Page 81 of Severed Rivalry
“Ground her from her phone, take two days off of work, and nail the fuckers.”
“As if it’s that easy.”
“Why make it more complicated?” He puts the car in park and throws out a hand. “Don’t go in half-cocked when you could go in whole-cocked. She doesn’t know you know. You only get one chance at this moment.”
He turns the car off and exits the vehicle, walking to the street to a waiting rideshare. He disappears as he appeared, leaving me reeling and incensed and… emboldened.
How does one person say so little yet say so much?
Me: Your brother is a lunaticand I’m home.
Cian: What the fuck did he do?
Me: I’ll call you tonight before bed. Suffice to say, I’m on a warpath and he just cleared the trail with a machete.
Cian: Why does that sound so accurate?
I let myself into the house to find things eerily similar to what I saw at the hospital.
Rosie is at the kitchen table with a romance novel and a Diet Coke.
My daughter is in the same shape she was thirty minutes ago with her face glued to her phone.
“Hey, Rosie.” I tap and squeeze her shoulder before rounding her and heading to the living room. Renée shuffles her phone in a new and certainly unwelcome way. “Hey, Née. How was school?”
Her face is flushed as she shrugs. “Fine.”
“Are you ready for dinner?”
“I guess.”
“Come sit with us as I put something together.”
She follows me back to the kitchen, discreetly tucking her phone into her hoodie front pocket, and drops into the chair at the table with Rosie.
“How did surgery go?”
“Good.” I look over the refrigerator door. “He looks rough, and I think he’s hurting, but they were able to make everything right. Leftovers okay?”
“Sure,” Rosie puts in. “I’ll make a salad.”
My daughter gives another shrug. Words. One day we’ll get back to words. That will be a great day.
I pull out the leftover marinara and throw some water on to boil for pasta as Rosie rummages through the fridge for salad fixings.
“Did anything good happen at work or school today?” My voice is a little too high and my words are a bit too rushed. So I temper everything so as not to seem amped.
“Same old, same old for me.” That’s Rosie. She’s so steady, day-in, day-out.
“We got a new science teacher. The old one got arrested for breaking bad.”
“What?”
“That’s just what I heard. I’m guessing he got a TV show.”
My daughter isn’t innocent, but she’s not worldly enough to know her science teacher was cooking meth.
Meth and porn in one day. I see why people homeschool and get antisocial. Oh, hell no. When my brain gets to why my childhood makes sense, it’s time for redirection. Time for hard truths.
