Entry-Level Mistress

chapter 17



I didn’t go straight home. Not when my dad was waiting there, expecting me to come back and tell him exactly how I intended to bring Daniel Hartmann down. Except, I couldn’t. Which was why I had just broken up with Daniel. I wouldn’t be a pawn. Not for anyone.

But dad was still there when I walked in several hours later. Sitting on the futon, in my spot. Which infuriated me. If he hadn’t shown up I would still be with Daniel, could sit on the futon, could—

“I broke up with him, OK?” I sat down on the Papasan, crossed my legs. It was weird to look at everything from this position.

“I’m not sure that’s the smartest idea.”

Heat swarmed me, made me dizzy.

“Excuse me?”

“We want to get back at him, and proximity could be useful.”

“No! I’m not getting back at him, Dad.”

He stood up, suddenly furious, his finger pointing at me.

“You’re just going to let him walk all over you. Let him walk all over me? Ruin our lives again?”

I stared up at him in shock. I didn’t like seeing my dad this way. It was like I hadn’t just ruined his career opportunity. I’d broken his peace.

“Taking anything away from Daniel might hurt him financially but it gains us nothing,” I said carefully. “I don’t want to be like him. I don’t want you to be like him either.”

My dad stepped back. As if he were finally listening. As if all those years of meditation hadn’t been wasted.

“You were right, Dad. Revenge was a stupid idea.”

He sat down again. Relief filled me. The panic eased from my body.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized again. “I can see why you’re angry. But I’m the one who’s to blame. I sought him out.” I looked down at my hands. “And then I forgot why I was there because he was nothing like I expected and yet everything like he is in the magazines, only real. He’s got this magnetism, and he’s smart and intense, and I found myself wishing he wasn’t who he was and I wasn’t who I was and there wasn’t all this history.” The absence of motion made me stop. I peeked at my dad, found him leaning forward, head in his hands.

“You love him.”

He said it flatly and it made me ashamed, as if all those gorgeous, unfurling emotions were the ugliest things in the world.

“Dad, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. You went to jail because of him! You lost your life. But I can’t. I just can’t do it. It’s got to end somewhere.”

He was silent. The air in the room grew thick and uncomfortable and heat rushed to my cheeks again. But I was afraid to speak, afraid that something else would break if I did.

“You can’t frame a man who isn’t susceptible to vice, honey.”

Like a string on a violin plucked, I vibrated, and the air vibrated too, shifting from perfect silence to sudden cacophony.

“What are you saying?”

But I thought I knew what he was saying. Rather than setting my father up for some false crime, all Daniel had to do was entice him into committing a real one. Or had he even done that much? From the perspective of the circular chair, everything came together. The past, my childhood memories, newspaper articles, the few details Daniel had actually dropped when he wasn’t avoiding the discussion.

“I deserved to go to jail. I’ve served my time and I’ve paid the—”

“Are you saying you’re to blame?” I cut him off, my voice rising with the question. I wasn’t a violin; I was some cubist, distorted painting. I was a mouth screaming and an eye somewhere else, staring, stunned. “Are you saying that Daniel didn’t ruin you? Make you lose all your money? Force me to go live with mom and that psycho nutjob she calls a husband?”

“Not entirely, sweetheart. Daniel set me up, but he had good reason to be angry with me. The past, it’s complicated—”

“No!” I interrupted, standing. “I don’t want to hear ‘it’s complicated’ anymore. I’ve heard bits of pieces of this story my whole life, and there’s your side, and there’s what mom says, and there’s what the papers said and then what Daniel’s told me.” My voice wavered and I hated the watery sound of it, the weakness. I couldn’t cry again. Wouldn’t. “What’s the truth, dad? Did you drive Mr. Hartmann to suicide or were you the victim trying to make the best of a bad situation? Maybe you loved Lucille or maybe you’re the reason she overdosed on meds. Or is there a truth to this? I don’t think there is one.” I whirled around, unable to look at him, unable to look at a life that was so different from what I had thought it was. The past should have stayed in the past. It was too ugly and too complicated and no one was innocent. I just needed to figure out what was real about the present. Who I was, what I wanted to be. I just needed—

“I can’t do this.”

“Emily—”

“You should have told me before.” My voice was high and still rising on each note and I hated it. Hated it! “My whole life I grew up thinking that you were wronged, manipulated and hurt. I blamed Daniel for everything. Until I met him, and then I couldn’t make it make sense. He’s not some evil horrible person.”

“He did try to hurt me.”

“Yeah, maybe he did. But why did Mr. Hartmann kill himself? Were you committing adultery?”

“There are things you don’t understand, Emily. You shouldn’t be speaking to me this way.”

No, I shouldn’t be speaking to him at all.

“Stay out of my life!” I yanked open the front door. Didn’t look up until my father had left. Until I shut the door behind him.

Images of the past flooded through me, dizzying me with their disjointed rhythm.

I felt betrayed. Disillusioned. The last vestiges of childhood finally gone.