DAD

Part 13

I took a taxi and started for her home. It always had taken like 20 minutes to reach her room, but don't know why today these 20 minutes seemed like an hour; maybe I was too eager to meet her. I reach her place finally, and hand the taxi driver money, the 100$ note bro had given me.

"Miss, don't you have anything small? This is a big amount."
"I'm sorry this is all I've..."
"But Ms. I don't have money to exchange to this..."

"Take this, I'm sorry." Mrs. Peterson pays the driver, and hands me my dollar note back.
"Mrs. Peterson, you really didn't need to—''
"Stop, come in."

She invites me in, and tells me to sit on the couch. "You've got nice couch; this is new?" I ask, as I didn't see 'em before. "Yeah, Dale decided to buy new ones." She smiles and goes to the kitchen which was directly connected to the living room. "Mr. Peterson has a good taste." I smile grabbing one the pillows, I had always felt comfort at hers. "So, coffee or tea? Or soft drinks?" She asks from the kitchen. "I'll take coffee. I've always loved your coffee." I walk up to her in the kitchen. She makes a cup for me and same for her, but with no sugar for her. In the meantime, Mr. Peterson comes in from the back door, maybe he was in the backyard. "Hello Ms. Klein!" He always got excited when he saw me. "Hello, Mr. Peterson, nice to meet you." I smiled. All the three of us went to the couches in the living room and we sat, I just grabbed a bin bag to sit on; I always thought it's quite of a cool stuff. As we take seats, there emerges a token of silence in the room for a while.

"Ms. Klein..." Mrs. Peterson starts.
"Please call me Clementine, it's fine." I try to comfort them as they seemed quite frightened to say me something; number one influence of Alexa that got me: studying people's face.
"Clementine, we both know about your family and the thing last night." Mrs. Peterson speaks.
"Is it famous all around oxford now?"
"No no. Just us and Alexa."
I nod.

"Look, your fees...they won't..."
"I understand, I will take a part time job, and hopefully cover it up till next month, maybe i won't be able to give your fees, so you can resign from being my guidance advisor...I completely would consider that." I smile and answer, though from inside I was breaking. This time because of scarce of money.
"No sweetie...it's not that..." She speaks again and looks at Mr. Peterson to explain me the rest.

"Look Clementine, your fees aren't the issue here. We know it from a long time that you have been facing these problems with your family...and now they've tossed you out."

"Tossed me out, yeah." I say, maybe it seemed rude because the term hurt me bad.
"We don't mean to hurt you; we just want to..." He continues.
"Want to?"
"Adopt you."

That was it. They were joking or what? Adopting me could be the worst nightmare a person can ever get. If I would've been in their place, I wouldn't have ever even thought f that.

"Clementine?" Mrs. Peterson picks me out of my thoughts.

I stare at them for a while, to find some truthfulness in their eyes. I saw it, but couldn't believe.

"Ma'am I don't know if you're joking or anything, but if you really mean it then I would say that I'm legally still belong to the Klein family and in order to accomplish your decisions I think I need some legal support and some valuable time to present my opinion about it." I say and get out of the house, grab a taxi and drive for hostel.

On the way to the hostel, I see a shop of art pieces; and decide to stop there. I get some changes from another pawn shop and give the taxi driver his fare. Then I attend the shop. It was beautiful, it was not the store we bought canvas from that day...it was another one. After walking a while a girl, apparently smaller than me in age, comes to me and enquires if I needed any help.

"Hello ma'am, what kind of art are you looking for?"
"Um, I was actually looking for the manager...of the shop."
"Oh, he's there, the counter's three rows from here." She smiles and leaves, the first quality of a salesgirl on the go.

At the counter
"Hello sir, I'm Clementine." I smile to make a good first impression.
"Hello Ms. Clementine, are you not being helped?" He smiles back.
"Um, no... I actually wanted to know what sort of arts you sell here."
"Oh, random artists, per piece they get 40% of the money of the price." He smiles again.
"Would you sell my drawings?"
"Ma'am, um..."
"Please?"
"You're an artist?"
"I study at the arts faculty of Oxford."
"Oh, ma'am you must be good. We shall try...but we need to sell one of your arts first and see what cost we get."
"Sure, so when do I bring it?"
"Tomorrow...afternoon?"
"Sure."