Duly Noted

by H. M. Shander

  She swallowed back the bitter taste building in her mouth. “Speaking of Isas, where do you get them? Chris, Nate’s shrink sister, said she’s never heard of them.”

  “I get them from my doctor.” His eyes failed to meet hers.

  “Dr. Who?”

  “Does it matter? I get them for you when you need them.” He stood and started walking away.

  “Stop. Right. Now.” Finding strength, she stood. “Tell me the truth.”

  He turned, anger rolling off him in waves. “Right. Like I owe you any form of the truth. Have you been entirely honest with me?” he yelled.

  “No,” she said, pained to have the truth thrown back at her.

  “So stop prying into my life.”

  “Prying? I’m not prying, I’m asking a goddamn question.” She stomped her foot. “I talked to Chris yesterday, and it came up in conversation. Again. She thinks they’re actual Rohypnols, Daddy. A date-rape drug. You don’t get those from a doctor.” Her father glanced around, and didn’t answer. “You’ve been giving me street drugs? How could you? I’m your daughter.” Her hands flew wildly through the air, missing the nearby kitchen chair.

  “They’re safe in small quantities.”

  “What?” Her eyes bugged out. “Listen to you. You gave me – YOUR DAUGHTER – a street drug that has no regulations. What the hell?”

  “Now you just stop!” He held up his hand. “I bought them from the best supplier, and kept them under lock and key. You didn’t get them willy-nilly whenever you felt you needed it, they were dispensed under care.” A frown crossed his stern face as he pointed a finger at her. “You’re the one mixing drugs, not me. You’re the reckless one here, so stop losing your shit on me, Princess. I gave you the Isas to help you.” Fatherly concern replaced his anger as he lowered his head.

  “Right. Like by helping me, you kept me from learning about Thomas Anderson’s trial?”

  His head snapped up. “How do you know about that?”

  “Does it matter?” She threw his own words back at him. “Were you ever going to mention the Victim Impact Statement? Do we even have a lawyer?”

  “Of course we do, and I’ve paid quite handsomely for him.”

  Defeated, she sat beside him. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Her tone softened as her energy level depleted and the need to sit overwhelmed her.

  “I didn’t need you flying off the handle. You’re a little uncontrollable when you lose it.”

  Seeing an image of Nate’s face as he told her about her trying to open the truck door flashed. She shivered knowing he was right. “But that doesn’t excuse you from telling me. If anything, I can tell them how my life has changed. The medications I’m on, the fears I have, what holds me back. I’m a victim in this. I was there.” She crossed her arms over her chest, fearing her heart had more cracks in it than a sidewalk, and she feared all her heartache would eventually kill her.

  “I know, Princess.”

  “Can I still write the statement? I assume you’re going tomorrow.”

  “Yes, I am. And no you can’t.” He scratched his nose and shrugged. “Everything had to be given to the lawyer before his court date last week. Seriously, how did you hear about this?”

  Matthew James, but I won’t get into that with you. I’d rather never have to think of him again. She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter anymore.” Grabbing her laptop, she opened her word processor. “So, can I still write it? I swear it won’t take me long.”

  A hand clasped her shoulder. “Aurora, it’s over. Thomas Anderson will be going to jail for a long time. Your letter won’t change that.” After glancing at his watch, he said, “I have to go. I have a meeting in twenty minutes. I didn’t think you’d be here when I dropped my stuff off.” His eyes narrowed. “By the way, why aren’t you at work?”

  “Because Nate works there too, and right now, it hurts too much to see him. I feel sick to my stomach just thinking of that look on his face.” A shiver ran through her.

  He studied her to the point it made her uncomfortable. A weak mumble escaped his lips as he once again checked her pulse. One eye squinted as the other scanned the area. “When was the last time you took any drugs?” His lips moved, but no words escaped.

  Any drugs? It was hard to remember. Surely she had something yesterday. Right? Fuck, why was it so hard to think? Did she have one yesterday? No, she didn’t think so.

  “When, Princess?”

