Wretched Love

I glanced to the hall where I could still hear the water running and Violet singing in the background. She had a beautiful voice, and I’d loved the idea of her becoming a singer. But, of course, that hadn’t lined up with her father’s expectations. Anything in the arts was considered ‘crude.’

Satisfied that she wouldn’t hear, I sank onto one of the stools at the breakfast bar.

“She wants to know more,” I told Macy. “About why her father and I broke up.”

“And you think telling her that he’s a piece of shit who beat you for years and almost killed you might cause a boatload of trauma?” Macy guessed.

I grinned weakly, taking another long sip. “Bingo,” I muttered.

Macy didn’t say anything, didn’t press me, she just waited as I processed.

“I don’t know what to do,” I whispered.

Macy sat watching me, her eyes filled with sympathy but not pity. She had an energy about her that put me at ease, even with all the thoughts swirling around my head. There was a… calmness to her.

“He’s a vile man,” I continued after I took another large sip. “Evil, to his core. Of that I am certain. But he is her father. He’s her hero. He is the man she is going to model all of her relationships after. And he’s always treated her well.” My mind wandered to the singular time Preston had even come close to losing it with Violet.

He had some important client over. Someone from out of town. Someone who was a big fish in a pond much larger than the one Preston swam in.

I’d been a mess all week, trying to plan the menu, clean the house, design a table setting and make sure I had the right flowers, candles and outfit for the occasion. I knew that my punishment would be unlike anything else if I screwed something up. I had been walking on eggshells all week, terrified, anxious, barely sleeping. All the while, I had tried to make sure Violet didn’t notice the change in the atmosphere.

She wasn’t a child anymore. She was observant enough to see things that she’d been blind to before.

She was almost fifteen. She was growing into a lovely young woman already, not showing signs of that awkward transition between childhood and becoming a young adult. No gangly limbs or acne. Her midnight hair billowed down her back, her nose was high and delicate, lips full and faintly pink. Her eyes were blue but not like mine. They were almost lavender. They had been since she was born.

I feared that beauty. What it might invite. What kind of boys it might attract. The ones with the square jaws and good families like her father. The ones with monsters beneath all of those masculine lines and good breeding.

But she was not timid and naïve like her mother. No, she already knew her own mind. She was obsessed with philosophy, feminism, civil rights. She was almost a fully formed adult.

She already challenged her father on some of his more misogynistic ideals—all of them—and I’d had my fists clenched under the table as she did so, taut, ready to jump between them if need be.

But Preston had never shown an inch of irritation that his daughter believed in women’s rights when he so obviously didn’t. He was charmed by her independent spirit.

Except the night at the dinner table when his guest had complimented my cooking and complimented Preston on finding a woman who ‘knew her place.’

Me, I’d smiled tightly and looked down at my plate with a meekness Preston expected.

My daughter did no such thing. “A woman who knows her place is a woman who knows her voice,” she offered sweetly. “A woman who knows her place is a woman who knows it’s wherever a man says it’s not. I think we’re all liberated enough to understand that men who try to confine women to certain roles and rooms within the household are terrified of the power women will have if they are allowed to reach their full potential.” She reached over to take a dainty sip of her iced tea. Not rushing, no... Taking her time as everyone at the table watched her. It was a power move most adults wouldn’t be able to pull off.

She put her tea down. “And most of those men are deeply insecure and inferior to women in every way,” she finished, smiling sweetly.

The short but loaded silence after she spoke was a cacophony in my ears. That was until Preston plastered on a fake smile and made some joke. He forced the conversation forward, but the mood in the room definitely shifted.

I’d moved food around on my plate, my hand shaking. Violet had eaten without a care in the world, wearing a self-satisfied smirk.

By the end of the meal, it became clear that the business associate was sufficiently shamed by a teenage girl, therefore, he wasn’t likely to ever deal with Preston again. Despite his attempts to get him to stay for a cigar and a drink, the man left.

And Preston turned on Violet the second the front door closed.

“Do you have any idea how important that man was?” he asked in a low tone, walking into the dining room where Violet was eating her chocolate cake without a care in the world.

I was sitting beside her pretending to drink tea with a slice of my own in front of me. I wouldn’t eat it, obviously. But I didn’t want to imprint any unhealthy eating habits on my daughter, so I would always pretend to eat dessert.

Violet looked up at her father and rolled her eyes. “Do you have any idea how much of a gross misogynist he was?” she countered.

Preston stared at her. “It is not your place to try and challenge grown men at the dinner table,” he told her with an edge to his voice.

An edge that my daughter did not recognize. Because she did not have to recognize it.