Paige saw fit to ruin all that.
My older sister better be okay because, if she wasn’t, I wouldn’t be—this I knew and the reason I made myself put some clothes on and trek downstairs in a house familiar to her and not to me. When Dad had been offered a job that took him almost as far away as he could possibly get from our old lives and Paige chose to live with him, I’d been pretty damn shattered for a long time. Paige and I had been more than sisters. We were friends, so yeah, I’d been hella hurt. In the end, I’d been a big girl and eventually gotten over it. There were more opportunities for her with our dad and I got that. She got stuff here with Dad, cars and fancy schools like the one I got to go to today.
“You miss your uniform or something?”
It also got her dad, Dad’s eye, and consequently, his scrutiny. I’d naively hoped he’d take his breakfast in the actual nook designated for that. He had all week since I arrived.
My presence known, I eased into the kitchen, my dad taking inventory of my acid-washed jean shorts and oversize top. He snapped his paper over the breakfast bar. “I had Rosanna leave it out for you.”
The academy uniform I missed, but probably because she’d placed it in my closet and not out in the open. Rosanna was his housekeeper, and I’d been told if I needed anything to go to her—anything to avoid actually dealing with me.
I wet my lips. “She probably put it in the closet or something. I’ll change after breakfast.”
His look was dismissive, the same eyes I had with their deep brown and far less passion for life than he had when he’d been with Mom. My dad had always been a bit of a hard-ass, but when Mom passed, the switch went into overdrive. He didn’t deal with any type of emotions. He just worked, all that easier than other things. When Mom died, it gave him an excuse to fall into the rich and opulent life he’d traded for, basically, my hippy mom. She’d been into herbs and crystals where he’d been into stocks and the sports section. Those stocks and his background in banking got him this big-ass house and a fancy job that allowed him to wear those suits he wore at the breakfast table. Most would say I probably took my looks from my dad, straight dark hair, long nose with a button tip, and curved chin. I got my hips from my mom, though, and poor Paige, she’d gotten the crap end of the stick when it came to that. She was nearly as flat-chested as our dad, but she had been skinny, though. So I guess she got that.
Trying to keep the interactions with my dad quick, I headed toward the pantry to get the Pop-Tarts I brought over with me.
“Don’t bother with those,” he said right as I touched the box. “I’m having Rosanna toss them all out. You don’t need all that sugary crap.”
My jaw working, I got off my tiptoes and returned my feet to the floor. “What am I supposed to eat?”
“I had Rosanna make you a green smoothie and some eggs. You live with me, you’re going to do some changes.”
My peripheral caught the foreign drink on the counter, green and no doubt filled with things that’d make me gag this morning. The thing that definitely would make me gag was next to them, though: the eggs under the glass dome filled with steam.
I gripped the counter, turning. “I told you I’m a vegan, Dad. Have been for three years.” As he tended to listen to every other word, I supposed he missed that.
He moved the paper. “You mean to tell me Pop-Tarts are vegan?”
“Those kind are, yeah.”
“Well, you’re not eating them, and I thought vegans were supposed to be healthy. I swear to God, you and your sister and these alternative lifestyles.”
By “alternative lifestyle,” he meant my sister’s sexuality, something he clearly still hadn’t dealt with and my sister came out in middle school. Dad was old school amongst other things and always, always sought for perfection. That perfection had been my sister’s downfall, and I was sure the reason she left. Dad directed a finger. “Drink the smoothie. You’ll be all right until lunch.”
I supposed, if he had it his way, I wouldn’t eat at all, just so he wouldn’t have to know about my existence. I’d been acting as his little dark cloud on the West Coast for years now, his secret daughter he hadn’t had to deal with. Maybe if he had, I wouldn’t have had to be a secret.
And Paige wouldn’t have really left to protect me from his wrath.
This conversation clearly over, I went to the kitchen pegboard for keys. I’d been given full use of the cars there, which I was taking full advantage of once I changed and could get the hell out of this house.
“You won’t need those for school.” Dad got the jump on me again, folding his paper crisply before standing. “Hubert will take you to school. He’s warming the car now for you.”
Hubert was his driver. “How will you get to work?”
“I’m taking the Rolls-Royce,” he said, grabbing the driving gloves I hadn’t noticed by his own kitchen plate. My dad would have a driver and not even use it. Back before Mom died, he hadn’t quite reached the level of success he had now, something he never failed to wave in front of my aunt’s face whenever he saw her. She had to work sixty-hour weeks as a nurse to put food on the table. He merely had to make a phone call with a few clients. He grabbed his briefcase. “Have a good day
