“Don’t call me stupid,” she scolded, sounding bossier than she had over the past month or so. Look at sweet little Ellie, growing a backbone.
“Your father wants you in his office,” Ellie said.
“Yeah? Well, I’m busy.” I walked over to my desk and went to grab my headphones. Before I could, Ellie snatched them away.
What was it with this woman? Did my father just install a bossy chip into her brain?
Ellie placed one hand against her hip. “No, you’re not. Now get going to your father’s office.”
“Why?”
“Because we know.”
“Know what?”
“Youknowwhat weknow,” Ellie said, narrowing her eyes and waving a dramatic finger my way.
“Or... I don’t,” I lied. I was such a big liar. I used to bemore honest. Maybe that was what grief did, too. Turned a person into something they’d never been before.
Ellie placed her other hand against her other hip. “Karla, come on. You can drop the act.”
I swallowed hard, trying to still be strong when all I wanted to do was melt into a pile of nothingness. It would’ve been nice to be a pile of nothing. “Listen, I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I’m getting sick of this roundabout accusation stuff, so either spit it out or leave my room.”
“You haven’t been to school in weeks, Karla,” a deep, disgruntled voice snapped. I looked up to see Dad standing in the doorway of my bedroom. His eyes were packed with a rage I hadn’t witnessed, well... ever. His chest rose and fell with each breath he took. “That’s what she’s talking about. That’s what we need to discuss.” He turned to Ellie, not dropping the intensity of his tone, and said, “I’ll take it from here, Eleanor.”
Whew.
He used her government name.
She was going to be fired come morning.
About time.
I’d been getting a little irritated at how hard it was to keep being mean toward Ellie. She might’ve been annoyingly beautiful and painfully naive, but she wasn’t as bad as the other nannies. Lorelai liked her. My little sister laughed a lot more with Ellie around. Our house hadn’t had laughter in a while. The sound almost felt foreign when it filled the hallways. I didn’t know it could still vibrate off the walls.
Still, I didn’t need a nanny. I needed to be left alone. And with one extra person—Ellie—out of the picture, I could go back to fully embracing my miserable self again without a happy-go-lucky puppy of a person always trying to smile at meand ask me how I’d been doing. Uncle Landon already texted me daily asking me how my heart was doing. I didn’t need Ellie doing the same check-ins with me.
I did feel a little bad for Lorelai, though. Ellie was good for my sister. Out of Dad, Lorelai, and me, my little sister was the one who was the most... normal. She was probably thrilled to have another normal-ish person around with Ellie. Even though I was a crappy person, I didn’t want to be a crappy sister, too. Lorelai deserved at least a little bit of light in her life. And I just diminished the light by getting Ellie in trouble.Oh well.Hopefully the next nanny wasn’t as much of a pushover.
After Ellie saw herself out of my room, Dad kept his eyes on me. His arms were crossed over his broad chest, and his nostrils flared with every weighted breath he took.
“Where were you going, Karla?” he questioned.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter,” he said with an edge to his words. “You’ve missed so much school! You’ve been God knows where doing God knows what—so tell me! Tell me where you went!” he yelled, but the words almost came out as a plea. As if he was begging to understand me, which threw me for a loop.
Since when did he start caring again?
I felt sick as my dad stared at me like he was my dad again. My mind didn’t know how to wrap itself around that concept, because for months now, it had felt like he was nothing more than a man with a title, not a man who actually performed the task of being a parent.
Now with Dad scolding me for my bad behavior, I felt conflicting emotions. I was annoyed with him for thinking that after all this time, he could punish me. At the same time, for a split second, I had my dad back again, even if it meant him being filled with rage and disappointment.
His jaw tightened with tension as his frustration filled the room. I felt tiny beside him. Minuscule. Almost nonexistent.
“Karla Marie East, where were you?” he asked again, usingmyfull government name.
I was going to be grounded. But who cared? It wasn’t like I had a booming social life.