  “Shut up, Daddy. I’m thinking.” Seriously, when was it? The anger started boiling in her again. I had to have had one yesterday, right? Or was that Sunday?

  Her daddy sat across from her. “You’re right when you said you don’t have the flu. You have withdrawal.” Eyes ringed in fear and concern bored straight into her heart.

  Her eyebrow shot up. “There’s no withdrawal, because I don’t abuse drugs.” Even though she said it, she didn’t believe it. Not anymore. Saturday night’s fiasco was the icing on the cake. Kaitlyn was terrified at what she took and refused to leave her alone. Nate had also worried. Her daddy paled when he heard. “No!” She hadn’t taken anything over the last couple of days because she was dead inside over pushing Nate away. It wasn’t withdrawal. It was heartache she was going through. She battered her fists on the table. “NO! I’m not going through withdrawal. My heart’s fucking snapping in two.” Storming down the hall, she slammed the door so hard the pictures on the wall fell. Another door slammed immediately after, and she presumed her daddy left.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Picking up one of the fallen picture frames, she looked at her dresser where her friends sat waiting expectantly for her. They sat in their containers, staring out from behind the labels, eyeing her as she walked by, almost yelling ‘pick me, pick me’. She could hear their whispers, hear them calling out to her, how taking one of them in her mouth would make her feel better, so much better. They would help her, and reassure her and make her feel good inside. She stared at the bottles and with a right arm that would please a pitcher, she launched them all into her dresser mirror, shattering it into a million pieces as she screamed at the top of her lungs.

  Collapsing into bed, she begged for sleep to take her under, but it was only four o’clock, too early to turn in for the night and too late for a nap. Besides, she wasn’t tired, she was angry. And she had no way to rid herself of her sudden energy. She stepped around the shards of glass and marched into the kitchen. She started baking – anything and everything – until the wee hours of the morning, and had exhausted her baking ingredients, filling her fridge and freezer full of homemade yum-yums. It was two a.m. when she climbed back into bed, and her father had yet to return.

  In the morning, she heated a muffin, and her daddy stumbled out of the spare room, right into the heart of the disaster zone.

  He rubbed his eyes as he surveyed the mess. “What the hell happened?”

  “I baked.”

  “And you forgot to clean?”

  She shrugged and tossed her muffin wrapper onto the table. “By time I was done, I wasn’t interested in cleaning.”

  “You never are,” he said as he reached through the stack of pans to grab a coffee cup.

  She rolled her eyes. Biting into a muffin she’d made with pancake mix instead of flour, she was impressed at the taste. Better than she thought it would be. She took another bite. “What time did you roll in?”

  “Four.”

  “What the hell were you doing out so late?”

  “What are you, my mother?” he snapped.

  Aurora glared and tore off a chunk of muffin. Obviously he was in a mood to fight and amazingly enough, she wasn’t. She took a deep breath and said, “Oh, just so you know, I broke a mirror yesterday.”

  “And you didn’t bother to clean it up?”

  “No. But I have a reason for that, a theory if you will.”

  He raised an eyebrow as he grabbed a muffin and walked over to the table.

  “I’m working on it. Trying to be all met
aphoric about it and what it stands for and what it represents.”

  “And?”

  “I’m still thinking on it.”

  He chomped on the muffin and as she looked at her father, his eyes were bloodshot and rimmed in red. “These are good.”

  “I know.” A sip of warm coffee dripped down her throat. “You look like hell, Daddy.”

  “Thanks.” Reaching for another muffin, he asked, “How are you feeling this morning?”

  “Emotionally? Physically? And which version? Sugar coated or hit you between the eyes truth?”

  “Too many options for first thing in the morning.” He tapped his watch. “Why aren’t you at work, yet?”

  “I took today off. You know, to deal with things.”

  “What’s to deal with? So you broke up, whatever. You got over Derek, and he was–” He stopped whatever words wanted to fall from his mouth. “You’ll get over this.”

