Page 384 of My Sweet Dollie, You Have to Love Me
“I’m sorry, Daddy, Mom. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
And in the tenderness of their touch, I feel forgiveness.
“We love you, Princess. We know you’re sorry.”
Turning, my parents are nowhere to be seen.
Another Irish voice comes from the other side of the door—the one I love hearing so much.
“Where’s Dollie? What the fuck happened in here?”
Turning back to the wood, I sob against the door at hearing the concern in Ambrose’s voice.
He’s right there, the person I need most.
I swallow down the thought, but press my hands flat to the wood, trying to get a little closer to him.
“You say something?” Shane asks, pottering around the kitchen to clean the mess he made while trying to mask the shaking of his voice.
“You heard me, and you heard my question. Where is Dollie?”
“She’s fine. In the bathroom.” Shane adds the last part only after I hear Ambrose near the door. “She really is fine.”
“Why wouldn’t she be? Why the fuck are you here?”
Something is said between them that I miss, but I catch the next part in a thick Irish twang.
“I’ve told you once before that you shouldn’t touch my fucking girl. If I find out you have, I’ll cut each stubby finger from those tiny little hands of yours and shove them down your throat.”
“Your girl?”
“Did I stutter?”
“I was just thinking, don’t you mean your sister?”
“No, you heard me, and we both know what she is. My fucking girl.”
A knock comes on the door.
He’s just on the other side.
“Dollie?”
My teeth chatter, my body shakes, and I sniffle that bit too loudly, but I can’t talk. There’s a pressure in my throat that words can’t seem to get around.
“Are you okay?”
“She just needs some privacy,” Shane butts in. “Stomach problems.”
Please, don’t go. He’s lying. Please, don’t leave me,I beg silently.
Ambrose’s boots move across the kitchen floor, and then the winding noise of the back doors and Bubbles’ barking follows. “Pissed off my dog, too, huh?”
“She was trying to get one of Dollie’s piping bags. So, I put her outside.”
“Oh, was that used on the cake you tossed in the trash?”
“She did that herself. Her hair got in it. You know what a perfectionist she is.”
