able to retire/pay her back/buy an island, blah, blah, blah. Not until the last paragraph of the novel did Vivian’s heart nearly leap out of her throat. “And I have some new business partners in Chicago. Since you’re not really working, maybe you’ll want in on this next venture.”
Her father had been studying up while AWOL from her life. Business partners. Venture. She’d almost believed he was legitimate, except that she knew he scraped a living by making people believe his lies.
And he was coming to Chicago.
It had always been a guarantee her father would find her. She wasn’t really trying to hide from him, only she didn’t want to have to listen to his pleas for money before she’d built up her energy stores again to tell him no. Over and over and over. She wanted to feel on firmer ground before he started knocking her about emotionally.
Nearly two months in Chicago and she was still skirting the same quicksand that had made her flee Las Vegas. Sure, she now had a job and Susan wouldn’t kick her out of the house while there was a grandchild in the mix, but the stable base she’d come to Chicago for was still having its foundation dug.
Some of this was her fault. Despite saying no to her dad’s pleas for money and ignoring his phone calls most of the time, she had given in enough that he believed she would give in completely, eventually. Because she always had. But now she was responsible for more than just her own well-being. She couldn’t let her father bleed her dry because then he’d bleed Jelly Bean dry, too.
Karl could protect her from her father. She could call Karl up, apologize for walking out on him, appeal to his sense of responsibility toward their child and move back into his apartment. She wouldn’t have to give up her job at Healthy Food if she moved back in with Karl. But she’d be right where she had been a month ago, relying on her husband for security rather than for love and companionship. She’d been trapped in that apartment then, and keeping a part-time job at her mother-in-law’s restaurant wouldn’t make her free this time.
“Hell,” she said to no one but herself as she logged out of her email. “Being free now is all in my mind.”
She was living in her mother-in-law’s house and working in her mother-in-law’s restaurant. The only difference between her current situation and the one she insisted she was too good for was that she couldn’t sleep in Karl’s warm bed with his expansive view of the city whenever she wanted to.
She could always look for a job that wasn’t dependent on the Mileks, but she liked working at Healthy Food. She liked seeing the same old Poles come in for their buffet dinner every night at five-thirty, and she liked the rotation of cops that came in throughout the day for a meal when they had a free moment. Stability and vibrancy danced together, amongst new immigrant and third-generation Americans alike.
