Page 13 of Sinful Attraction

“I’m alive. Not sure about my dignity.” The one little laptop looks ridiculous sitting in the middle of my huge, empty workstation.

“Mom and Dad aren’t letting up, huh?” She smiles ruefully. “I get it. When they found out I had no plans to remarry after Paul died, they called my priest. Said I should get counseling.”

“Because you didn’t want to go back to being a wife when you just lost your husband? They actually did that?” I askincredulously. She hadn’t told me about the bullshit our parents had pulled.

“They did indeed. Kind of hard to come back from that.” She chuckles and shakes her head. I have no idea how she can handle our parents’ meddling so calmly. Maybe she doesn’t get treated as badly. Certainly, they almost never take her to task in front of the family. With me, they always do.

“I can’t even try to date without them descending on me,” I grumble. “They meddle in everything I do. I can’t work without being criticized. I can’t work for the family without being discouraged. And when I look for a new man, he’s never good enough while simultaneously not moving fast enough to lock me down and put a baby in me.”

“Oh, honey,” she sighs. “You can’t let them get to you, especially Mom. Mom doesn’t even know what she really wants when it comes to you because you’ve never toed the line with her.”

“I shouldn’t have to toe the line with her. I’m in my late twenties, damn it. If she keeps trying to be so controlling, I swear to God I may have to move out and stop talking to her for a while. Dad, too.” I wipe down the freshly cleared space on my desk, mopping up little threads of dust that used to sit between hard drives and server equipment.

“Arya, come on! This is your family. You have to be willing to put up with some eccentricities—”

I feel tears come to my eyes suddenly: tears of anger, humiliation, and frustration. “Eccentricities are one thing. Sexism, trying to control my life and treating me like garbage when I try to contribute—”

“They didn’t treat you like garbage.” She sounds exasperated.

I stare at her. She has been only witness to some of it, but what she has seen should have been more than enough for her to realize our parents are out of line with the way they treat me.

Then, I realize it. I don’t know why I haven’t gotten it before.

Every damn time Nina is around, she comes in after I’ve fought with Mom and Dad to “comfort” me. Except comforting me isn’t really what she’s doing. She’s trying to convince me to calm down, be reasonable, and go along to get along.

She’s not here in support of me. She’s sweet and oh-so-reasonable about it, but in the end, she’s here on my parents’ behalf.

“Look,” I sigh. “I get you mean well, but they’ve gone too far this time. Hell, they’ve been going too far for years. And it really hurts that you always come by to advocate for them like this.” Better to just tell her outright that I’ve caught on.

She scoffs nervously. “I’m not advocating for Mom and Dad—”

“Yeah, you are. You’re not even interested in what this does to me or what it feels like. You never actually listen to my side of the story. You cut me off, tell me I’m overreacting—”

“Okay, that is a wild generalization.” But she speaks too quickly, and she is shifting her weight nervously. “I understand you’re upset about this, but your family is your family. You can’t just go running off and forget your responsibilities because you’re angry.”

“It’s not just because I’m angry,” I say as calmly as I can manage. “Look, it’s clear you don’t get it, and you don’t want to get it. I’m the black sheep of the family because I haven’t given Mom any grandkids. If I walk away, you’ll be the black sheep for not remarrying. You don’t want that to happen, so you need to encourage me to stick around and keep taking all the heat.”

She blinks at me, looking at a loss for words. Deep in her eyes, I can see the guilt. “I’m just trying to help you patch things up—”

“I’m not the one who was out of line. Someone sabotaged my attempt to finally impress them, and now, things are even worse than they were. I just wanted to get some recognition—”

Nina sighs. “They don’t want big accomplishments out of their daughters; they want it out of their sons. All they want from you is for you to be married and give them a grandkid or two. Why is that so hard for you to understand?”

“What I find hard to understand is why you’re willing to go along with their controlling bullshit when it hurts you, too,” I snap.

She winces. “That isn’t fair, Arya.”

“How is it not fair?” I demand. “You’re here the way you always are, stepping in to get me to calm down, forgive them, and let the matter drop. But this is different. They have been hammering at me for days, even more than usual, and every time they see me, it’s the same. If they don’t stop—”

“Okay, okay, calm down,” she says, holding up a hand and pissing me off even more. “I hear you feel like they’ve got you under pressure. But you did make a big mistake—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Nina, we were robbed. And the only way that could have happened is if someone on the inside—on our staff, in our family—helped! Why aren’t they looking for that person instead of coming down on me? Oh, wait, I already fucking know. Because they hate me for not giving them a goddamn grandkid when they already have six!”

My voice rises, and as it does, her expression becomes closed. “Stop being dramatic,” she says in an exasperated tone. “They’re just expecting what lots of parents expect once their daughters reach a certain age.”

“Normal families don’t treat their daughters like shit—”

“Plenty do, actually.” Her voice is so cold now that I know I was right to call her out. She keeps on with her rationale, even though all it does is show me just how badly she needs to go to therapy.

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