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“What does this have to do you with you?” Emily asks her father, who is standing as still as a statue, but I can practically feel his blood pressure rising from here.
“Emily, no marriage is perfect,” Ava starts.
I can’t help it—I laugh out loud after Ava starts that ridiculous sentence.
Ava pulls out a chair and slumps into it, so dramatic.
I warned him I’d tell her if they didn’t. Guess they think I’m bluffing. “You see, Emily. Your parents, so exacting in their standards for you and me, the ones who spent years telling you I’d be the one to cheat on you, ruin your life… Well, it turns out the two of them just like to project their bullshit onto everyone else.”
“Stop,” her father barks. Apparently, he is going to man up at the eleventh hour. “Emily, I had an affair. I cheated on your mother.”
Ava turns away from him in her chair and closes her eyes, playing the victim. She may have been a victim at one time, I’ll give her that. But, now she’s just as bad.
“What? When?” Emily swivels her head between her parents.
“It was a long time ago, it meant nothing, and it’s over. It’s all over with now,” the Major General says.
“Oh come on now, tell her the rest of it,” I add. We’re not doing this for six more years. It’s all coming out now. I will help Emily get through it, and we’ll bury it, bury all of it.
The Major General can’t help it and takes one step toward us, arms clenched at his side like he’d like to beat me senseless. I’m sure he would. Good luck, fucker.
“He slept with Kristy,” Ava blurts out, but she does it with such malice it’s clear she’s said it only to hurt her husband, to shame him in front of his daughter.
“Kristy?” Emily exclaims and turns her head to me. “Your mother?”
“Yep,” I confirm.
“What the fuck?” Emily roars. “Are you, are you serious?”
The Major General must not feel
he owes her an answer because he just locks eyes with her and grinds his jaw.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Emily barks at him.
“Watch your tone. I am still your father.”
I don’t know why fathers say this crap as if their sperm entitles them to respect, love, or loyalty even after they treat their kids worse than mafia bookies. Nothing is inherently owed to him, nor Stan.
Emily may share the Walker name, but that’s their only claim over her. And even that will one day be changing, if I have anything to say about it.
“When?” Emily asks them both.
“Around the time he left,” Ava points at me.
Emily pauses and tilts her head, “That’s what all the arguing was about back then. You weren’t fighting about me. You were fighting about each other.”
“He humiliated me, Emily. Sneaking around with that filthy home-wrecker for months,” Ava’s fists are balling up, the real Ava is coming to the surface.
“Months!” Emily shrieks.
“This changes nothing, Emily. Everything I said to you remains true,” the Major General attempts to retake control of the conversation.
“You’re, you’re the biggest hypocrite I’ve ever met! Of all the people, Dad, Cole’s mother? Jesus, just, why?”
“If you had listened to us, to begin with, none of this would have happened, Emily. Your father wouldn’t have had to go over there to drag you home, speak to Cole's father. We would never have met them! None of this would have happened if he, and his disgusting family, had never come around. But you had to defy us and go slumming,” Ava glares and points at me.
“Slumming?” Emily cries. “All these years, you lied to me, you told me you loved Cole. You were just lying to me, manipulating me!”
