Chapter 13 LEXI #2
From his seated position, he tugged the lever that would close the front door for him and frowned up at her. Installing that little contraption had cost her thousands, but it was worth it. For him.
“You work too much, Alessandra.”
Hanging her coat on a hook in the entryway, she rolled her eyes where he couldn’t see. He only used her full name when he was trying to be stern with her. Since she’d been an adult by age twelve, it really didn’t work, but she didn’t have the heart to tell him.
“So you’re always telling me, Dad, but I’ve got to run my gym somehow.”
He harrumphed and rolled in front of her towards the kitchen. Whatever he’d ordered was making her mouth water.
“What’s for dinner? It smells great.”
“Got homemade chicken marsala and some garlic breadsticks,” he said.
Lexi raised her eyebrows.
“Since when did you learn how to cook marsala?”
The wheelchair made its rubbery grind as he rolled away from her and stuck his head in the kitchen and mumbled, “Didn’t make it.”
His head popped around the side of the refrigerator door, looking entirely too innocent.
“Hey! I’ve got a nice white wine here. You want some wine, kiddo?”
Lexi stepped up to the stove where stunning aromas wafted from under tin foiled pans. When she’d found the place, she insisted on renovating the counters and appliances to wheelchair-friendly heights.
As a result, his kitchen looked much taller, almost as if he had cathedral ceilings, and she had to stoop down a little to reach anything. She took the foil off the pans. Glass pans, she noticed, definitely not takeout.
And her father never offered her wine unless it was a holiday. There was something, she decided, but she’d wait him out. He’d never been able to keep anything from her for long.
“Sure. Glasses?”
He gestured to a cabinet as he fought with the foil around the top of the wine. She bobbed her head to the low country music emanating from somewhere. She took two glasses and plates down from the cabinets and set the table for them.
Getting into the idea of a nice dinner, she went to the living room to look for an errant candle. She was certain she’d left one here from Christmas last year. Maybe pine didn’t mix well with marsala, but it would still be nice for the table.
Opening the low entertainment center, she was surprised to find a plethora of candles. Vanilla, daisies, freesia, ocean waves, honeysuckle… It clicked. Her father was having a woman over. Women? Either way, her father was dating. Shit.
With a trembling hand, she reached for the honeysuckle candle, lit it and marched back to the table.
Like everything else in the apartment, it was low for her, but perfect for his height in the wheelchair.
She snagged utensils from a drawer and set the pans on the table, placing everything within his reach.
“How is everything?” she asked, aiming for a casual tone.
He took a sip of wine before answering.
“Good! I started going to bingo here, some Thursdays and Fridays. It’s nice to get out and talk to people.”
Lexi waited as the marsala almost dissolved on her tongue. Whoever had made it could cook.
“Don’t you talk to people all day?”
He rolled his eyes, and she remembered where she’d picked up that particular habit. She smiled and took a sip of wine; it really was a nice white.
“Working isn’t the same, kiddo, you know that. It’s nice to talk to people who don’t need me to reset their security systems or talk to them about their paranoia.”
He lit into his plate with gusto, and she was happy to see him really enjoying it. Jim Porter, security technician, she mused, was dating a woman who liked candles and cooking. After a few minutes of eating in silence, he gestured to her with his fork.
“What about you? What’s new? Catch me up.”
“I’m looking at a side job,” fell out of her mouth before she could help it.
He froze and looked at her, annoyance clear in his eyes as he finished chewing.
“Okay,” he said finally. “Why?”
The nice white was serving as a very nice prop for her to stall answering, and she did so happily. Her brain quickly filtered out all the answers she couldn’t tell him.
I’m fighting again. My PTSD has been acting up again. My inner demons are killing me. I need money. I want to belong to Grayson. The white stilled in her mouth as that last thought settled. With a big swallow, she decided she’d deal with that realization later.
“I’m helping with a new fight arena,” she said, entirely too conscious of the grey area she was in.
Desperate, she cast about for what else she could tell him.
“It’s inside a club I go to sometimes, and the manager thought I’d be good as, like, a consultant for the fights.”
It definitely wasn’t untrue. He resumed eating and nodded.
“Alright. Good enough money to add to the gym, though? On your schedule?” Lexi shrugged.
“I’ll make it work Dad, I always do.”
