The Storm
Home should have been a place of sweet serenity, the one safe place left when the rest of the world turned against you.
It should have been, but it wasn’t.
Sweet serenity was the last thing Amanda Rath felt as she punched in the code to open the heavy front door. She slipped inside, sore and tired. She’d spent the entire day at a specialist’s office. It seemed like there wasn’t a part of her body that hadn’t been poked and prodded.
Her fiance, Phil Wist, rounded the corner as soon as the door shut. He leaned against the wall, arms crossed, his presence large and daunting even in the spacious front entrance. He’d clearly just arrived home from work, as his crisply pressed suit indicated.
Amanda watched him approach, wary as she slipped out of her knee high designer boots. She stacked them neatly on the rack in the closet, just the way Phil liked them. He liked everything to be spotless, pristine. In control. He didn’t like it one bit when he didn’t get his way. He could be childish and petulant.
“What did the doctor say?” Phil’s presence only seemed to grow. He wasn’t a large man. But being tall and streamlined, naturally athletic, certainly wasn’t a disadvantage when he wanted to command attention. He was used to that. He grew up with all the privilege in the world. To him, the world was his to command.
Amanda wished she could slip into the closet and hide. Phil had already been to see a doctor two days before. They found nothing wrong. Which meant the problem must be her. She knew he would see it that way, even if it wasn’t true. If there was one thing in the world Phil wasn’t great at, it was accepting blame.
“Why don’t we sit down,” Amanda whispered. She hated the way she reacted to Phil when he was like this. When he wanted answers. He knew how to get them too. He’d been trained as a stockbroker to seek out and find the truth that lay below the unexpected. It was how he and his family had created a virtual empire.
“Sit down?” Phil frowned. He took another step forward, menacingly. Amanda resisted the urge to shrink back. “Why? What did the doctor say? Spit it out Amanda. I want to know.”
She’d been warned about this. Her family, her friends, they all told her that Phil Wist, that any Wist, had a set of expectations. They liked what they liked and they hated what they didn’t. The world wasn’t a series of gray shades for the Wists. It was pretty darn black and white. Phil could be controlling, tending towards jealousy. If he didn’t like Amanda’s friends, she was required to drop them. Her mother warned her, warned her that men like Phil expected a wife that was little more than a trophy. Thank god she wasn’t that yet, a wife or a trophy. She’d left home when she was twenty and moved in with Phil. She hadn’t spoken to her mother since. Four years. Four years of silence.
“She said there wasn’t a problem. Nothing. They couldn’t find a single reason that I haven’t conceived.”
Phil’s shoulders sagged. He looked a little deflated. It wasn’t something she was used to seeing. They had been fine before his grandfather got sick. Ever since John Wist had been diagnosed with cancer, the pressure had been on.
At first, Amanda didn’t understand the need for her to get pregnant. She couldn’t see what Phil’s grandfather had to do with anything. Then she’d found out the truth. Phil’s grandfather controlled all the money. He owned the company Phil and his father both worked at. He had started it and grown it, trained his own son as well as his grandson to be part of a ruthless world where you sank or swam.
Family money was tied up with the old man. He made all the decisions that directly affected Phil’s future. The old man didn’t like Amanda. He didn’t like that she came from a modest house, raised by a single mother. He didn’t like that she wasn’t over six feet with the killer angles and blonde hair of a model. That she’d gone to college and had an Art Degree instead of majoring in business. Most of all, the old man hated that Amanda, who had tied up his grandson for four years, had failed to produce a child.
Not that they’d actively tried the entire time they were together. She’d been adamant that she finish school before they conceived a child. She loved Phil, but she valued the education she’d worked so hard to attain.
That left two years. Over the past year, after John Wist had been diagnosed with cancer, Phil had become overly preoccupied with having a child. It was pretty cut and dry to Amanda. No child. No inheritance. He risked being cut off if the old man died and she wasn’t pregnant.
The helpless expression left Phil’s face. Amanda’s stomach sank as it was replaced with a twisted scowl. It turned features that should have been handsome, smooth, the classic made from money face, into something that was hard and a little frightening.
Dark eyes burned into hers. Phil’s lips, lips that were a little too thin on a good day, turned back to reveal a set of perfect, white teeth. His nostrils flared with anger. There was a tick at his angular jaw as he fought back anger.
Amanda braced herself for the storm that was coming. She’d dreaded this, that black look, the entire drive home from the doctor’s office. Phil only got that black look of rage when something went terribly wrong. She’d never seen it aimed at her before. She had seen it once, when he’d made a wrong trade and the company lost half a million dollars because of his mistake.
“Liar,” Phil roared. Spittle sprayed out in the air in front of him. He stalked forward and gripped Amanda’s arm. His fingers wrapped around her bicep like a vice, cutting in painfully. “You’re useless! Infertile!”
“No,” she yelped, nearly shocked into silence. “The doctor said…”
“I don’t care what some doctor said. She clearly had no idea what she was talking about. We haven’t conceived a child and we’ve been trying for two years! Two! There is something wrong with you! You’re barren. Infertile. I don’t fucking care what the word is for it, you’re useless to me!”
