TWENTY-SEVEN
Belle
Zeus does exactly as he promised and phones Dad to tell him what Cerise has been up to. The coffee cradled in my hands provides something to focus on other than the ache in my chest. The heat hurts my hands a little, but not as much as the knowledge my fucking mother, the woman who birthed me, is responsible for all of our pain.
Zeus scrubs a hand over his face, brow pinched hard. “Why has she done it, J? Fucking throw me a bone here. What the hell reason could she have for wanting to hurt us so bad?”
Dad leans against the side of the sofa. He came straight over, preferring to hash it out face-to-face rather than over the phone.
“I don’t know,” he says with a sigh. “I thought all this shit revolved around her post-partum, her resenting Belle after we lost Rose. But this is taking it a step too far.”
“You don’t fucking say,” I murmur.
“It’s my fault,” Dad says with a frown. “She wouldn’t be such a problem if I hadn’t phoned her the other week.”
“There has to be more to it than that.” Zeus leans both elbows on the kitchen counter, holding my phone with one hand while he scrubs the other over his head. “I keep thinking back, trying to come up with anything I’ve done to make her hate me so much, and I draw a blank. She said something once about always stealing your time, about hating that I was ‘always there.’ But even that….”
“It doesn’t add up, does it?”
“What else is there? I mean, why the fuck did she come back after ten fucking years, you know?”
Don’t we all wish we knew that?
Dad huffs a sigh. “We’ll go talk to her like you said. She’s got to put a stop to this.”
“And if she doesn’t?” I set my empty mug on the coffee table.
“Then I look into what legal action we can take against her,” he states. “We’ve ignored her for too long, thinking if we paid her no mind she’d go away. But that hasn’t worked, has it?”
Zeus shakes his head, fire in his eyes as he stares at the counter.
“I’m laying this to rest, whatever the fuck it is,” Dad reiterates. “She needs to confess why it is she’s doing this. I mean, backing me up was one thing, but harassing Belle….” He shakes his head, hands on hips.
“I want to go.”
The pair of them look at me wide-eyed.
“I’m not sure that’d be wise,” Dad says.
“I am. She has beef with me, so I’ll go with you, Dad.” I meet both of their stares. “Why should I hide away while she gets to play bully? Fuck her. I’m not eight anymore, wondering why my mother doesn’t love me. I’m twenty-one, and I want to know why the fuck she can’t let me go if she never wanted me.”
I get Zeus wants to defend me on this, but the issue is with Cerise and me. She’s simply using him as a pawn to get to me.
Dad flattens his lips, the points of his jaw bulging as he sighs. “You won’t take no for an answer, will you?”
I smile, earning one from Zeus in response. “Nope.”
“Fine. But if I ask you to step out, you do.”
“Fine.” As if.
***
Turns out Cerise lives less than ten minutes from where Zeus and I do. Makes my skin crawl to think she’s been that close all along. Dad brings his work truck to a stop in the driveway, killing the engine as he stares at her unassuming townhouse.
“Last chance to stay out of the crossfire.”
“Just hurry up, would you?” I get out of the vehicle and head for the front door.
He hurriedly locks the truck behind me, and then jogs to catch up. I lace my fingers together as he knocks on the door, worried that if I leave them loose at my sides I might be tempted to smack the bitch.
“Well fancy seeing you two here.” Cerise leans on the door, apparently not in a hurry to let us in.
“We need to talk.” Dad pushes past her, forcing her arm out of the way.
I take his lead and let myself in to her house. It’s cold in its lack of decoration. A plain two-seater sits in the living room, a basic side table with only the television remote sitting on top at the end. There are no pictures, plants, or even extra cushions.
It’s bare necessities only.
“What is it you’ve got to say, then?” Cerise enters the room and beelines for her smokes. She cracks a window and lights one, eyes on us the whole time.
Dad frowns at her choice to smoke indoors, her addiction one of his bugbears about the woman. “Why did you do it?”
“Do what?” She smirks.
“You fucking know what.” Dad steps toward her.
Cerise looks around him to where I hesitate against the wall. “Why should they be happy when nobody else is?”
“What do you mean?” Dad snaps. “I’m happy. Who else isn’t?”
“Jodie.”
He laughs at her. “Jodie is a happy new mother, engaged to be married.”
“Oh whatever. Zeus broke her heart. She was forced to choose between him and being a mother. That wasn’t fair.”
“It was a mutual split,” I explain.
She scowls. “Is that what he told you?”
“No.” I lift an eyebrow. “That’s what Jodie told me.”
Cerise seems suitably put out that I know more about her former best friend than she does.
