Splinters of You (Retired Sinners MC #1) - Anne Malcom Page 0,22
came home so hurt, broken, and plagued with childhood trauma, I wrote half a bestseller in a week. Which was about seventy percent of the reason I went in the first place. The other thirty percent was my father.
I didn’t have him anymore, and I wasn’t that desperate for some new emotional scars to turn into a book.
“You haven’t because I won’t be arriving,” I said finally.
A pause.
A sharp one.
“You come to every family holiday, that’s something we have agreed upon. I say nothing that I hear from my daughter twelve times a year. That she doesn’t call me on my birthday or answer my calls on hers. Nothing about the way you speak about us in the media—”
“I don’t speak about you at all,” I cut her off.
“Exactly.” The word was terse. Accusing. “You are one of the most famous writers in your generation; some of that, at least is in part thanks to the education your father and I provided you with.”
I massaged my temples. “Yes, sure, I’ll sing your praises in the next Times piece,” I lied.
“You have to come to Thanksgiving.”
“The only thing I have to do is get a Pap smear every three years. Thanksgiving is optional and the anniversary of gross genocide and colonialism.”
What I was saying was one hundred percent true, but it wasn’t the genocide and colonialism that stopped me from going. Unfortunately for the human race, both of those things were commonplace.
“You’re not even going to come and visit your father?” my mother asked in that sharp, guilt birthing tone she was an expert in.
“Why would I visit my father? He’s dead,” I replied, in my harsh, cold, and cruel tone I was an expert in.
My mother’s sharp intake of breath told me I hit the spot I wanted.
“Your father is not dead, Magnolia,” she hissed. “Don’t you dare speak like that about him again.”
I snorted. “I’ll believe you if you put him on the phone right now and he says my name,” I challenged.
A pause. A long pause.
“Right, you can’t,” I said, breaking the silence. “Because he doesn’t remember my name. Or the fact he has a daughter. Or a wife, for that matter. And my father would be the only reason I went home for Thanksgiving because he’s the only one of my parents that doesn’t blame me for Cody’s death.”
Another sharp intake of breath.
“Don’t even try and act shocked or defend yourself,” I continued. “Because we both know it’s true. Even before he died, you weren’t cut out to be a mother. You were cut out to be a Colonel’s wife, and unfortunately for you, that comes part in parcel with having children. I’m glad you were a cold, unfeeling shrew. That you turned me into a version of the same. Because without you, I wouldn’t be where I am now. I’ll thank you for that, Mom. I’ll pay to get you into the nicest nursing home whenever you finally succumb to some kind of illness. It’ll be a nice one too. Apart from that, do not expect me at Christmases, birthdays, or any other bullshit holiday designed to bring people together that hate each other.”
It was then that I hung up the phone, walked straight to the liquor cabinet, and proceeded to drown my sorrows in whisky.
Chapter 5
“It was always over too quickly. I tried to make it last. So I could go longer without finding another. But it was getting harder. No one was catching me. Not even close. I was god now. And death. It was a gift I was giving them. Dying for art. What a more beautiful demise could a woman ask for?”
“It’s six thirty in the morning and I just cut my own bangs.” I squinted into the mirror, tilting my head left and right to make sure they were even. “I’m not sure if I’ve made a great new look or if I’m in the midst of a huge freaking breakdown.” I’d been staring at myself in the mirror so long it was hard to tell.
“Okay, call me back, or at the very least, text me and let me know that you haven’t finally died of exhaustion,” I finished, knowing Katy had been pulling shifts that no human should be able to do without caffeine and without killing anyone.
I hung up the phone, painfully aware of the hysteria echoing through the phone.
I’d not spoken to another human being in over a week.