“I know you can honey, but that doesn’t always mean that you should…
” he trailed off for a moment, before pushing back a little from the table.
“I know you’ve always done a lot, honey.
Probably more for me than you should have, especially when you were a kid.
But maybe pushing yourself like this isn’t always the answer. ”
She didn’t like where this was going. Her knife cut into her marsala with more force than necessary, making a harsh little scrape.
“I’ll be fine Dad.”
“What about that big fellow you have at the gym, hm? Maybe if you made him a manager or something, you’d have more time to run the business? Have a social life?”
Lexi shrugged.
“Honestly, I’ve been thinking about it. I don’t know if I have enough to offer him for the job, though.”
He nodded, and they fell back into silence as they ate. The honeysuckle candle lent a pleasant glow to the table, and the scent meshed nicely with the sauce from the marsala. She wanted to reassure him.
“I’ll work it out, Dad. I’ll be fine.”
“I don’t want you to be fine anymore, Alessandra,” he snapped, and she looked at him, surprised.
She could count the number of times he’d snapped at her on one hand. His gaze softened, and even in the candlelight, she realized how much older he looked.
“I want you to be happy.”
He took a deep breath, followed by an even bigger sip of wine.
“You know, finding someone important to you really goes a long way in making you see the difference between being fine and being happy, kiddo.”
This was it. He was going to tell her. Even with an idea of what he was about to say, she wasn’t ready. Her eyes sought the framed picture of her mother on the edge of the counter. Except it wasn’t there. Her throat snapped shut.
“Where’s mom’s picture?”
Lexi hadn’t meant to sound like that. Shrill. Almost accusatory. But it was too late to change it now. Her father responded to her brusque tone by sitting back and pushing back from the table.
“It’s in a safe place.”
He rolled across the kitchen and poured more wine into his stemless glass. The words flew out of her mouth before she could think them through.
“You put mom’s picture away so it wouldn’t upset your new girlfriend?”
He didn’t turn around, didn’t look at her. Right on time, adrenaline surged through her body, making her scalp tingle and her breath heavy. He spoke quietly.
“Her name is Sarabeth. She’s from Georgia.”
Lexi couldn’t say anything. She finished her wine at an impressive pace and ate what was left on her plate without tasting it.
Her chair scraped the linoleum as she shoved back from the table in silence.
The plates made an easy stack on her arm as she cleared the table, and she noticed her father watching her from the corner of the kitchen as she rinsed off each item and set it in his small dishwasher.
“You don’t even notice how much you take care of me, do you?” he asked.
She stilled at the sink, looking out the small window to his side yard. The grass needed a trim.
“If you didn’t want me to, you could have said something.”
Finally she turned from the dark window and looked at him. Her phone buzzed in her pocket, but she ignored it.
He shook his head and scrubbed his hands over his face.
“I didn’t even realize it either, kiddo.
Not until Sarabeth said something to me about it.
It’s always just been us. I’m starting to realize though, that I haven’t been fair to you.
I don’t know if I ever really noticed how much you do for me.
How much you’ve always done. Since your mom and Danny…
” he broke off, and his eyes gleamed in the low lights.
“Since the accident, kiddo, I know I had to depend on you. I was so lost without your mother. I know I was responsible-”
“Don’t you fucking dare. You were never responsible-”
“I was driving!” he bellowed.
His voice echoed off the apartment walls and reverberated through her mind. Was this the shit his new girlfriend was putting in his head?
“Is this the kind of shit she’s been putting in your head, Dad? You have never said a word about any of this. It’s been fifteen fucking years. All of a sudden, I’m doing too much for you and it was your fault we wrecked? No chance in hell.”
Lexi would handle this herself.
“Where the fuck does she live?”
Her father took a deep breath and dropped his head. She couldn’t stand seeing him look so defeated, but she was too worked up to walk over to him.
“This wasn’t how I wanted this to go, Alessandra.”
Lexi winced at her full name, and the tone in his voice was so… distant. She willed him to look at her, and as if he’d felt it, he raised his head. The tracks of tears running down his face made the lovely marsala and wine roil in her stomach.
Her father hadn’t cried in front of her in years. The first time she’d seen him cry was at the funerals. It had been months after the accident, since he hadn’t been able to get around. Her brain replayed the double funeral for her, as well as several scenes from before and after.