Phil could be an asshole at times, but he could also be tender and funny in terms. She knew he was under a lot of pressure, both at work and in his personal life. She had to forgive him for this. Had to. She couldn’t live with him otherwise, if she kept those bitter words in her mind.
“Phil, please. We’ll keep trying. I’m sure it will happen… maybe we just need to see a few more specialists-” Amanda’s words were cut off as Phil turned and jerked her hard. She stifled a gasp of pain as he pulled her after him, down the hall, towards her studio. He shoved her in through the door.
“You think that I work all day so you can sit home and do this? Fucking paint? You’re useless! You’re art is garbage. Nothing but a fantasy. You’ll never amount to anything, never sell one piece. I kept you with me because you were what I needed. I don’t have time to find someone else. I don’t have time, Amanda! I’m out of it. My grandfather took a turn for the worse and it’s fucking obvious he’s going to cut me out of the will unless you get pregnant. And I can’t fool the old prick. He wants medical evidence of the fact.”
“Phil! Please, you’re hurting me!” Amanda tried to pull her arm away, out of Phil’s iron like grasp. His fingers dug in harder, bruising her tender skin.
“Enough! You had to do one thing. One thing and one thing alone. God, I’m glad I didn’t marry you. My family never liked you, Amanda. They were right. You’re trash. I don’t know why I couldn’t see it sooner. I guess I’m seeing it now. A pretty face and a nice pair of tits will only get you so far in life, sweetheart.” He let go of her arm with a hard thrust. He brushed by her so abruptly she nearly fell over.
“Phil!” She spun around. “Where are you going?”
“Out,” he thundered. “Out of this fucking house. And you, you will be gone when I get back in an hour. Take whatever you think you want. Whatever trash in this studio that you think has some value, but get out. You are of absolutely no use to me now.”
“But… what about the car? The… my…” it was impossible to form words. How could four years with a man she thought she knew and loved just evaporate into smoke? This was so unlike the Phil she’d been with for so long. This man, standing at the end of the hallway, his face twisted with hate and rage, this wasn’t Phil. Or was it? Was it ever possible to truly know and understand another person?
“Take your car. It will only get you further away from me,” Phil said, his hard tone like a blast of winter air. “It’s in your name anyway. Think of it as a parting gift. The only thing you’ll get from me. If you come after me for anything else, anything else at all, or if you try and go public with this and ruin my family’s name, I’ll come after you. Don’t forget that money buys the best lawyers possible. I’ll crush you. I’ll make you wish that you never knew my name. So don’t even think of it, Amanda.”
“But… where will I go?” Her mind whirled. She could hardly process what was happening. That as of a few minutes ago, she was homeless for something that wasn’t even her fault. Whether Phil believed her or not, that doctor had sat face-to-face while she explained, from the battery of tests Amanda had been through, that there was nothing medically wrong with her. She couldn’t really have been wrong, could she? Maybe certain kinds of infertility don’t show up on a test…
Phil stomped down the hallway. He gripped Amanda’s shoulders so hard she nearly fell over. His fingers dug unmercifully into tender muscles. “That is no longer my problem,” he hissed into her ear. He shoved her into the open door of her studio. “Now start fucking packing. One hour, Amanda. One hour. Don’t push me or test me or you will be sorry. I’ll throw you out with nothing but the clothes on your back if I find you here when I return.”
A hard shove sent her sprawling through the open door. She stumbled and righted herself before she crashed into one of her paintings. It was a large piece. She’d been working on it for months. She whirled around, but Phil was already gone. His angry, harsh footfalls echoed down the long hallway then the front door slammed.
Amanda collapsed. Her legs just gave way and she found herself, a heap on the floor.
Everyone had warned her. Warned her about the Wists. She hadn’t listened. That’s what love did to you. It made you a fool. A damn fool.
The one thing she’d done for herself, after losing her friends and her mother, no… after giving them up for Phil, was to open her own bank account. She’d kept it a secret and had socked money away when she could. It wasn’t easy, given that she didn’t actually have a job. Phil wouldn’t let her work. She did volunteer work because it made him look good. She hosted dinners, went to dinners, entertained his friends. And she painted. That had become her life. A life she thought was so full of purpose.
A life that meant nothing at all.
She had a couple thousand dollars in her account. Hardly enough to even get an apartment once she paid the down payment. She didn’t have anywhere to go. She couldn’t go back home. Not to the small town an hour outside of Boulder, where her mother lived. That wasn’t home anymore. Her mother had been pretty clear. Dump Phil Wist or move out and not come back. She’d chosen the latter.
And she was paying for it now.
Amanda took a deep, shaky breath. She realized she was crying. Hot, salty tears streamed down her cheeks, completely unheeded. She didn’t even feel it. A slow, horrible numbness spread over her chest. She forced herself to her feet and stared around the room.
She had one hour. She wasn’t going to leave her paintings behind. She forced herself into action, to move towards a future that was completely and utterly uncertain.