It all started with this huge property my parents bought together. It was meant for this family drug store that they planned to build after they got married. Obviously that didn't happen and the property was left to become a weed garden. But the store was my father's dream, so he still felt it was his right to pursue it. Of course what's his dream must be my dream also, so he started taking cash out of my paycheck from the diner to fund the building and start-up costs. He said I'd get out everything I put into it and more, but I still felt a little bitter, you know. But I did it for him and that was all that really mattered.
It was Saturday evening. I had just gotten home from work and set my keys on the side counter in the entry way when something startled me. It was my mother tapping her nails on the kitchen table.
"Amelia," she said in a tone reminiscent of a Disney villain.
"What's going on?" I asked. "Where's Dad?"
"He's in his office talking to his lawyer," she replied.
"His lawyer?" I asked somewhat alarmed.
She nodded with a sly smile.
If there was one thing I just couldn't understand about this woman, it was her love for causing others pain.
When my father finally entered the kitchen, he looked absolutely defeated. Head hung, shoulders slouched, eyes never straying from the carpet. It turned out that even though my father had paid for the property solely with his own money, it was bought in her name and so legally it belonged to her. At the time, this was meant to give her a part in the business and bring them closer together, but like tattooing your girlfriend's name on your buttcheek, it turned out to be a bad idea. Now she had the legal rights to take all of the land and sell it, ruining any chance my father had of getting his drug store. And that's exactly what she planned to do.
It wasn't that I wanted the drug store, in fact I was kinda hoping the whole endevour would just be a flop, but it was the way he cried, the way he begged, "Francine, please, don't do this to me." This store was his dream, the one thing he had always been reaching towards. She was just taking it away out of spite. At first, the only thing I had felt around her was distance, but now it was hate, sheer, unadulterated hate for the woman who had dashed my father's dreams.