“What does it matter, anyway?” Dad takes a seat on the arm of the sofa. “Why can’t you move on with your own life? Why harass your daughter like this?”
“Because why should she get away with it?” Cerise thrusts a hand at me. “She just swans on in, shaking her pert little arse around, and he salivates over her like a hungry dog. It’s sick.”
“So what if he does?” My voice rises with my protest. “You left when I was a kid, Cerise. You gave up your right to have a say in what I do when you failed to come back.”
“I agree.” Dad nods at me. “I raised Belle, Cerise. Alone. Even before you left you’d pass her off to whoever would take her. You never wanted kids. Fuck—the twins were an accident.”
“Exactly,” she cries. “I was a teen mother, John. I never planned to start a family so soon.”
“Maybe not,” I say. “But how was that my fault? Why did I have to suffer because of your mistake?”
“Because if I made sure I failed you, then I didn’t worry about trying not to.”
I frown at her. “That’s some fucked up logic.”
“Is it?” She looks between the two of us. “If I didn’t care, then it didn’t hurt to think about how wrong everything was.”
“What was wrong about it?” Dad asks. “We had a beautiful baby daughter, a new house… a sound marriage.”
“Really?” Cerise frowns. “Was it sound?”
“Are you telling me otherwise?” The pain in Dad’s eyes lances straight into my heart.
“You were good to me, John,” Cerise says with the most honesty I’ve ever seen from her. “You were everything a good husband should be, but that didn’t change the fact I never wanted to marry you.”
“What?” He bolts upright. “What the hell?”
“You proposed because I was knocked up,” she hollers. “I had to say yes. I was young and pregnant. I was scared.”
Dad stares at her, seemingly lost for words. Hell, I am too. I melt against the wall, watching the truth finally pour out. And it strikes me as I watch my mother hug herself—this is the first time in my life I’ve seen her look sorry for something. She watches Dad try to make sense of it all, a worried furrow to her brow.
“We had fun, John,” she says softly, hands massaging her arms. “We were young, silly, and in love, I suppose. But you and I were never suited for each other. You wanted stability and security, and I… I guess I wanted to stay a wild child a little longer.”
“You’re telling me,” he chokes out, “that if you hadn’t got pregnant, we would have lasted, what? Another few months?”
“If that.” She shrugs.
“I just….” He runs a hand through his ash-blond hair. “I mean it makes sense now that I look back on it, why you had such a hard time after Belle was born. Losing Rose is one thing, but to have that happen when you didn’t want either of them to begin with…. No wonder you couldn’t connect to Belle.”
I feel seperated from the scene, as though I’m watching some melancholic home video. Neither of them acknowledge me as they work through years of lies, as they uncover the things that have been buried beneath anger and malice all this time.
“I didn’t want you to blame yourself,” she says. “That’s why I made you hate me, and then after a while that just became who I am.” Cerise throws the spent cigarette out the window. “It’s still who I am. I hate that Belle’s happy. I hate that she’s got what I never had.”
Dad frowns. “What has her happiness and your lack of got to do with Zeus though? Why drag him into it?”
My stomach knots as I step forward. “Because Zeus is what she wanted, Dad.” Cerise locks gazes with me, her mouth turned down at the corners. “She wanted to be a wild child with the bad boy. She never wanted to marry you, because she wanted to be with him. Isn’t that right?”
“Yeah,” she scoffs. “Well done, honey. Twenty-one years old and you figured out what your dad still can’t see at thirty-nine.”
“And if you can’t have him now, then you’ll make sure nobody can. Right?”
“Exactly right.”
Numb. I feel numb. What should I feel? What emotion do I fall back on when all of them threaten to overtake me at once? Anger, frustration, sadness, relief, and regret. They’re all there, pushing to surface as the big picture finally comes into focus.
This is the reason for her hate. This is the reason for her bitterness.
“You can’t do that to them,” Dad growls. “You can’t ruin their lives because he didn’t reciprocate your feelings, Cerise.”
“Like fuck I can’t. Do you know how long I tried to get him to notice me? How shitty I felt when he’d walk on by like I was fucking invisible?” She huffs a bitter laugh through her nose. “All the girls wanted him, and he damn well knew it, strutting around like the king of that damn school.”
“No he didn’t,” Dad says quietly. “He didn’t know that. Zeus never believed he was worth anyone’s time.”
“Oh, rubbish.” She plucks a new cigarette from the packet. “He was so cocky. He knew he was a looker and he made the most of that.”
“Do you know why he started working out?”
I frown as I focus on Dad. He’s talking about times he’s never shared with me. All of this is new.
