“Hey, before you go,” he reached into his pant pockets. “I wrote you back. Try to relax. I'll call you later.”
Cole handed Tristan a small folded up note. Tristan took the note as a small smile formed on her face. As Cole turned to head downstairs, Tristan sneakily tore the piece of newspaper from the book and stuffed it into her school sweater's front pocket. Cole offered to walk Tristan to the door. As the pair walked down the stairs, they were greeted by a set of angry eyes. Jack’s face was a ruddy shade of red as he saw his daughter walking down the stairs with the boy. Jack didn’t care if he knew the boy as well as his own son. His daughter was only fifteen. Entirely too young to have a boyfriend in his eyes. Jack decided that he would need to keep a close eye on the youngest Piedmonte boy.
"Hello Father," greeted Tristan coolly, as she followed her older brothers out the front door. Meanwhile, Jack waved goodbye to the members of the Piedmonte family, expressing a firm goodbye to Cole.
*
The heavy oak door of the Morrow residence burst open and Tristan walked in with purpose clear in her step. Her face showed no emotion, but her posture gave her anger away. No one said anything to her in the car, they have all come to the realization that a conversation with Tristan when she is angry will do them no good. It is always best to just let her cool down. In the car, as everyone talked loudly over the radio, Tristan just looked out her window, ignoring the laughter, jokes, and conversation. Occasionally she would get a worried glance from Adam, but she ignored that too.
As she walked in the foyer, Liam and Blake followed close behind her and watched as she walked up the steps. Liam turned to his brother, irritation clear in his face.
"What the hell happened?!" Liam demanded.
Blake looked cross with his older brother."How the hell am I supposed to know? She went up to the den with Cole and came down furious!"
"And the thought never occurred to check on your fifteen-year-old sister with your buddy?"
"No. It's Cole. Why would I?"
Tommy brushed by them, as he came through the door.
"It's not Cole that she's pissed at. Didn't you see how they parted? She smiled at him, but gave Dad a nasty look."
Jack entered the house with bags of groceries that he had purchased while the kids were at the birthday party. Seeing the boys huddled together, he snapped.
"Knock it off! Don't you have homework to do?!" Jack yelled at Tommy, Blake and Shane as he angrily passed the grocery bags to Liam. Liam placed the heavy bags in the kitchen and Adam put them away to escape his father’s wrath. Jack walked to the foot of the steps, looking expectantly up to the second floor landing.
"Tristan!"
No answer. He called again, "Tristan! Come down here! I want to talk to you." A door slammed hard on the second floor followed by a series of footsteps. Tristan appeared at top of the stairs with a murderous look present on her face.
"What, Dad?" asked Tristan impatiently.
"Don't ‘what’ me! Get down here! What the hell is going on with you?!"
Tristan stomped down the steps towards her father. They were alone, and both of them were upset. This was not going to go well. Tristan approached her father until they were just a few feet from one another.
"I do not like being lied to," explained Tristan, looking her father dead in the eye.
"Baby, who has lied to you?" asked Jack, with a worried look on his face.
"As if you don't know," replied Tristan.
Tristan reached into her scarlet Steeplechase sweater and pulled out the folded up news page. "When were you planning on tell me about this?"
Jack's face scrunched into a perplexed expression, he honestly did not know what his daughter was handing him, nor what she was upset about. Jack took the paper from Tristan and slowly unfolded it. The look on his face slowly evolved from confusion to anger, and finally gave way to fear.
"Where did you get this?" Jack asked, anger clear in his voice.
"I stumbled upon it in a scrapbook at Cole's house. You've been lying to me… to us… for years! How could you?!" Tristan told Jack in an escalated voice, with each word her anger intensified. Jack took a deep breath, almost on the verge of tears. Slowly he passed the newspaper clipping back to Tristan.
"It was for your own good."
"You said she was gone. Meanwhile she was found dead on the same day that I was born! I have spent the better half of my life loathing the woman who gave birth to me because I thought she abandoned us!"
"Tristan, you don't know the whole story, just give me a chance to explain..."
"You had fifteen years to explain!” Tristan interrupted. “You lied all this time to us! I will just wait for Grandma and Gus to come back tonight, and they'll tell me!"
At this, Tristan turned on her heel and began to go back upstairs.
"Don't walk away from me, young lady! Turn around, and you'll listen to what I have to say." Tristan begrudgingly turned around to face her father.