Page 2 of Snow's Charming
Now, all was well for Sesi’s growing-up years until she neared her 21st birthday. Then things got odd, but Iwon’t tell you anymore than that. It’s best if y’all hear this right from the horse’s mouth! So, I’ll present to you now Sesi’s recollection of her father’s passing.
Too-da-loo—for now, anyway.
Savannah Silverwand
CHAPTER 2
Reality Bites as Cold as Ice
My stepmother pressed a cold, bony hand onto my shoulder. I froze in response to the frigid gesture. She’d meant it to appear as if she had sympathy for me. I’d come to know this about her over the decade she’d been married to my father. But now that I was kneeling over the closed casket containing him, the gesture was just cold. I didn’t need the show any longer. The woman had lacked any real empathy for me in the decade I’d known her. She detested me. That was the truth. At every opportunity we were alone, she let me know just how much of a failure and embarrassment I was.
Thankfully, we are in public right now. I didn’t have to deal with the psychotic side. I had to deal with the saccharine-sweet side. After being with her for so long, you’d think I’d like the saccharine side, but I always thought that was worse. At least when she was berating or hitting me, she was expressing her true self.Not that it made her physical abuse towards me easier to deal with. Though I think I’d be more terrified if she were sweet when she’d backhand me.
I flinched as her palm rubbed small circles on my shoulder. A typical reaction on my part. My body always flinched to brace for the beatings she’d give me when my father wasn’t looking. Her glare directed at me was just as icy cold as her bony hand. Not knowing what else to do or how to respond to the fakeness she displayed, I simply stared at the casket in silence. Why the woman insisted on a closed casket made little sense to me. Closed caskets were for burn victims or severe car accidents. Not for someone who died of cancer.
My eyes darted to the flower arrangements on either side of the casket. They were tacky at best. Being typical Jackie, all of them were her favorites. None of them were his. If she’d allowed me to help plan the funeral, I would have had red roses mixed in the arrangements. He loved his rose garden after all.
“I’m sorry for your loss. He was a good man.”
My ears burned from the bite of her frosty tone. And? It was only a matter of time before my face matched my cheeks with an anger that had been building ever since she’d told me my father was gone. I began to clench and release my hands, which were in a revertant prayer clasp. It was all I’d known to tamp down the growing volcanic temperatures welling in the pit of my stomach. I wanted nothing more than to burst out and incinerate her frigid tones with a liquid heat response. What person whom I’ve known formore of my childhood than my mother would say something so cold? I knew the answer, of course. No one with a heart would—hence my wanting to retort at her ridiculousness. But I promised myself I wouldn’t cause a scene out of respect for my father.
She never once asked me what my father would want at his funeral. We were Roman Catholics—and strict ones—I might add! Certain things should have been done. But in typical Jackie fashion, she focused on herself rather than allowing my father’s last rites to be upheld. That should have been foreboding about the actual funeral. But I had held out hope.
Any decent and loving wife would have allowed the man to have a priest over for the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick. Even if he’d died before she made the call, the priest would have done the sacrament at the hospital or the house. But no. She didn’t bother because she didn’t care. She did everything in her power to make it look like she loved my father in his presence, but when his back was turned? Well, let’s just say she hated him as much as she hated me. The older I got, the more convinced I became that she had only married him for the money and prestige.
Of course, none of that matters now. She’d gotten her wish, after all.
The house was left to her. She gloated as her lawyer read that bit in the will. And then did a victory dance when said lawyer told me I’d need to vacate the property after the wake. I’m sure that isn’t entirely legal, but I honestly don’t care to stay. Anything—evenliving in a cardboard box—would be better than staying with this woman. She was smart, though. I’d give her that. She’d never leave a visible mark for my father or teachers to notice. Sure, I could have said something, but in the end, it would have been her word against mine, and I knew everyone would believe her over me. That’s why I never tried.
The coldness of her hand radiated throughout my body once more, and I squirmed out of her hold before her Vulcan Death Grip had my body frozen to the padding of the board I was kneeling on.
“He was a wonderful father,” I told her.
“Sesi, don’t do this here. Please don’t disrespect your father by disrespecting me.”
I sucked in a breath and bit my tongue. How she could think that my praising my father was showing her disrespect was beyond me, but that was Jackie. Of course, my delivery sounded a little snotty, but can you blame me? I lost my father and my only home in a matter of two days, and she thinks I’m supposed to be all peaches and cream. I was exhausted and had zero energy for her bull.
“Look, if you must talk to me in that tone, perhaps it’s best to sprout your wings. The inn is very nice, and I’m sure you will be far happier living there than with me.”
“I’m not discussing this with you. Please excuse me. I want to meet the people who came to pay their respects to my father.” I said as I rose from my kneeling position.
“Oh, darling, that isn’t necessary. I can take care of it.”
“I’m sure you are capable, but he was my father, and it’s only right that I stand in the procession as part of his family.”
“Sesi, I told you, let’s not do this here. I’m still your guardian until you turn 21 at midnight tonight.”
“You aren’t my father’s only family, Jackie. I deserve to be up there just as much as you.”
She reached for my hands, and once hers contacted mine, the frigid coldness of them took hold of me once more.
“Sesi, I must insist you sit and relax. The procession line isn’t for children.”
I ripped my hands from hers and crossed my arms over my chest. Planting my feet further onto the floor (as if that were possible), I addressed her.
“Jackie, with all due respect, what is it? Am I a child or an?—?”
My words broke in my mouth when a male voice interrupted me. I was grateful for the distraction because no matter what I said to Jackie, she’d claim she was right, and that would set me off. Why I allow the narcissist to get under my skin is beyond me.
