“And you didn’t want your older children mucking up the dynamic you have going?” I began to argue.
“I just want some damn peace for once, without your idiot brother trying to “borrow” more money from me or your looks of disapproval. I know exactly how she is,” he barked with that same tone he’d gotten from me. Quieter, he repeated. “I see it, Lume. I see her. She asked this of me, and I’m going to give her this.”
My lips pursed. Swallowing thickly, my face screwed up. I’d told myself this for years, since I’d sat in the crowd at their gaudy wedding thinking of my mom and watched him pledge to love another woman, one who liked to smirk and make snide remarks about everything, I hadn’t just buried Mom a few short years prior. The father I thought I’d known had been put to ground with her.
When silence greeted him from across the line, he rushed in to add, his voice that soft, cajoling tone he thought was apologetic but struck me as condescending, “You won’t find anywhere for the night right now. Everything is booked up,” meaning he’d checked, “but the cabin is.”
Quietly taking a few deep breaths, I closed my eyes. That big but was hanging there in the air. I already knew. “Where are the keys, Dad?” My voice was flat, as dead as the part of me that was still holding onto that last bit of hope that he’d just decimated.
“At the other cabin,” he admitted, “with Bethany.”
Something in the way he said that had me asking, “And where are you?”
At the uncomfortable laugh that left him, I had my answer.
Fuck.
“Where’s the cabin your family is at?” I asked woodenly.
As if my words didn’t hurt to say, my admission that they were his family, something I never would have said unless I was referring to all of us and he knew it, wasn’t clearly hinted enough at, he immediately perked up. “I’ll drop you a pin. Dougie showed me how.”
“Alright.” Clearing my throat, I swiped at the wetness quietly leaking from my burning eyes.
“That kid is something else, I tell you. Smart, you know? He’s turning nine next month, does more than I can with phones. It’s a wonder,” he said as if I didn’t know how old my own little brother was or that his phone had practically babysat him since birth. I’d never felt more like a stranger within my own family in my life.
With a noncommittal noise in my throat he thought nothing of, he went on.
Unlike Queen B thought, I knew my siblings as well as I knew not to leave anything sharp near Beau’s eldest, Beau Jr., who worried me, frankly, or leave my heels out of my suitcase when Max was in a dress up kind of mood. Dougie, dad’s eldest of his brood with the second wife, was phone smart but couldn’t be bothered with much else, unless it was green and hulked out or some bloody videogame. He was failing in school and may just repeat another grade.
I knew them, contrary to their apparent popular belief I was absent in their lives by my supposed own choosing.
“Okay, Dad, well, I got the pin. The weather is horrible right now. I’m going to talk to you later, alright? I need to focus on driving.”
The connection was awful. He was starting to cut out as I got the GPS set up and headed out towards the first stop on this crappy holiday trip.
I’ve been exiled to the family cabin.
“Call me when you get back- road- ‘kay-” I thought he said, then something about Bethany I couldn’t make out. His tone was almost urgent. I didn’t get it but whatever. I didn’t understand much of him nowadays, to be honest. I suppose I’d stopped trying.
After a few minutes of waiting to see if I could make out anything else, I hung up. Shrugging mentally, if it was important he’d call back.
Turning on the car stereo, I took out the Christmas CD in the player. I couldn't say I was in a very Christmas-y mood. Opting to listen to the music on my phone, I clicked on one of my playlists at random. Eyes on the road, I wasn’t really overly concerned with which one of the few playlists I’d made it was.
As “Devil in Disguise” started to play, Elvis’ familiar crooning voice coming out of the speakers, I had to laugh. Mom’s playlist. Tapping the roof, I laughed. If that wasn’t a sign, I thought, headed to meet with the devil herself.
“Thanks, Ma,” I said with a chuckle, shaking my head. And then, because why not, I quietly sang along.
Chapter 3
“What did he say this was for, again?” Bethany held the keys out but had her perfectly pink painted manicured nails curled around them possessively.
You mean, you don’t know, devil slag? I wanted to ask sweetly. I was too disappointed in the sperm donor to care at the moment, to be honest. Scrooged—that’s what I was feeling. I was done scrooged. I’d reached my limit.
I was just… done.
I’d gotten Dad’s text telling me to say the cabin was mine before I’d pulled up. While I found it curious, I just didn’t care to question it. If it sped things along, I’d tell her it was my secret lair and I was really a superhero. The idea he kept things from his wife didn’t surprise me in the least. He’d kept Bethany well-hidden enough from his first wife when she was alive, slowly dying of cancer, hadn’t he?
I shuddered to think what wifey two kept from him, honestly. Ugh.
“My cabin,” I said easily. It was scary how easily the words slipped from these lips. I’d gotten decent with this stuff over the years. I supposed I had my father to thank for that too, seeing as it came so naturally to him.
Damn, I had some deep daddy issues. And I wonder why I’m still single, I thought with an internal shake of my head.
“Yours?” Her eyebrow quirked.
I could make out the boys behind the door she held partially opened, her body blocking my entry, asking who was at the door. Disappearing behind it briefly, her voice was low but I could make out her telling them it was no one and to go play.
No one. I was no one.
When it happened again, I snatched the keys from her hand when she turned yet again to answer.
“Thanks, Bitchany!” I called jovially. Louder, I shouted, “I’ll be leaving the boys’ presents on the porch! Bye, fellas! Sissy loves you!!”
Whipping back around to watch me tromp down the stairs, retrieve the gifts for the boys to drop them off, she spluttered, gaping, “What did you just call me?”
Smiling, like nothing was amiss as little dark heads popped around her slim form, I waved. “You heard me,” I called out the second time she spluttered out her query.
I’d just signed the death warrant on my relationship with my father and brothers, but all things considered, how much longer did I have until Bethany had nipped all that in the bud? I was no one, after all.
Still, as I pulled out and drove away, those sweet little faces waving after my car excitedly, my heart lurched as my throat grew tight.
How long, though, I had to ask, until their mother’s poison settled in and they too gave in to her manipulations?
Chapter 4
Grabbing my bags out of the back of the car, I stood back to slam the hatch shut. Snow fell off the rooftop on my charcoal four door, tumbling to the ground to join the rest of that piling up white stuff already up to my tall snow boots. Standing out here less than ten minutes and my toes were already starting to prick. I supposed it wasn’t the best idea to go for the bargain buy when that could lead to regret; i.e. don’t buy cheap snow boots and then act surprised when you start to freeze your toes off in them. Oi.