Page 47 of Bred Mate
“Or we could just… not,” I point out. “You could just tell the old man you couldn’t find anyone, and you could let the swamp deal with the rest of it.”
“I like her plan,” Karl says. “We don’t owe Rainer Katsoff anything. It’s time we got out of this parish. It’s time we went home.”
“My home got bulldozed and turned into a mall.”
“I’m taking you to my home,” he says. “In New Orleans. You’ll see your brothers and settle in.”
“Wait. Where are the boys?” I forgot about them too, though not as much. I thought Karl would take care of them. Sounds like he did. Sounds like I’m not going to like how he did it, though.
“I sent them to New Orleans to stay at my home. Tim and Tate already have jobs, and Connor is being tutored to start school. They’re doing well,” he says.
“Right,” I reply, my eyes welling with tears. “They’re doing well without me, you mean.”
“Ellie, you should be happy they’re doing well, period. It’s not about you. You don’t want to be held hostage, do you? So don’t do it to them. Don’t guilt those boys into pleasing you at the cost of living their own lives.”
Him telling me not to guilt them just makes me want to guilt everyone. I know that’s fucked up, but I feel like I am losing everything, and like everything I tried to do was not only a waste of time, but the wrong thing and a bad thing. Was it selfish of me to try to keep them with me all these years? Should we just have turned ourselves into foster care when we were still small?”
“You’re saying I’m like Rainer,” I say outlandishly.
“I’m saying you’re doing a similar…” he starts to explain, but I am not interested in what he is saying. I am interested in what I feel.
“You’re saying I’m a sixty-year-old man who forces his son into relationships he doesn’t want.”
“I didn’t…”
“You’re saying I’m a monstrous destroyer of lives and environments.”
“I’m saying lay off the kids, or I lay into you. I’d happily whip your ass again, Ellie,” he growls.
“Why would you do that to me?”
“I don’t like your attitude.”
“Oh, yeah? Well. I don’t like losing.”
“You didn’t lose. You’re alive.”
“I lost my home to that asshole. I lost the thing I’ve been fighting for. I lost my family. I lost my cell phone. None of our family are going to know where they’re really from anymore. The boys are going to be city boys. I’ll be some fancy city lady too. I’ll get used to running water and then I’ll say things like, I don’t know how I lived without internet stapled to my forehead…”
His cheek is twitching. He gives up the battle and starts laughing out loud.
“That’s what you think happens in the city?”
“Yeah. Something like that. Or I’ll start collecting furniture. I’ll put a hundred chairs in a room.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t let you do that. Any of that. Nobody is going to staple the internet to your forehead. Come here.” He draws me into a tight hug, which I know I don’t deserve because I sound bratty even to my own ears. But I wanted this so bad.And I have no idea what life is going to be like now that the forest is gone.
CHAPTER 10
Ellie
Karl lives in the biggest house I’ve ever fucking seen. Columns. So many columns. And the interior is massive and decorated with the kind of fancy furniture you could put in a photo shoot. It’s a little odd, honestly. It doesn’t remind me of Karl at all.
“This is my father’s dwelling,” he says. “It’s where the alpha of Louisiana lives. That’s why I’m living here, and it’s why you’re going to live here too. You’re likely already pregnant, you know. We should be setting up a nursery for the baby.”
“I feel like you’re getting ahead of yourself. I’m not necessarily pregnant. That could take months to happen. Or years.”
“If it does, I’ll enjoy a very long period of trying,” he says, unfazed. “What would you like to eat? We have a chef who will make anything you like.”