“Because all you boys did,” Cerise says as she sparks the lighter. “You tried to outdo each other.”
“When we were sixteen, sure,” Dad scoffs. “But Zeus started when he was fourteen. He worked out with shitty homemade weights until the gyms would let him in as a minor.”
Cerise frowns, clearly unsure what Dad alludes to.
“You ever wonder why he couldn’t tolerate your drinking?”
She makes a dismissive shake of her head.
“Because his dad was an alcoholic.” Wow. “He began working out the same day he failed to stop his dad from beating on his sister. Made a promise to Sefina to get big enough that nobody could hurt her.” Dad leans forward, frowning as he drills it home to a subdued Cerise. “So imagine how it felt for him when he failed to save her from her husband. Let that soak in, Cerise. And then ask yourself if he truly thought he was all that and then some, because I think you’ll find Zeus is nothing like the man you think he is.”
I can’t take this anymore. I’m stuck here in the last place I want to be, learning things about the man I love that make me want to hold him tight and tell him that he hasn’t failed me. That he did the best he could, and that I could guarantee his sister knew that.
I step outside as the timbre of Dad’s voice grows more and more hurt, the sheer anger in his words reverberating off the walls as I close my eyes and relish the cool night air across my face.
Dad’s lost it. After twenty-one years of being fucked over by her in one way or another, he’s finally had enough.
I don’t blame him one little bit. Which is why I don’t stop him, don’t try to bring order to the place as he lets out decades of hurt, decades of broken trust.
A bitter laugh falls from my lips, the sound surprising me somewhat. My mother never wanted me, never planned me, and now… now she’s jealous of what I have. In a cruel twist of fate, her unwanted child ended up with the one thing she wanted most. The one thing she couldn’t strongarm into being hers: Zeus.
The yelling subsides, the deep resonance of Dad’s voice replaced with the staggered tones of Cerise’s tears. He’s finally done it. Or maybe we both did? For once, my mother has been forced to feel. Forced to face what her hate has done to people.
It’s about time she learnt what it feels like to care.
“Get out.” Her growled demand spins me around.
Dad storms out the door toward where I wait near the truck. “I mean it, Cerise.” He stabs a finger in her direction. “You leave us the hell alone, or so help me.”
“What, John? What will you do?” She leers from the doorstep, not quite brave enough to come after him.
The streetlights highlight the moisture still on her cheeks.
“Maybe it’s not what he’ll do but what I will.” Fucked if I know what I’d do to hurt her, but the threat is valid all the same.
“Come on, Belle.” Dad stabs the key fob to unlock the truck. “Let’s go.”
I round the hood of the vehicle and get in my side. The truck rocks as Dad slams his door, and within seconds we’re peeling out her driveway, hitting the road with enough force to jolt me in my seat.
Dad’s face is a storm, anger still prevalent as he rips through the gears. I don’t know what to say to him, what words I could use to ease his heartache when I’m a living reminder of it.
Turns out I don’t have to say anything. His face softens, the scowl slipping away as he adjusts himself in the seat, hands wringing the steering wheel.
“I’m sorry you had to hear all that, sweetheart.”
I reach across and rest my hand on his knee. “I’m glad I did, Dad. It explains so much. In a way it gives me closure, knowing her reasons for all of this.”
He eases the truck to the side of the road. A strained sigh comes from him before he rests his head on his arms looped over the steering wheel.
Seeing your parent upset—it’s odd. How do I fix him? What do I do when he’s always been my rock? I guess I treat him the same as he would me. Dad’s breaths come staggered as I adjust my position so I can reach him properly. One stroke of my hand across his back, and he shakes with the sobs that overtake him. I rub my palm in circles, my tears echoing his as I feel his pain.
Twenty-one-plus years of lies. The woman he chose to do right by just threw that back in his face tenfold.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur. “I wish you’d had the life you deserved, not one ruined by her.”
He draws a deep breath, pulling himself together somewhat. “Belle.” His eyes are bloodshot when he lifts his face to look at me. “I had the life I wanted with you. I wouldn’t trade you for anything.” He swallows. “I’ve got the woman of my dreams now.” His lips curl up on one side. “Despite how I look, I’m happy. I just….” He leans back, head rested on the seat. “I regret so much. There are so many things I would have done different if I’d known.”
“You can’t change what’s been.” I learnt that early on. “Only move forward.”
“Yes.” He frowns as he reaches for my hand. “Exactly.” His gaze hardens, determination taking over. “Fuck rules. They were made to be broken, right sweetheart?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m taking you home, Belle. I’m taking you to where you belong.”