  Snap. Never mind, she was ready for a fight. Anger coursed through her hands and she gripped her mug until her knuckles turned white. “Like hell. Nate was the best thing that ever happened to me. It fucking hurts that we’re not together. And it’s all my fault. I pushed him away. I told him to go. It killed me inside to do it, but I had to. For him, I had to do it.” She took a sip of coffee even though what she wanted to do was throw it at her father. “So get over it?” She stood, anger propelling her off her seat like a rocket. “Fuck you, Daddy. It’ll never happen.”

  He rose in response. “Excuse me?”

  “I’m so fucking tired of you telling me how not to deal with something. How to sweep it under the carpet like it never existed. I’ve tried that and it doesn’t fucking work for me. I need to talk it through. I need to feel emotions. I need to hurt, and I need to cry. I need to fucking deal with things. You telling me that there’s nothing to deal with negates my feelings and makes me feel unworthy. And I am worthy, Daddy.”

  “Of course you’re worthy. No one’s saying you’re not.” Sympathy rolled off him. His shoulders fell, and he looked exhausted.

  “Then stop. Let me deal with it. My way. Just because it works for you, which I’m not entirely believing anymore, doesn’t mean it works for me.”

  “Do you want to know how it works for me? I’ll tell you.” He fell into the chair, rubbing his face. “But I’d rather I didn’t.” A loud sigh. “Your mother had kicked me out. That weekend – that horrible weekend – I was already packing. Then it happened, and she was gone, your sister too. You were here, at the university hospital for weeks. What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t stay here at the apartment, and yet, I couldn’t sit at home and sulk. I had two funerals to plan. TWO. So I worked. Every. Fucking. Day. Because I had to. I had to carry on. Bills still had to get paid. So that’s how I dealt with it.”

  “Geezus.” Her tone softened. Shocked and more than a little curious to learn why her mother had kicked him out. Had he done something? Had she? What happened between them? “Did you ever deal with her death? Ever climb into bed at the end of the day and miss that warmth? Did you ever miss her voice, or the sweet way she’d make everything better with a hug?”

  “It wasn’t like that with us.”

  “It had to be at some point. You were married for twenty-four years.”

  His chest relaxed, and he propped himself up. “We’d stopped loving each other a long time ago. It was all too easy to do. I was away, you know three on, one off. And the one off was always filled with tension. She managed perfectly fine raising you girls while I was away, and my week home it was like I was a huge imposter, messing up routines and schedules. It got easier to stay away than to be yelled at for getting involved. But I’m an honourable, responsible man, so I started a small job on the sly, and made extra money. Lots of it. Enough to pay for you and your sister’s education and the apartment here, without it affecting my income and the life you’d all grown accustomed to. Thanks to this side job, I could work smarter, not harder. The new job became my love.”

  She sat and stared at him, trying to process everything he said. “But you never dealt with it.”

  “I already had. Before she died.”

  “What about Carmen?”

  “I didn’t know her, we saw each other so briefly, especially after she moved here for school. I was more a stranger to her than a father. If someone asked me to name five things she loved spending her time on, I’d be guessing at four of them.”

  “Oh, Daddy.”

  “It’s no different than you.” He looked at her, and his face became tight. “We’re family, so I drop in on you from time to time, and we speak often. But we don’t know each other, do we?”

  Her eyebrows formed a deep V, and she shook her head. There was the truth – they really didn’t know each other. His life was his own, and as much as he helped her with her living expenses, he didn’t get involved in her life, so she was on her own. They were each other’s family, and yet they’d shut the other out.

  She looked at her father, and a lightbulb flashed over her head. “The colour yellow, the smell of coconut, sex, this necklace and Nate.”

  “Huh?”

  “These are five things I love. One you knew, and now you know the other four so you won’t have to guess.” A smile spread across her face.

  He laughed. “Sex? Really?”

  “I had to see if you were still listening.” She moved closer to him. “There, now I’m not a stranger.” Gripping his hand, she reflected how similar their hands looked. His was more masculine for sure, but the long shape was identical. “We have the same hands.”

