Debt

"You just got a phone call about your business. Because someone was handed a business card for you at a party," he said, brows furrowed. "They placed an order for their upcoming baby shower. It's... quite an order too," he added, waving the paper at me. I saw then that he had my business card in his hand as well. "I found this with some recipes in your nightstand. Prue... I've been home for almost a full day. You let me blabber on about the cafeteria food and you didn't think you should mention that you started a business?"

I took a breath. "I didn't. I hope you got their number so I can call back and tell them that as well."

"Dear Prudence, you have business cards," he told me, waving the little pink rectangle at me. I'd snagged it after the party, wanting to really check it out, wanting it for a keepsake. Byron had the rest in his office somewhere.

Not for long, I guessed.

I felt myself wince at that, but pretended to ignore it. "I didn't have those made, Dad," I said with a shrug, trying to reach for it and the order paper out of his hand, but he yanked his arm back.

"What do you mean you didn't make them? Who made them then?"

"Dad, really, this is a non-issue. It was never meant to be anything serious. Really."

His head cocked to the side and his gaze felt like it saw down to my soul in that moment. "Did St. James have these made up?" he asked, his tone both questioning and confused.

"Dad..."

"He did, didn't he?" he demanded, brow raising.

"Yes. Okay, yes. He used to make me make dessert a few times a week. He liked them. He decided to pass that information around."

"He made you business cards then handed them out at a party where he had you provide the desserts."

"Yes. But that is literally all it was. A whim. I was never actually planning on..."

"Why not?" he cut me off, something he almost never did.

"Why not?" I repeated, then waved a hand out. "I have bills to pay. I need a steady job."

"And you can't have a steady job and bake on the weekends?"

"Dad, I am trying to be realis..."

"Prue, there is more to life than being realistic all the time. I know I haven't exactly been the best role model about things like this, but I know a life where all you do is work a job you don't like and pay bills is no life at all. You always wanted to bake. I should have encouraged something like this a long time ago. But I was always too selfish to."

"You weren't selfish. You were sick."

"Yes and no, Prue. Yes and no. Gambling is an addiction, true. But it's not like a drug. It didn't change my brain chemistry. I knew that every time I went out, I was hurting you. I knew that, but I did it anyway. That's selfish. You can layer whatever excuses you want on that to try to blur the truth to it, but it's still there underneath it all. I was selfish and you paid the price for that more than I did most of the time. I see that clearly now. And because I see that, I'm not letting you self-sabotage because of what might happen. See, baby, the only way you are guaranteed to fail is to not try at all. I raised a woman who is a lot of things: strong, intelligent, funny, resourceful, giving, loving, loyal. But I did not raise a failure. I didn't raise a quitter either. I told this nice woman that you would happily cater the desserts for her shower, and that is what you are going to do. If you need a reason, I will pull the Dad-card and say: because I said so."

"You never played the Dad-card before," I said, smiling a little. He really hadn't. For all the stress about money and the uncertainty of his being home for anything, my father had been a very hands-off parent. If I wanted to wear pink and yellow striped pants and a bright orange sweatshirt, that's what I wore, and he paraded me around proudly. If I wanted to stay up all night and eat junk food, I did. Granted, I paid with a tummy ache and going to school exhausted, but I did it. When I wanted to date, I dated. When I wanted to come home, I came home. I had no rules. I always figured that was why I came out so rigid myself, because I was given limitless freedom my whole life and learned early that there were real-life consequences for my actions.

"You never gave me a reason to, baby," he said, moving toward me and putting a hand to my cheek. "This is the first time in your entire life that I have thought you are being foolish." His hand fell and he put the order on my fridge under a magnet we had bought on a trip to Las Vegas when I was twelve. I bought it in the lobby gift shop with a spare chip I had found under my father's bed. "Now I have to wonder what it means that Byron St. James managed to put something into motion in under a month what I haven't in twenty-some-odd years."