Page 91 of Crash

“You,” he says, turning back to my mother. “You will come back home where you belong.” He crosses the room and attempts to get in her face, but Luke blocks him. My mother steps back, hitting the wall, her face completely white now. I walk from behind the counter, unwilling to let my mother revert to the shell she was for so many years.

“You don’t tell anyone what to do anymore,” I repeat. “What are you going to do? She left you. I left you. You’re alone and you have no power. The end.”

He reaches for me, but Luke grabs him and pins him against the wall in less than a second.

“You want him because he has money. You are like your mother. You choose a man for what he can do for you. Tell her, Jocelyn. You married me for what I could do for you and now you just walk away after you’ve taken everything. She will use you, boy.”

Luke continues to hold him in place, but my father’s words have knocked the life back into my mother.

“Shut up! Just shut the hell up! I’m not coming back. Vivi is not coming back. You can make this divorce difficult or easy. That’s your choice. You are a miserable person who has made everyone around you miserable. You treated your only child like nothing, and I’m guilty of that too, but I’m trying to make amends. Despite us, she’s an amazing woman, and the truth is we don’t deserve her, but I’m trying to earn a place in her life. You continue to spit poison. And for what? There is nothing you can do to either one of us. You are a small man with a small mind.”

“You bitch,” he says, spit coming out of his mouth.

“With a small vocabulary,” my mother throws at him.

Luke moves to let him go, but only to put his hand around his throat.

“Apologize to your wife and daughter, Mr. Chateau,” Luke orders.

“I don’t apologize to women.”

“Wrong. You do today.” I can see him add some pressure to my father’s neck.

I hear footsteps and laughter behind us and turn to find Sandy, Jake, and my aunt walking to the room.

“Hey, Lukey!” Jake yells. “I hear you can have a career as a party planner. Just wait until I tell our mother you were planning a party with someone else’s mother. She’s going to lose—” Jake’s words dry up as the three of them enter the room.

“Luke, what the hell are you doing?” Jake hisses, coming to stand next to his brother.

“Waiting on Mr. Chateau to apologize to his wife and daughter. I can do this all day, sir,” he says, holding my father in place.

“You don’t have such a big mouth now, do you, Ixon,” my aunt says. She walks to the door and locks it before she pulls down the blinds.

“You did this,” he says, pointing to Sandy.

“Uh-uh. You don’t want to do that. If you do, I’m going to have to step aside and let my brother deal with you. Believe it or not, I’m the nice Clark. He’ll kill first and ask questions later.” To prove his point, Jake takes a step closer to my father. Worried that this will get violent fast, I open my mouth to speak, but my mother talks first.

“Let him go, Luke. I don’t want his apology. His words have no effect on me anymore. Just like him, they are empty.”

“I feel the same. I don’t want his apology or anything else from him,” I say.

Luke nods and lets him go. He stumbles, almost crumbling to the ground as he dramatically coughs. He looks at us, but when he realizes he’s outnumbered, he fumbles with the lock and walks out.

After he walks out, everyone is quiet as we look around.

“You okay, sweetie?” Sandy asks, slowly approaching me.

“No.” That’s the only word I say before walking to the back room as quickly as possible. I can feel the color spread across my face as I think of my father’s ugly words. Luke follows right behind me, closing the door behind him.

“This is what I come from, Luke. My own father spewing his hatred for you to see. He basically called me and my mother whores. This is my father, Luke!” I scream out the last few words. “I’m so embarrassed,” I whisper. I sit down and put my face in both hands. “My own father doesn’t care about me. He hasn’t seen me in months. He threw me out with nothing, and he doesn’t even bother to ask me how I am. No wonder my mother was a zombie my whole life. He sucks the happiness right out of you, and you know what? I’m going to do the same thing to you.”

He grabs a chair and sits next to me. As soon as his hand touches my hair, the tears fill my eyes again, blurring my vision. I bury my face in his neck and let the tears fall. He doesn’t say a word. He holds me against his body and lets me cry. When the tears dry up, I pull away from his neck and wipe the moisture on his skin with one swipe of my hand.

“Your father’s a jerk, love. No other way to put it. You have nothing to do with the type of person he is. He’s a case study in psychology, and that’s not on you. And the only thing you’ve done to me since we met is make me happy.”

I lay my head on his chest and can’t help but smile.

“Luke, I have not made you happy since we met. Stop lying.”

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