Page 160 of The Overtime Kiss

My father.

42

A LITTLE BIT RIGHT

Sabrina

Two questions prick at me as I stand in the front entrance.

Why is he here and how does he know where I live? Not…how are you? Not…how is Mom?

But as soon as that last thought lands, worry crawls up my throat, turning into dread. That has to be it. “Is Mom okay?” I ask, some ancient, primal concern jostling to the front of the line.

I don’t want her to be sick. I don’t want her to be gone. Why else would he be here? Or could it be…for me?

He strides up the steps, pressing his hands down, as if to say don’t make a scene. “She’s fine, Sabrina. Of course she’s fine,” he says, dismissing me. “Don’t raise your voice.”

I jerk my head back, then hold my arms out wide. “I didn’t! That was a normal tone.”

“She’s fine,” he says again, crisply. “How are you?”

Wait. My head spins. Did he actually ask that? Does he…care how I am? For a second, I relax my shoulders. Maybe this is a détente. Maybe he came to say he’s sorry. A kernel of hope lodges in my heart. “I’m fine.”

“Good. I’m glad,” he says, then stops a few steps down and looks around, as if he’s assessing the steps and the front porch with its flowerpots, filled with native plants. “This is a nice place,” he observes.

“Thanks,” I say, but if this is an olive branch, call me wary. There’s something in his tone, like he’s laying a trap.

I cross my arms. “How did you know where my home is?”

His lip curls. “You want to know how I figured out where you live? It’s notyour house.”

Why is my father so mean? “How is that relevant?”

But what I really want to say is—why are you so awful? Was his father like this to him? Is that where he learned this behavior? Well, if that’s the case, it stops with me. I will never be like him. I will never treat people the way he does.

“Because it’s not accurate,” he says. “And I would think as an accounting major, you’d care about accuracy. But you’ve proven accuracy isn’t important to you.”

I grit my teeth, anger lashing at me, hurt storming my chest. “Dad,” I begin, but fuck him. He doesn’t deserve to be called a father. “David, how did you figure out where I live?” I ask again.

“Chad gave me the address,” he says matter-of-factly.

“Chad?” That doesn’t compute.

“Yes, Chad, the man you were supposed to marry but instead threw a childish fit about in front of two hundred and fifty people.”

Oh. So we’re still mad about that. Got it. “You’re going there again?”

“Sabrina, I’ll be going there for a while,” he bites out, as I try to figure out how Chad has the address but then it hits me—Elphaba. I wanted my sewing machine so I could make a costume for Luna, and he needed to ship it to me. Andnaturally, when my dad needed to find me, he asked his minion.

Trying to hold my own once again, I speak as evenly as I can to this man. “Well, you found me. What do you want?”

“I’ve been texting you and asking you. Is it really that hard to send me the report? We need it for our year-end accounting. I’d have thought you’d know that.”

That treacherous ball of hurt rolls faster down my veins, presses harder against my insides. Of course he came here for business. Of course that’s all he cares about. “I sent it to you,” I say, and I can’t believe I ever thought he’d show up just…for me. “Like I told you when you first asked for it.”

“Well, the file is corrupt. Is it so much trouble to send it again? Especially since I came all the way down here.”

Like that was hard. He has meetings in the city all the time. “You could have told me that over text,” I say, then whip my phone from my back pocket.

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