Chapter 38
Davian
Change of Strategy
When You’re Gone
Bryan Admas, Melanie C
With my eyes squeezed shut, I rubbed my face with both hands, trying to push away the images of Quill's hands on my naked body.
Normal people dreamed at night about things they weren't allowed to have and enjoyed it, but I pushed her away even in my dreams, woke up with an erection, and fought against wishing that I could, at least in my dreams, do with her what my sick mind desired.
The mere thought was sinful. Disturbing.
Quill was nineteen. A number I hadn't known before my soul had allowed her to control my emotions. A number that now, along with all the other walls, stood between us like an evil omen.
“Dad?”
“Mm?” I grumbled, as more shame and self-loathing threatened to consume me from within.
If Lara knew how messed up her father was, she would move out and never come back.
“Coffee? You look dead.”
No one got up earlier than Lara. And she definitely didn't get that from me.
“Sure.” I turned to her and studied my cheerful-looking daughter. “Thanks.”
Sometimes
Goldmund
Lara, dressed in one of her fall pajamas, smiled without looking at me and opened the coffee tin.
We hadn't had a chance to talk again yesterday.
And of course, Lara pretended nothing had happened to keep the peace.
Something I hadn't actively taught her, but she was a smart girl, had always watched attentively when I had talked to Joseph or Monica, had listened to me when I had complained about the behavior of my colleagues.
I had made quite a few mistakes as a father, and I didn't know how to iron out the consequences.
Proud of the person Lara had become didn't even come close to the truth, yet I feared that she would end up in the same rat race as me at some point. And I couldn't let that happen.
“Next time someone asks you what you plan to do with your journalism degree, tell them the truth. No matter what they might say.”
Lara looked up from the coffee pot in surprise, hesitated, but I didn't end my comment as I usually did by starting a new topic. Even though it felt uncomfortable, I consciously tried to give her my silence as an opportunity to process my words.
“I didn't lie,” she finally laughed. “You know how the Richters are.”
“There is no peace left to keep.” Don't talk about Quill. Stay on topic. “Besides, I regret ever trying to keep the peace anywhere. Either people take advantage of our kindness, or they forget that we are independent human beings with feelings and needs.”
“It's gotten you far.”
I opened the kitchen cupboard to get Lara's chocolate spread, but paused and looked at her with raised eyebrows.
“Perhaps in the eyes of a society that has standards that only satisfy a tactically dominant minority.”
I set the kitchen table while Lara picked up Streusel and watched me thoughtfully.
“So you regret becoming a lawyer?”
“No. Because if I hadn't become a lawyer, I would never have been able to give you this life.”
I hated my job sometimes, but hey, who worked with passion, except freelance artists?
I poured the coffee and took the pot, along with two cups, to the table, where I sat down on the corner bench.
“Dad... I'm grateful for all that. But I'm not blind.” Lara let go of the puppy, who disappeared into the hallway, wagging his tail, and sat down diagonally across from me.
“You've worked so hard all these years without ever thinking about yourself.
And if I've learned one thing from all those days without you at home, it's that I'd rather live with a lower standard of living than with an unhappy family.”
Great, Davian. That was an indirect You weren't home often enough. Time I couldn't give back to her.
“I'm sorry. I wish I had been with you more often.”
Staring blankly at the cup, I hesitated before taking a sip of black coffee.
“A little child might not understand that, but I'm an adult and I understand that sometimes you have to make sacrifices. It didn't bother me that you were rarely home. It bothered me that this decision never made you happy.”
My teeth pressed against my tongue, sliding back and forth over the tip.
“To be honest, I would have preferred it if we had lived in a smaller house with less money.”
Shaking my head, I tried to meet her gaze.
“Don’t say that. You don’t know what it’s like not to know if you’ll have a roof over your head or food on the table tomorrow.”
Far too often I had told her how I grew up. Not badly, not in poverty. Still, a foster child was a foster child.
The mere thought that Lily had wanted to make our little girl a foster child still gave me a huge kick in the gut, even after all these years.
I hastily washed down the bitter taste of this fact with coffee that wasn't even remotely as bitter.
Lara would never know that this had been an option for her mother.
Grand Jury
Atli ?rvarsson
“I saw it happen to Quill when she couldn't get into her house for a month because her drunk mother had locked herself in. She slept with all kinds of men just to have a roof over her head.”