  He held her hands up, looking at them. “Indeed.”

  She cocked her head. “So, now it’s your turn. Five things you love.”

  He stretched back, and pulled his hand away. “Five? Okay. Fort Mac – I love it there, the smell of oil, a fine bottle of wine, warm socks and money.”

  “Guess I’ll stop getting you a tie for Christmas,” she laughed. “And get you warm socks instead.”

  “If my feet are dry and warm, then I’m a happy guy.” Her daddy smiled and said, “So back to you. Nate’s one of the things you love, eh?”

  The colour rose in her cheeks. “Yeah. I really do. Even if we have such different lifestyles. But I fucked up, Daddy. Big time.” There was no need to mention Matthew. It was best to keep that info on a need to know basis. If shame were a blanket, it would be made of lead, trapping her beneath it forever.

  “So how do you fix that?”

  “I’m thinking on it. Weird and wild ideas passed through this brain as I baked like a maniac last night.”

  He glanced to the kitchen. “Want to tell me about them while I help you clean?”

  “You want to know?” Perplexed the direction the conversation had gone when it started out so poorly.

  “Yes. You’re my daughter – my family – and I should get to know all about you.”

  Feeling a lightness in her heart she hadn’t felt in days, she walked into the kitchen, wondering where to start.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  It had been hard returning to work a few days after decimating Nate’s heart, knowing he was there and avoiding her. Not that she blamed him. And even though she shouldn’t, she looked for him. Every. Damn. Day. Just a glimpse of his face. His perfect body. That sweet dimple in his cheek she could put her finger in. It would help the heartache, right?

  There was nothing in her medicine cabinet to dull that hurt. If there was, it wouldn’t be found within her apartment. After finally admitting she was in withdrawal, she begged her daddy to clean out all her pills. The first day knowing they were gone was okay, but the second day was harder. Her body ached, and she craved something. Anything. But her daddy had removed everything – there wasn’t even cold meds around. Jerk. She never knew she could hate someone as much as she loved him.

  Nightmares plagued her, filling her mind with horrid visions of Nate’s devastated expression. The sorrow he wore as he stepped away from her, a mixture of deep
pain and disgust. But he was free of her. Free of her reactions, free of her guilt. Free to find someone who’d be a part of his life, the way she never could. Someone else deserved him and it pained her that it would never be her.

  She remembered a frightening dream. The pills had grown to ten feet tall, and hovered over her–

  “Aurora?”

  Shaking her head, the visions disappeared. “Huh?”

  “Can I see you in my office, please?” Sara, usually the most chipper staff member, looked most displeased, and beckoned her.

  Once behind the closed office door, she sat in the chair across from Sara.

  “Aurora, I’ve been watching you over the past few days. You’re not very happy.”

  Bing. Bing. Bing. And the award for most observant boss goes to…

  “I’ve been hearing complaints from the other staff members.”

  Aurora glanced out the window. Go ahead and fire me. Please. It would be the icing on the cake. I swear I won’t take it personally. “Yeah, so?” Her fingers twitched as she waited for the inevitable.

  “What’s up with you? I want to dismiss you, but I can’t. Matthew James has threatened to pull his summer event if I do.” Sara folded her hands in her lap, and stared hard at her. Under her breath, she whispered, “I really hate that man and the hold he puts over us.”

  Anger roared to life inside her. “Seriously, that man is out to ruin my life.” Why can’t he just leave me alone?

  “Actually, it’s because of him you still have a job.”

  “And if I quit?” I don’t want to be a part of his spectacle.

  “That never came up,” Sara said, looking down.

  Oh, really? Interesting.

  “As much as I–” She stopped and glared. “Never mind.”

  Aurora turned and faced her boss. “Oh, just say it. It’s not like anything you can tell me, I haven’t told myself over the past nine days.”

  Sara opened her mouth, and snapped it shut. “You’re difficult, aren’t you?”

  A shift in her seat. “Yes, I am. But you would be too if you were in my shoes.” Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a Xanax right now. So sweet and intoxicating. I could just drift–