❝Are you done acting like you care?❞
Tristan's jaw clenches so hard that for a second I'm actually afraid his teeth will disintegrate. ❝I'll ask one more time. Where. Were. You. Last. Night.❞
I lift my chin, wishing the raw command in his voice didn...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
"Grandma?"
Still absorbed in the soap opera playing on the television across from us, she absentmindedly mumbles, "Yes, chérie?"
I grin when she calls me 'sweetheart' in french and poke her arm so that she'll actually listen. Tearing her hazel eyes— the same eyes she passed on to my mother who passed them onto me— away from the screen of the television she turns and gives my nose an affectionate tweak, "Oh, okay, what is it you little rascal?"
Giggling at the way she rolled the 'r' in rascal with her heavy french accent, I grab the remote and mute the television before speaking. "Grandma, why does Father never smile anymore?"
The doting smile on my grandmother's face freezes and then drops altogether. "What do you mean by 'anymore,' Juniper?" On the inside, I flinch the least bit at her use of my full name, but I'm quick to remind myself that only Grandma is allowed to call me that— in fact, she could call me whatever she wanted to. After all, I was the one who took away her beloved and only daughter from her.
The thought that I'm the root to so much grief saddens me, but I make myself remember that not everything is about me. I shrug my shoulders and swing my legs back and forth, playing for total casualness, "I dunno. It's just that I saw a few pictures in his office drawer yesterday. He was smiling in all of them— he never does that."
"Oh, chérie, what were you doing in there? You could have gotten in so much trouble if you were caught."
I shrug again, deciding that she wouldn't want to know just how sneaky a little seven year old like myself could be. "I needed a thin black sharpie for my journal; my one ran out of ink, and I know that he keeps a million of them in his office." I cringe inwardly at how smoothly the lie comes out, even though I knew I was saving myself a truckload of disapproval.
"Things have changed and so has your father." I listen to her words, wondering why her face tightened at her mention of him. I guess it was no secret that Father wasn't my grandmother's favorite person, but it still unnerved me to see her so... cold towards him especially after seeing pictures of how fondly she smiled at him and my mother.
"What's that mean?"
Grandma leans closer to me and smooths my hair back from my face, "It means that just because he won't choose happiness, doesn't mean you should do the same."
I nod, hardly registering the kiss she drops on my head, too busy lost in self-loathing, because I knew the truth; I was the real reason my father didn't smile anymore.
The actual reason for my visit to my father's office, which was secluded from the rest of our huge building, was that I was bored and needed a little excitement in my life. Watching ridiculously dramatic soap operas from the 1900s with my grandmother provided only so much entertainment for a seven year old.