Choking on my coffee, I started coughing, put the cup down on the table much too hard, and raised my hand apologetically, which Lara fortunately ignored.
“And as for us, we both know that as a writer, you would have earned enough for both of us to survive.”
“She did what?”
A heavy knot had formed in my stomach. And it didn't seem to be going away. Every image of Quill with some men who were exploiting her for sex that flashed through my mind made it worse, until disgust and anger dominated my feelings.
Her mother was one thing. But the fact that Joseph had allowed it to come this far, that his daughter had ended up in such situations, disturbed me in a way that would make it impossible for me to ever look this man in the eye again.
“Please don't judge her. She was sixteen.”
Lara sounded concerned.
Sixteen.
Fuck. The fact that I hadn't known about this until now only showed me how little I knew Quill.
Yes, I should stay away from her. But we were friends now, and friends were there for each other, taking heavy burdens like this off each other's shoulders.
“Sixteen...” I thought aloud, rubbing my face in an attempt to hide my growing despair. “God.”
Quill deserved to be shown how wrong she had been treated. How wrong all the things that had happened to her were. How toxic. And suddenly there was this feeling of needing to protect her. From this bitterly cold world, from every poisonous word that wanted to eat away at her.
But who did I think I was? I was dripping with poison too. Much more fatal poison. And the last thing I wanted was to be responsible for her destruction.
“I really worry sometimes.” Lara was spooning the cinnamon foam off her coffee, which she had just poured. “Especially when she meets up with some thirty-year-olds instead of dating one of the thousand cute guys walking around at Maplecrest.”
Thirty-year-olds. Did Quill have a certain type of man? Older men?
Once again, I scraped my teeth over the tip of my tongue and stared into my coffee.
She was obviously trying to compensate for something she never had. Another warning sign that I should keep my distance.
I wasn't in my thirties. I was forty-one. Not just too old for her. Way too old for her.
Quill should date someone her own age, even if I didn't like the idea.
Guys in their twenties were immature, careless, fickle, and there was no man of that age whom I trusted to treat her properly. Not without wanting to get her into bed.
I gritted my teeth.
Lara looked at me thoughtfully, a sign that I was dwelling on my thoughts for too long, so I cleared my gaze and looked at her thoughtfully instead.
“Are you dating anyone?”
There were reasons why I had never asked her explicitly until now. Among other things, the amused grin she now gave me.
“I would definitely not tell you that.”
Still grinning and with telltale red cheeks, she drank her coffee.
Back then, this had left milk foam above her lips, but at some point my little girl had grown into a mannerly woman. Time had flown by too quickly.
“You sabotaged my last date, even though Julius was an absolute dream guy.”
I snorted, trying to push out of my mind everything I had just learned about Quill.
“He drank beer.”
Not only was I sure that he had been driving under the influence of alcohol, but the way he had lusted after Lara, his eyes greedily fixed on her every time, had often brought me to the brink of losing my self-control.
“Every man drinks alcohol.” Lara rolled her eyes. “Except you, of course.”
And I would keep it that way if it meant Lara would pay attention to this aspect when choosing a partner.
“He was seventeen,” I argued. “Besides, he had more provocative tattoos than hair on his head. And his car looked like he had let his questionable friends doodle on it with felt-tip pens.”
“Dad!”
“It's good that he's gone.” I picked up my cup again. “You're still way too young anyway. Don't make the same mistake your mother and I did.” A topic I didn't want to get into. “Like I said, I don't want you to have to live the way I do. With restrictions.”
Only after I had emptied my cup and was about to reach for the coffee pot again did I notice that Lara was staring tensely at her chocolate cream toast topped with blackberries.
“Lara?”
“Mm?”
She forced a smile, but didn't look up.
“I'm sorry for how I behaved yesterday. Even though it's important to me that you're honest with me because I'm your father, it's not up to me to decide whether your friends are more important to you.”
It felt like a slap in the face, but you got used to that when you raised teenagers into adults.
“Quill isn't more important to me.” She snorted with an offended laugh. One eyebrow raised. “She's my best friend. Friends do things like that, okay?”
I nodded silently, trying to understand what Quill had done better in three years than I had in eighteen that made Lara so loyal to her.
She had been there. I hadn't.
My jaw clenched and I stared at my empty plate.