Forbidden

Chapter 35

35

 

I trudged into the house happily that evening, kicking off my boots and hanging up my coat, humming a tune under my voice.

“Misha?” a voice interrupted me. “Is that you sweetheart?”

I turned and found my mother standing down the hall from me. She looked a little haggard, but maybe it was because she was staying up all night painting something in her art room.

“Yeah,” I replied as I pulled off my knit cap and my scarf.

“Can you come into the sitting room please?” my mother said, before she turned and went down the hall.

I was thoroughly perplexed now.

Why did she want me in the sitting room?

 No one ever went in there; for a moment I dreaded having to help her clean all the dust off the furniture, devising a plan in my head to get out of it.

I stepped into the sitting room, surprised to find my mother and my father taking up the small, antique sofa on the right, but Mr. and Mrs. King sitting in the high backed chairs on the left. As if the whole scene couldn’t have been worse, Randel sat in the chair in the center, refusing to look at me.

There was a china tea service set out on the ornate coffee table, but the tea in the cups looked cold and untouched.

Something was very wrong here.

“Mr. and Mrs. King,” I approached softly, forcing faux enthusiasm into my voice. “What are you doing here?”

“Misha!” my mom hissed, getting up off the sofa she shared with dad. “Excuse her, Harvey, Simone. Misha’s a bit rude.”

“As I can tell,” Mrs. King replied in a cold voice, sipping from her tea cup.

Mrs. King was indeed a pretty woman. She didn’t look a day past 30, with her smooth, unlined russet skin, her sharp features and her straight, dark hair. She was wearing a business suit, and I could tell that put my mom on edge because she was sitting on the sofa in ratty shorts and a corn silk tank top spattered with paint.

My mom raised an eyebrow at the delicate woman sitting in the chair and then turned back to me.

“Sit down.” She mouthed, pointing to an empty high back chair to her right.

Sighing, and partly wondering what this was about, I took up a seat on the chair, trying not to fidget at its uncomfortableness.

“Now, Misha,” Mrs. King said, setting down her empty tea cup, and there was a certain frigid cheerfulness to her cold demeanor. “It has been such a long time my dear; we’ve missed you so much.”