“Princess,” my dad called out as soon as he saw me. I was in his arms in the next second, his cigar and newsprint scent as familiar to me as my own.
Peter Garrison was not a bad man, but he was a simple one and that was in and of itself a bad thing. He got up every morning at six a.m., read the entire Globe & Mail newspaper back to front then went to work at UBC where he taught the same six courses every year in the Classics department, then he was home to mum and dinner on the table by six-thirty p.m. after which he spent the night working or reading in his study. Simple life. Simple man. And, in his eyes, simple relationship with his daughter.
He loved me very much but he didn’t understand me and it was beyond his capabilities to try.
So, I hugged him back and enjoyed my brief moment of peace in my daddy’s arms.
“Why aren’t you dressed yet, it’s nearly eleven o’clock?” William asked me, echoing my mother’s words as he waited his turn to press a kiss to my cheek.
I accepted it but took a large step back when he was finished. “Why are you here at eleven o’clock on a Sunday? Why are you here at all?”
He blinked at me. “You wouldn’t come home and then when I saw you with that awful biker man, I knew I had to take matters into my own hands.”
“So you brought my parents and ambushed me on a Sunday?” I asked acerbically.
“Yes,” he stated.
“I could hit you right now,” I gritted out between my teeth.
“Cressida Phillipa Irons, do not speak to your husband like that! I know I taught you better,” my mother rebuked me even as she unloaded the groceries that the men had brought inside.
“Mum, why are there groceries that I didn’t buy in my house?” I asked, in a surprisingly calm voice.
How in the world was I going to get them to leave when they were very clearly settling in? I thought of King somewhere in my house and anxiety spiked my blood like lead poisoning.
“We’re having Sunday dinner here because you refuse to come home,” she said into the oven as she checked its cleanliness (found it sorely lacking) and preset the temperature.
“No, you are not. I don’t go to your house for family dinners anymore because it is no longer my home,” I cried.
Childish rage and frustration built inside me ready to stomp its feet and throw its fists in the air. The reversion made sense if only because they made me feel like a child, helpless against their ‘adult’ mandates of superiority, as if my opinion wasn’t valid given my age.
When I thought about it like that, it made sense that I’d been drawn to a (much) younger man. I was tired of old people and their stuck in the mud ways.
“You need to leave,” I ordered.
No one listened to me.
In fact, my dad was already taking his beer from a cooler that they’d also brought in from the car, the same one he and William used every Saturday when they went fishing. Without heeding my order, he descended the four shallow steps separating the kitchen from the living room and took a seat on my cracked leather couch.
“Not bad,” he mumbled, patting the cushions.
My mother continued to set out the ingredients for what looked like a real turkey dinner and William just stood there staring at me as if he was waiting for me to perform.
Oh, I’d perform all right, but I was certain he wouldn’t like the show.
I opened my mouth to throw a tantrum, perversely looking forward to it, when the low distant rumble of a motorcycle sounded in the distance.
“I’m waiting for you to tell me what you were doing with that criminal,” William prompted me.
“How do you even know he’s a criminal?” I shot back. “Just because he has tattoos and rides a bike doesn’t mean he’s done anything illegal.”
“He’s the President of The Fallen MC, of course he’s a criminal. If you knew even half the things I knew about him, you’d run back to me and beg me to keep you,” he returned.
“How do you know anything about him, at all?” I asked, curiosity warring with my rage.
William blanched slightly and I wandered if it was because he’d hired a PI to tail me.
My God, I hoped not.
“I’m a lawyer, Cressida, I know these things,” he said vaguely. “I’m not here to argue with you, anyway. I’m here to talk you into coming back home with me.”
“If you wanted to talk to me about that, you could have waited until our session next Friday,” I retorted. “Right now, I really want all of you to leave.”
“We were concerned about you, Cressida,” my mother chimed in. I shouldn’t have been shocked to see her in the red and white checked and frilled apron that she wore whenever she cooked at home. Of course, she’d brought it with her. In less than ten minutes, she’d somehow yet effectively made me a guest in my own house.