Karri

She stood still, simply staring at the wall.

Her father paced back and forth in front of her, screaming vitriol and invectiveness in a never-ending streak that actually kind of surprised her. It was quite a while before he started repeating himself. She’d never known him to have such an extensive vocabulary before.

“Are you done?” she asked as he began to wind down, and then braced herself as he launched himself into another tirade.

By the time he came to a halt she’d been standing in the front hall of his house for a good fifteen minutes being screamed at. It wasn’t the reception she wished she’d gotten, but considering the last time she’d seen him he’d cast her out of the family, it was actually better than she’d expected.

Karri was willing to put up with it all, however, as long as she achieved her goal in the end. She’d come back to her father’s place with one goal in mind, and that narrow focus was allowing her to drown out all the things he was saying to her.

“Get out,” he said at last.

Steeling herself, Karri crossed her arms and prepared to defy her father. “No,” she said, injecting as much iron into her tone as possible, hoping to get through to him that she wasn’t leaving until she was damn well ready to, and on her own terms.

“Excuse me?”

“Don’t give me that bullshit,” she said, already tired and only having just started. “You heard me clearly. I said I’m not going. Not until you calm down and have a rational talk with me.”

“How am I supposed to have a rational talk with someone who would betray her family?” he screamed, his face going blotchy red.

“I didn’t betray anyone, Father. Quit being so dramatic.”

The older man shook, so angry he couldn’t even speak.

“Father, listen to me, and listen well. You have got to let go of your hatred. You have to grieve for her. She’s gone.”

He didn’t respond. Karri sighed and decided to try a different approach.

“Look at it this way. If the situation had been exactly the same, except no shifters were involved. Let’s say they didn’t even exist. If someone from Cloud Lake took Mother. Would you hate every resident in Cloud Lake with the same rage you have these past few years?”

He looked away.

“Exactly. You wouldn’t. You’d hate the person responsible, because you know the rest of them would have had nothing to do with it! If I dated someone from Cloud Lake, would you try and shoot them simply because of where they’re from?”

She held up a hand when he opened his mouth to speak. “No, Father. You do not get to dictate who I can and cannot date anymore. I am a thirty-year-old woman. I am allowed to make my own choices, to make mistakes if need be. I understand that you’re worried, that some of that anger is born out of fear for me. It’s…endearing, when you aren’t firing your damn shotgun at me. Which, by the way, you have yet to apologize for.”

He was beginning to squirm under her constant assault, and Karri kept pressing it. She’d always abandoned these sorts of fights with him before they even started, not wanting to risk him taking the company away from her in a fit of rage, but now it didn’t matter any longer. Now she could hit him with every trick in the book.

“She’s dead, Father. It hurts to say. I know. I’ve cried over i. Have you? She may not have been my biological mother, but she sure played the part of mom for over twenty years. If you even try to pretend like she didn’t mean just as much to me as she did you, then you’re a liar as well.”

Karri took a step toward him, noting the way he was no longer red in the face, his eyes darting left and right as she approached. This was long overdue, a conversation they should have had over a year ago. Grieving for a lost loved one was hard. It wasn’t something that Karri had any experience with. She knew exactly zero about how to approach it, what to say, what not to say. But it was clear to her that her father had wrapped himself in a ball of anger, insulating himself from his grief.

As time had passed, the anger had hardened into something she doubted he knew how to get rid of. So it was up to her to chisel and blast her way through it, exposing the hurt below. Tears welled up in her eyes as she continued to speak.

“I miss her,” she whispered. “So unbelievably much. Every day I wake up, and something triggers a memory of her, and I think about wanting to shoot her a text, to tell her that this reminded me of her. And then it all comes rushing back to me, the fact that she’s gone. Those assholes from Fenris took her, Father. They killed her. And you know what Andrew and his friends did?”

Her voice took on a feral snarl. “They hunted them down, Father. They went after them and they killed them. Every one of the fuckers who came to our little peaceful town. They ended them without mercy, without tenderness. We might not have known who did it, but they did. They avenged her, Father. You don’t have to love them. You don’t even have to like them. But you have to let go of your hatred just because they’re different.”

She offered up a silent prayer and then stepped closer, wrapping her arms around him in a tight hug, letting the tears spill down her cheeks at last. “I miss her too…Dad.”

He shuddered, and a moment later his arms came up to pull her in tight, holding her like a father to his daughter.

“I miss her so much,” he whispered in her ear, his voice breaking as sobs interrupted it.

“Me too,” she said, giving him a squeeze. “Me too.”

They stood like that for some time, letting their grief out.

“I’m sorry,” he said at last.

Karri knew that had to cost him, but she needed to keep pressing. To hear him say it. “For what?”

“For everything,” he said insistently. “Being an asshole these past two years. I took out far more of it upon you than I had any right to. Hell, I shot at you!” He looked away. “Oh my God, I shot at my own daughter!” He ran a hand through his thin graying hair. “What kind of father am I?”

She laughed, sounding almost hysterical when mixed with her tears. “It’s okay. You have terrible aim. You missed me entirely.” She paused, trying to decide if she should continue. Screw it, he needs to get over it. “You hit Andrew twice though. You almost blew off his foot and you made a mess of his back. If he were a human, he’d have died on the spot.” She wasn’t going to forgive him quite so easily, even though it was reassuring to hear him sound genuine about apologizing to her.

“I…I regret doing that,” he said at last.

Good enough I suppose. That’s more than I think I ever actually expected him to say.

Karri didn’t want to push it. Her father was feeling sentimental at the moment, but that didn’t take away from the core feelings he had within him. He still didn’t want her running the company. That would never change. So she decided to play her final trump card.

“Father, I need you to do something for me.”

“What’s that?” he asked warily.

It had to be done. There was no way around it. Not if she wanted to make things right in the end. It would make her father happy too, which would help. Two out of three parties wasn’t a bad ratio. It was better than one out of three.

Taking a deep breath, she told him exactly what was going to happen. At first he looked at her like she was crazy, having never expected to hear the words come from her mouth, but by the time she was finished, Karri knew she had him on board. He would do as she needed, in exchange for what he wanted.

It was a deal worth doing.