Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 127949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
I think that creative outlet helped her work out some of her grief about Stan. The house is dotted with her work. Some are darker, some lighter, like the one that hangs in here. The corner of my mouth turns up, remembering the day I walked into the studio to find her covered in paint head-to-toe, her hand and foot prints on that canvas in a fury of wild colors and brilliant creativity.
It’s one of my favorite pieces of art in the house.
She lifts the crystal stopper from the decanter of my 30-year-old Macallan, grabs a cut crystal rocks glass from the silver tray, and, holding it in her other hand, pours me a perfect two-finger neat scotch, a little forced smile on her face that makes my heart clench.
“I’m off fried rice.” Catrina flaps her hand in a dismissive wave, holding her phone in front of her face, even though she knows I have a strict no phones at dinner rule. But enforcing that with my best friend’s widow is not the same as enforcing the rules with the girl who looks to me as her father. “I don’t want to bloat. I have a new friend.” She wobbles her phone out with a flashy, overly whitened smile, and I watch as Winona’s own smile fades. “Which brings me to my next question.”
“You didn’t ask a first question,” Winona points out, and I beam with pride, raising an eyebrow as she sets my drink down to the right of my dinner plate.
She’s done so perfectly since I taught her a year ago.
Catrina twists her face. “Don’t be sassy, young lady.”
The accident that took Stan shook us all down to our very marrow. My focus was Winona, and overall, Catrina kept to her baseline of poor-me and her tendency for general self-absorption, which I somewhat blamed on her own mother’s obsession with entering her daughter in beauty pageants from the time she was old enough to walk.
But in the last couple years, her treatment of Winona has declined rapidly. She’s been on Hinge, Tinder, Match.com, and every other dating/hook-up app out there. Ironically, her growing interest in finding a new man coincided with her realization that she’d spent nearly all the money left in her trust from Stan’s will.
He left ninety-percent of it to Winona, with me as the executor, and Catrina’s had a cockroach up her ass about all that since we sat in the estate attorney’s office a week after Stan died and found out the details of his estate plans.
Winona takes her usual seat to my right, scooting her chair just a little closer to mine while she spoons out just the right amount of food onto my plate without spilling a drop, flicking her eyes to mine as I nod and mouth ‘Good girl’, which turns her round cheeks hot red.
“Don’t call her that,” Catrina snaps with an eye-roll, and I see that flicker of something other than self-absorption in her eyes. Something I hope like fuck Winona doesn’t catch. “And don’t wait on him like he’s fucking king of the castle. Making her get your drink, make your plate—misogynistic asshole.” She scoffs, going back to her phone.
My girl’s shoulders slump. “He doesn’t make me do it. I like to do it. It shows respect, right, Daddy?”
Winona’s eyes meet mine, and I see a mixture of sadness and hope.
“That’s right. It pleases me that you want to do it. If I have to make you do something, that’s not respect, that’s intimidation.”
“Well, if you’d stop feeding her dumplings and every other god-damn thing she wants, that would show me a little respect. You want her to keep getting fat signs stuck on her back for the rest of her life?”
I slam my hand down on the table as a burst of pressure behind my eye balls makes me feel like an blowing out an aneurism.
The fork resting on the edge of Winona’s plate clatters to the floor, and a splash of soup leaps out of the little bowl next to my plate, making a circular wet spot on the dark wood of the table.
“What the fuck is your problem?” I glare at Catrina, who narrows her eyes back at me.
There’s a tension there that shouldn’t be, but there are things I won’t ever forget or forgive. Once she realized her piece of the financial pie wasn’t going to carry her lifestyle out in perpetuity, she made it clear to me one night after downing a bottle of Merlot solo that her intentions were to make a new family with me officially.
When I dragged her intoxicated ass back down the hallway to her own bedroom and threw her into the shower, making it clear, whatever she was peddling, I wasn’t buying, her sticky-sweet personality turned sour.
She dismisses my anger with a scoff. “I’m going to Vegas.” She scratches her head with her inch-long, blood-red taloned fingernail, then continues, “There’s a flight in two hours. I’m already packed. Just—” Her jaw sets, flicking her eyes to Winona, who is doing her best to ignore the drama, then to me, as I seethe because I already know what’s coming.