NATASHA
The young woman doctor my father found is with us as we get onto the FBI’s jet. It’s early evening and he says we’ll be home in a matter of about ten hours.
I’m lying on the bed in the back of the cabin, the IV is being started up again after they had to stop the fluids as they transported me to the airport. I’m holding my cards close to my chest as my mind has been a whirlwind of how I will get back to my Nic. My plan is to call him as soon as I get near a phone.
Dad did say Nic hadn’t moved on and hadn’t been messing around so I have a ton of hope he’ll want to talk to me. We can figure out how to be together if we can talk. I just know we can.
Dad opens the door to the tiny bedroom. “How’s she doing?”
“Fine,” the doctor says as she pulls the blanket up to my neck. “You can tell the pilot to take off. I’ll be right here with her.” She pulls the straps to make sure they’re tight. She uses them to strap me to the bed for the takeoff.
There’s a chair in the room too with a seat belt I suppose she’ll take while we take off. My father comes to me and kisses my forehead. “You and I will have a talk once we’re up in the air and can move around freely.”
I look at him as he turns to leave and feel compelled to say something, “Dad?” He stops and turns back to look at me. “I forgive you.”
With a nod, he turns back around and leaves the room. I watch the doctor wipe one of her eyes then she takes the seat and puts on the seat belt as the captain comes onto the speaker, telling us to put on our seat belts and get ready for takeoff.
“He’s not so bad,” she says.
I suppose the fluids are helping me regain brain activity as I suddenly realize she’s not from Greece. She’s American!
“How do you know my father?” I ask and watch her head fall to her chest.
Her mouth stays closed, though. The slight shake of her head tells me there is more between them. “You should rest.”
“You should tell me,” I say as the plane begins to move.
We wobble back and forth as it taxis to the runway. She won’t look at me and I have a feeling I know exactly why. I watch her bite at her lower lip. Then she looks at me. “It’s not for me to say.”
“He’s asked you to keep a secret?” I ask as I feel the plane moving faster as it gets on the runway.
She merely nods and I know my father is having an affair with the woman. She’s young, maybe thirty. She’s pretty too. Dark hair falls to her shoulders in a straight, glossy sheet. Her brown eyes look kind and nurturing.
Mom has blue eyes and blonde hair, like myself. Mom is a distant type of woman with little going on in her life. She’s never worked a day in her life. She tends to her flower beds she has all around the house. The house she and my father have lived in since I was four years old.
My father’s job was often the excuse for him barely being around. I understood he was a very busy man. It was also a thing that was ingrained in me that my father’s job was extremely dangerous and he didn’t like to talk about his work, so I was not to ask where he’d been at all. Neither did Mom.
And as I watch the woman who sits in front of me, not looking at me, instead she’s staring at the floor, I get the reality into my brain. My father uses women. He has high expectations for any man who is to be in my life but he, himself, treats women poorly.
Perhaps he has no idea what real love feels like. Maybe that’s why he acted like I was a little idiot when I cried and begged him not to take me away from Nic. He must think there is no such thing as love. Just like Nic used to think.
I move my eyes off the poor woman who must be feeling shame. “I’ll never judge you,” I say as we level off and the pilot comes on, telling us we’re free to move about the plane.
She takes her seat belt off and my father walks through the door. “I need a drink,” she tells him as she leaves the room.
His eyes stay focused on me. He’s very good at pretending nothing is going on between them. Moving to the edge of the bed, he takes a seat on it and rests his hand on my blanket-covered leg. “I want to talk to you about when we get back home.”
“What?” I ask as I think he might be about to tell me he and Mom are separated or something like that.
“I want you to know, I will have the house phone bugged. If you call that man’s cell or office, the FBI will know immediately and I will take action against the man. I don’t want to cause him harm but I will, to protect you.”
“I lied,” I say, suddenly.
“About what?” he says as he looks confused.
“About Paul,” I tell him, coming clean for the first time about what happened when I was a teenager.
“Don’t utter that piece of shit’s name, Tasha,” he says between gritted teeth.
“He was not a piece of shit. I was,” I tell him and watch the color leave his face.
“Don’t say that,” he says with a frown. His forehead creases and he looks as if he’s devastated.
I have to get the truth out. I can’t allow it to fester inside of me any longer. “Here’s the truth, Dad. I watched Paul and Sandy’s kids for them. That part you know. What you don’t know is that I saw Sandy treat her husband, Paul, like dog shit on a daily basis. I saw her taking off with other men while her husband was at work. I saw it all and I saw a man who was in the lowest spot in his life.”
“Don’t,” my father says as he looks at the blanket and nervously picks at a loose thread on it.
“It was me who seduced him. It was me who made all the first moves on the man. I put his hand on my breast. I pulled his dick out of his pants and I put my mouth on it. I did that all on my own.”
My father stands up as he shakes his head. “No! He made you do that! He made you, Tasha! You’re looking back and you’re blaming yourself, but it was him who did that! You were only sixteen. He deserved what I did to him! He did!”
“He was a broken man and I took advantage of him and what’s worse is I knew exactly what I was doing. And then you came to pick me up and caught the first time I put my mouth on him and you nearly beat him to death,” I level my eyes on him as he seems to be coming undone.
“No!” he shouts. “Tasha, no! He made you do that to him. And that fucker Grimm made you do those awful things with him. You didn’t want to and you know it!”
I shake my head. “I did want it. I watched an awesome show with a woman and a man and it was beyond amazing. I want it. I want that man and I want that excitement in my life. I want to feel it all, Dad. Understand it or don’t. I don’t care.”
“Natasha Greenwell, I did not raise you to be this way. I did not raise a sexual deviant,” he shouts at me.
“Am I deviant, Dad?” I ask as I watch his color come and go. He may throw up and I wouldn’t blame him. He’s the one who’s insinuated himself into my sex life and I can’t feel sorry for how he’s taking the reality that is me.
He gets off my bed and sits in the chair as he breathes hard. “You’ve really been down a hard road. You need help, baby girl.”
“Dad, all I need is Nic. He is really all I need. It’s been thirteen months and he’s still all I can think about. That has to be because we have something real. I don’t expect you to understand but I do expect you to back the fuck off us. Actually, I demand you do that.”
His face is pale as he looks at me. “You are demanding me to let that son of a bitch do to you anything he wants?”
“He does nothing to me I don’t want.”
With a nod, he gets up. “No,” he simply says.
So, I pull out my big gun. “You sure about that? Because I’m pretty positive that woman who you are calling a doctor is your lover.”
Quickly, his eyes go narrow as he finally looks at me. “Did she tell you that? She’s a liar!”
“No, she didn’t tell me that. I just found it odd that you found an American woman in Greece to treat my drug addiction, an addiction you caused. Two and two came together. It’s much easier now that my mind is clearing,” I tell him and by the way his body is shaking, I know I’m right.
“You know nothing, Tasha,” he says as spit drips off his frothing mouth.
“I know this. Your reign over me is over. Better to accept it, Dad. Fighting me will be a losing battle.”
The door slams against the wall as he throws it open and leaves me alone. My steady heartbeat is confirmation to my brain. His rule is over and my conscience is finally clear about Paul.
The truth feels good!