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Or so I thought.
As soon as I decided I’d do better at another table, I took a step to the side and his eyes flew to my face.
Immediately, he stood, stepped behind the chair beside him, and pulled it out for me in invitation.
An invitation my body accepted before logic could reconsider.
Ares
Usually, I worked from home. But after the past week with Hope, and the weekend without her, I needed to be close to her. So, I went to the office to work.
Even if I barely saw her and she didn’t see me at all, she was close.
But now I needed to put physical distance between the train wreck that was my family and the perfection that was Hope.
Somehow, even before I looked at the screen, I knew who would be on the line.
I answered briskly. “Ares.”
She huffed out a breath of irritation. “Have you considered my request?
“Some.”
The truth was, her words coiled in the back of my mind, striking whenever and wherever I had a quiet moment. That first phone call, the night I met Hope, shook me to my core. The thread between me and my father, the one I believed I’d severed, had snapped taut between us with her bitter words.
“How much do you believe I owe him?”
“You owed him your gratitude. Your respect,” she hissed. “How much is that worth? I don’t know. But you never gave it to him. Seeing as you failed to repay him with gratitude, something that made the rest of us miserable, you can at least compensate us financially. Pay back what you owe. The lessons. The car. The apartment,” she spat, that last gift particularly galling to her.
“How exactly did my lack of gratitude make you miserable?”
“Because it made him miserable,” she hissed.
“Hm, I wonder why it made him so miserable?” I asked sardonically. “Do you think it was because you forced him to neglect the child given to him by the love of his life? Because you had to force him to focus on the children you gave him? Are you still, after forty-two years, jealous of my mother?”
My mouth twisted with distaste. For her. For myself. For the shade cast on half-siblings I barely knew but who never asked to be part of this. Should I not have grown beyond the need to skewer her with these digs?
Before she could respond, I continued. “I have an accountant working on it. Believe me. Nothing would make me happier than to further distance myself from you.”
I hung up before she could answer. Her venomous voice grated against my eardrums.
Resurrected echoes of years of the same.
Taking a deep, cleansing breath, the one thing I picked up in therapy, I threw in the towel for the day. And I needed to take myself away for the sweet temptation that was Hope.
Maybe later, I could put in some work at home. For now, I planned to play with Sia. Then, when she grew tired, watch some mind-numbing children’s programming while she fell asleep on my chest.
But I needed a palette cleanser before going home.
Giovanni’s offered exactly that. I sat with my cocoa and pulled out Hope’s book. I smiled. It was the second one I’d stolen from her. The first in a paranormal romance series. Just as spicy as the first book I ‘borrowed’.
I couldn’t get her out of my head. During the day, I focussed on my work. But as soon as my head hit the pillow, the same question surfaced over and over.
Could I glue enough of my pieces together to be a blessing rather than a burden?
Blessing.
My cousin’s voice broke into my memory. My translator. When Sia was born, she took her iPad to my grandparents’ home so they could see her.
