It may be my imagination, but I think I see his upper lip start to sweat. I lean back, feeling just a little bit smug.
“I think I’m going to open another bottle of wine,” my dad says. He’s speaking very slowly and very deliberately, and he is moving in an equally careful manner as he pushes away from the table and heads for the kitchen. “Come with me, Sylvia? Working for Stark, you must have developed at least a bit of a head for fine wine.”
If he’d called me Elle, I think I would have said no. But I surprise myself by pushing my chair back.
Jackson doesn’t release my hand right away, and when I look at him, he tilts his head in a silent question. Should I come, too?
I almost say yes, but then I shake my head. I can do this. I can make it through the night as the dutiful daughter.
And then I can get the hell out of here.
I follow my dad through the butler’s pantry, then into the kitchen. Right between the kitchen and the living area is an archway with an iron gate instead of a door. I follow my father past the gate, then down the stairs to a small wine cellar with just enough room for the two of us and the hundred or so bottles of wine stacked neatly in the sturdy wooden racks.
I start to pull out a bottle, wanting something bold and red if I’m going to be staying for any length of time. But before I have a chance to really start looking, my father speaks. “You’ve been mad at me since you were fourteen,” he says, and I jolt upright. “Don’t you think it’s time to stop?”
I stand there like an idiot as his words register with me. We have never talked about this—never—and this new reality has completely flummoxed me.
“Time to stop?” I repeat. “What? Are we baking cookies and now they’re done? Has the clock finally run down in the final quarter of the game? Honestly, Dad, what the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m trying to talk with you. I’m trying to get past this.”
“Now? We’re really going to talk about this now?” My voice is so full of bile and vitriol it doesn’t even sound like my own.
“Those years were hard on all of us, Elle—”
“Sylvia.”
He pauses, takes a breath, and begins again. “Ethan was sick. Your mother and I were frantic with worry. We all sacrificed, Sylvia. We all did everything we could to help.”
“Oh, you sacrificed, all right.” I want to shout the words. Instead, they come out low. Powerful. And remarkably steady. “You fucking sacrificed me.”
His face turns bright red and he opens his mouth, sputtering as if trying to form words. He says nothing, though, and after a moment, I fear that he is actually having a heart attack.
“Dad? Dad?” I’m not even aware that I have moved, but somehow I have ended up at his side. I reach for his shoulder to steady him, trying to decide if I should scream for my mother or get him off his feet or what.
I’m about to do both when he violently jerks his arm away from my touch. “It. Is. Over.” Each word is pronounced slowly, carefully, and with the utmost precision. “That chapter in our lives is over. Done. The door is closed, Sylvia. And it is closed tight.” He takes a deep breath, his shoulders rising, then falling.
“Over?” My temper has been rising with every word. How dare he. How fucking dare he. And though I know that it is a mistake to get into this now, I cannot stop the words that spew out. “Are you insane? It’s not over. It’s never over, Dad. It will never, ever be over.”