is a businessman – he knows how to read bank statements and spreadsheets. And I swore him to secrecy, and I’ve known the man for years. I’d trust him with my social security number and mother’s maiden name.”
“Clearly. Since you trusted him with mine,” I say nastily. I leap to my feet. Xena looks back and forth between Winona and me with big, alarmed eyes. “You just destroyed any chance of the company going public!” I grab the plastic bag from the table and hurl it to the floor. “The board meeting is in two fucking weeks!”
“Do not swear at me. Ever. I will not be spoken to like that.” She straightens up, her eyes snapping with anger. “I am not the one who defrauded your company. Whether or not you go public has nothing to do with me.”
I’m in a haze of pain and fury, worse than anything I’ve ever felt before. Worse than hearing that my parents were dead. At least when they died, I thought my father was an absolute hero. Winona might as well have just spit on his grave.
“Who the hell do you think you are to trash my family like that?” My throat is raw from the heat of my rage. “Our family isn’t a bunch of liars! Not everybody’s like you, Winona!”
She looks as if I just slapped her. “What are you talking about? We’re not liars.” Tears brim in her eyes, glittering like diamonds.
I should stop, but I’m so wretched, so heartsick, that I plow ahead with raging intensity. "You lie to your parents all the time. You hate Peach Pit, you hate everything about it, you never want to go back there! You’re letting them bully you into ruining your life and moving to a town that makes you miserable. And what about that fake business you started? What about buying those damn jars of peach jam every freaking month, even though it makes you sick? How is that not a lie?”
“Our peaches make you sick?" her mother’s anguished voice cries out from the doorway. Her father’s standing next to her, his jaw dropped in shock. Loretta is standing right behind them.
“You hate our town?” Loretta says in a petulant whine.
“You were the one buying all that product? Why?” Her father demands, looking mortally offended. “Was it some kind of charity thing?”
Oh fuck. Oh no. I was so caught up in the horror of what Winona just told me about my parents, I didn’t even hear the living room door open. This is bad. This is very very bad. My fight is with Winona, but I just dragged her family and her entire town into it.
Winona wheels around to face them, her eyes wide with panic.
“Mom! It’s not like it sounds!”
Her mother’s round face has gone a sickly shade of white. “It sounds as if you lied to us for years and made us into charity cases. And I certainly wouldn’t force you to live near us if you hate everything about us.”
“I didn’t say that! He did!” Winona’s words tumble out on top of each other, her voice thin and panicked. “No, wait – he didn’t say I hated everything about you! He said– I don’t– ”
Her mother slams the living room door with a resounding bang.
Winona wheels on me, furious. “You petty son of a bitch!”
I should apologize. Even though she’s got to be wrong about my father, I shouldn’t have lashed out at her like that.
But the old self-loathing swells up inside me. I’m the boy who killed his daddy. I don’t deserve nice things.
“Like that was a secret,” I sneer. I’m trading hurt for hurt.
I’d expect her to cry at this point, but she doesn’t. She just gives me a blank look that makes me sick and dizzy. As if I’m a stranger. As if we never loved each other.
I stand ramrod straight, returning her blank look. Never show weakness, even if you’re bleeding out; my father taught me that.
My father taught me that.
My father taught me everything. His words, his lessons, his beliefs…they have to mean something. They can’t all be based on lies.
She turns and stalks to the door without a single word. Then she glances back at me. “Be good to Xena, or I will find out, and I will come after you.” And she slams the door behind her. “Mom! Dad! Wait for me!” she calls, her voice lost and broken.
Bile rises in my throat, and I swallow it, almost vomiting. I collapse