“What? Did you think I was doing something nefarious in here? Or getting it done to me? This is a decent neighborhood, for your information. I mean, just because people have to do things you’ve never heard of before, like budgeting, coupon-cutting, and all that, doesn’t mean they aren’t good people.”
Ash skips right over my offended and angry look and just gives me an exasperated one. “Stop,” he says in the kind of tone that tells me he’s about done hearing about how he’s a rich douchebag. He looks around the kitchen but thankfully can’t see into the living room because of the way the wall is angled. “You said you were checking in on your dad. Is he okay?”
I start scrubbing hard at a pot that looks like a murder happened in it, but then, when does dry red sauce not look like that? Obviously, my dad’s true crime shows are rubbing off on me. “Yup, he’s fine.”
“The house is dark.”
“Yup, it’s dark.”
“Uh…Ellis? Are you going to tell me what’s going on in here?”
I ignore him and keep scrubbing.
“Do I have to call you Elisa to get a response?”
“You know what?” I pull my hands out of the sink, and they’re dripping ominous red suds. I probably look a little crazed with my shirt soaking wet and hair damp because of the steam from the sink and how many times I’ve pushed it out of my face with my soapy hands. “Just go back and wait in the car. Please. I’m almost done. I need ten more minutes, and whatever inconvenience I’ve been to your day will be over.”
“That’s not what I was thinking, and you know it.”
The strangest thing is it almost looks like the ring on my finger is glowing for a second, but it’s probably just the kitchen light I cracked on when I came in and the suds and nasty red sauce bits floating in the sink. And the fact that I also don’t smell old dishes but something piney, woodsy, and manly that’s definitely wafting off of Ash, and I’m getting all hot and piney in my woodsy—okay, that’s just a very wrong play on words—doesn’t mean it’s the curse acting up. It just means my olfactory bits are going haywire.
I go for the magic P since please is about all that’s left to me at the moment. “Please,” I rasp. “Just give me ten minutes.”
“I can wait here…” He motions to the table in the corner that’s overflowing with unopened mail, old bills—things I still have to sort through—and other random dirty dishes I haven’t swiped yet.
I shake my head. “Outside. Please.” He must hear the strain in my voice and realize how close I am to the old-fashioned breaking point. Part of me, the evil and extremely sinister part I try not to listen to very often, wants to tell Ash to go around the corner and introduce himself to my dad. I want to tell Ash to take a good, hard look at my dad because it was his life his family ruined. I wanted him to look at the aftermath, to see what a shell of a person looks like. To see what stripping away the last precious thing to a man does to him.
Honestly, though, it’s been a long day as it is, and the rage just isn’t in me. It’s there, but it’s not at my disposal. I’m like a shaken bottle of champagne where the cork stays in, and the bubbles of rage don’t come flying forth even though they’re super freaking close.
“Okay. But in ten minutes, I’m coming back in.”
I nod. “Right. Ten minutes.”
Ash lets himself out, and I go back to madly scrubbing dishes. I’m not going to process this right now. I can do that later in a rather comfortable bed in a strange guest room while I’m not sleeping because who can sleep when they’ve been cursed and just about everything else in their life has gone to straight shit? It’s rhetorical. The answer is no one.
I finish up the dishes, even the dirty ones from the table, and go check in on my dad one last time. “I’m leaving,” I announce while the TV flickers oddly in the room. I don’t look at it. I sense there are bodies on there, and I’m just so done. Dad doesn’t even turn his head. “Dad?”
“Okay,” he says passively. He doesn’t even blink as the lights flash across his face.
“Dad?”
“Hmm.”
I glance down at the ring. I really, really want to tell him what happened. I need him to listen, to tell me that somehow, everything will be okay. “I’ll be back in a couple of days to check on you, okay?”
“Yup. Thanks.”
“Can you…do you think maybe we could do something together when I come over? Have dinner? Here?”