Now I’m the one who feels like she’s lost all hope and Mom’s so focused on her own troubles, she doesn’t even see mine.
And I have a ton of them, not that I’ve told her anything. I’ve turned into a completely different person and she doesn’t even see it.
“I talked to your daddy,” she finally says, and I realize she’s been leading up to this the entire conversation.
I curl up on the overstuffed chair in the living room, soaking up what Mom just said. Kari’s parents took all of her furniture, including the couch. I don’t have much. Kari feels awful, she’s constantly texting me asking if I’m okay, and I wish I could be mad at her.
But I can’t. She got sick and her overprotective parents whisked her away.
“Why are you talking to him after everything he did to you?” I ask, though I’m dreading the answer.
“He wants to help, sweetheart. He understands we’re in a tough predicament and he wants to be there for his family.”
A little too late for that, if you ask me. “How can he do that when he’s in a prison cell?”
“Chelsea! Don’t talk about your daddy like that,” Mom chastises.
I hate it when she calls him my “daddy.” I haven’t called him that in years. I rarely refer to him as anything other than my father. He’s never been a real dad to me. He never really cared.
“Whatever,” I mumble. “I don’t want his help.”
“He’s told me where some money is that he stashed before he went to jail. I’m going to withdraw it from the bank and hold it for him. He said I can go ahead and use part of it now,” she explains, sounding perfectly fine with this arrangement. “Don’t you think that’ll be a big help?”
Unease settles in my stomach, making it turn. “That’s dirty money, Mom.”
“It is not,” she says, her voice prim. She believes what she wants to believe. That’s how she’s always been with her husband.
My father.
He’s a horrible person. Right up there with Owen’s mom.
My mother, for all her man-hating and constant warnings about how men will treat me awful, how I can’t trust them and I’m better off alone, can’t believe her own hype. My father is her absolute weakness.
And she can’t even see it.
“It’s dirty money. He has some secret account he wants you to clean out so he doesn’t have to do the hard work and possibly get caught after he gets out. You’ll save it for him and when he’s released from prison, you’ll give it to him, think everything will be wonderful and perfect between the two of you, and then he’ll leave you. Again.”
She’s sputtering, sounding like a plugged-up faucet right before it blows and spits water everywhere. “How dare you say that, Chelsea. He is your father. He may be in prison doing his time, but you shouldn’t judge him for that. Everyone makes mistakes and now he’s paying his dues. He has redeemed himself.”
“Right. He’s a model citizen. Paying his dues by encouraging you to pull out his dirty money from his secret account.” I pause, wondering if my words are even sinking into her brain. “He’s a real prize, Mom. I refuse to get involved with that sort of thing.”
“That money will help you survive, which you’re barely doing, might I remind you.”
Way to rub salt in the wound, Mom. “I don’t want it. He stole it.”
“We don’t know that,” she starts, but I cut her off.
“Sure we do. He took it. I don’t want it.” How many times do I need to say it? “I want nothing from him. Absolutely nothing.”
“I’m not abandoning my husband in his time of need, Chelsea.” Her voice is like ice. “If you’re going to make me choose, be careful. You might not like my decision.”
She’s threatening me. Letting me know she’d choose him over me. I don’t understand her. I never really have. She’s always such a contradiction, her thoughts, her whims moving with the shift of the wind. Dad wronged her? Men are evil. Dad’s now wooing her with sweet words and endless promises? She needs to stand by her man no matter what.
I’m sick of it. Sick of the back-and-forth and depending on a man who doesn’t give a crap about us. It’s exhausting.
They both are.
“I won’t take the money.” I lean my head back and close my eyes, swallowing hard. “I don’t want you to see him.”
“Too late. I’ve seen him, many times. We talk on the phone daily. We write each other letters. He’ll be getting out of prison by the end of the year and we’ll be together again.” She sounds happy, so falsely pinning all her hope on this, and I want to smack her. Tell her he’ll disappoint her again. She’s forgetting all of that. Just believing his lies and his empty promises.
And when he disappoints her yet again and leaves her alone, what will she do? Turn to me?
“He told me that he’s tried to contact you,” she says, her voice full of disapproval. “And that you hang up on him every single time. You shouldn’t do that, Chelsea. He just wants to talk to you. You’re his daughter, his only child.”
They won’t have to worry about it any longer because I shut off the house phone, depending only on my cell. Couldn’t afford to keep the landline, which we had only because Kari’s parents insisted on it for safety reasons, whatever that means.
And cell phones normally can’t take collect calls.
“I refuse to allow him back into my life, Mom. I’m sorry.” I hang up on her before she can say another word and I stare at my phone screen, wondering if she’ll call back. Counting on her to call back. At least text.
But she doesn’t. That hurts more than I care to admit.
Leaning back in my chair, I stare at the ceiling, feeling … hopeless. The beginning of the semester I felt like I had everything. With two jobs and the perfect school schedule, finally out of the dorms and living with my best friend, I was on top of the world.
Then I meet Owen, and my world is flipped upside down. Everything’s changed. I can’t blame him for all of the changes, but he’s part of it. A big part of it.
I wish he were still a part of it.
Closing my eyes, I try to shut off my churning thoughts, my overactive imagination. I can’t go home. I can’t stay in this stupid apartment. I have nowhere. Nothing. No friends, no possibilities. Maybe I could rent a room. Sell what pitiful amount of furniture I have and move in with someone. That could work, and the rent would be way cheaper.