Professional Heir

Chapter 17

Kimberly.

Four days since I found out my best friend was the worst kind of traitor.

Four days since my world has been flipped upside down.

Am I okay, you ask?

Yes.

I mean, yeah, sometimes I break down and cry.

Sometimes my hands shake.

Sometimes I'm woken up by my husband who claims I'm having a bad dream.

But sometimes, sometimes I see my family smile and laugh together and I feel happy too.

But mostly I just feel jealous.

I'm incredibly selfish. I recognise how selfish I am when I wish it didn't happen to me. How I wish it had been Katie. She didn't believe it. She'd rather believe that I was the evil one who cheated on my husband over the fact that her precious Parker was a rapist.

I wish she could know how it feels. How it feels to have small snippets of the night come back to you. To be drifting off to sleep and suddenly remember the feel of his hands on you. To remember how scary it was when all I was trying to do was ask my husband for help, yet no words made it past my throat.

I felt like I was dying.

The memory of Elijah shoving his fingers down my throat to make me vomit. How he rubbed my back as I knelt there naked in his arms, coughing and sputtering up the contents of my stomach.

How Savannah came upstairs and helped me stand up to sit on the bed. She silently cried as she helped me into my pyjamas. Elijah was suddenly nowhere to be seen.

I don't remember anything after that. It had taken me four days to even remember that much. Robert says I fell asleep with Savannah clutching me to her chest, and when he got to bed she was also fast asleep.

I couldn't help but think of all the memories Parker and I shared. The first days of school, going to the park and playing football.

I'm sorry I left.

Maybe if I never left he wouldn't have done it to me.

I shouldn't have drunk the drink. But how should I have known? I never would have suspected Parker of such a thing. I never would have thought I needed to keep myself safe from him.

Four days.

I felt as if I was grieving him. Grieving him as if he was dead.

I couldn't help but miss him in a sense. I was never going to see him again, whether he was dead or alive. I couldn't help but miss the bond we once shared. The memories. Regardless of what happened, I couldn't help but miss our conversations. I couldn't help but miss when we were ten years old playing with trading cards in the street, or how we would eat our dinner on the doorstep so we didn't have to leave each other to go eat.

He had tainted every part of my childhood. He was always there. It will never be the same.

I was ripped from my thoughts when my father entered the room.

"Considering you got all this money, there's a patch of grass out your front that looks overgrown." He spoke through a yawn.

I didn't look up from my cup of tea." Okay, I'll phone the gardener."

"Gardener? Don't be ridiculous, I taught you as a kid how to cut grass." Dale waved his daughter off.

"Dad, it's like 25 square feet of grass that I'll have to cut. No thanks." I shook my head.

When I looked at him he was pleading with me with his eyes.

My father knew. He had reacted with anger, but not once with sympathy. Part of me thinks I prefer it that way.

That's when I realised it was his way of trying to make it better. My father and I never had been awfully close. Although father and daughter, you'd have to search deep to find something the two of us have in common. But I could tell this was him trying to be there. He was trying to be my dad.

*****

"Dad, I'm not using a trimmer. It'll take me forever."

He laughed. "A trimmer is what I thought you to use all those years ago. That's what you'll be using today."

I blankly stared at him.

"All you have to do is hold the button down and run it over the grass, it won't be that long," Dad instructed, orange machine in his hand as he demonstrated how to use it.

"Okay, yeah, looks easy." Kimberly nodded. He handed over the trimmer and I began to cut the grass myself. I couldn't help but feel like a proud child. "Is this okay?"

"Yeah, doing great, babe." Dale smiled as he grabbed a rake from the shed.

Kimberly continued off with the patch of grass that had overgrown. Dad followed behind me, taking the grass into a pile and shoving it in a recycling bag. "Watch what you hit with that though. If you find any bits of bark, throw it to the side, if you hit that it can gain enough speed to shatter a window." I stopped what I was doing at my father's words.

"What?" I asked with wide eyes.

"It's fine, just watch what you get."

"I don't want to shatter a window! No Dad, I can't do it. Can we swap?" I couldn't risk breaking a window. Robert would kill me.

"No no, you need to learn how to do it. It's not hard, Kimberly. Trust me, you're doing fine." I took a moment to shoot a glare in his direction before getting back to it with a huff.

"Do you remember how we used to do this when you were a little girl?" Dale questioned.

"I think I remember vaguely. When mum was alive?" Dale nodded. "I remember a green trimmer with a holiday bag wrapped around the wire."

"Yep. I used to help you control one of those while we cut the garden in our old house." Dale reminisced.

"Yeah, I remember. Don't mean I can remember how to use this though." I let a small laugh slip.

"Kim, I'm proud of you and you know that right?" I hesitantly nodded. "So don't think I'm being an ass when I ask, what's the deal with the gardener? I get that you have a large garden with flowers out the front too but is this not doable yourself?"

"I and Robert have busy schedules, dad."

"How? Every time we're here you never seem too busy." Dale questioned.

"That's because for the days before you come me and Robert try to get as much done as we can and in the nights we're often in our home office for a while. We don't want to work when the family are around. It's not fair for you all to come out here and we're locked away in the office. And I'm on maternity leave at the moment." I didn't particularly want to have the conversation. I had enough on my mind.

"Ah well, I didn't think I'd see this." Robert chuckled as he stepped outside. He joined us on the grass and pressed a kiss on my forehead. "I just wanted to say that I have to pop into the office quickly and I should be back in a bit, okay?"

"Okay, make sure you're not too late though please," I hated how busy he was with the office lately, and since I was on maternity leave he was telling me almost nothing of what was happening.

"Shouldn't be more than an hour." He replied.

"Oka- fuck!" I screeched as I hit a piece of bark and it flew off somewhere. Robert furrowed his brows as my eyes widened. Then the awaited shatter sound was heard. I practically threw the trimmer and covered my mouth with my hands as I turned to look at the garage. "I'm sorry," I mumbled.

Robert looked at the now shattered window that lined the right wall of the garage. "How-"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." I whined desperately.

"Maybe I should have done it instead." Dad mumbled, scratching the back of his neck in nervousness.