Chapter Six
______________________________________
Cash
Human beings are born with an equal capacity for good and bad. Who we become in life depends on which aspect of our nature we cultivate and nurture.
Take Luc, for instance. He’s good because he chooses to be good. Maggie? The same. Me? I’d like to say the struggle isn’t real, but it is. The two sides of my nature are constantly at war. I blame part of that on the man who has pulled his gray Mercedes up to the curb outside the bought-and-paid-for hunk of junk I currently call home.
“Hello, darkness, my old friend.” I squint through the open front door. Can’t see who’s inside the car. The tinted windows make that impossible. But Iknowit’s him.
“What?” Luc comes to stand beside me. He’s sweaty and disheveled. A morning of pulling up old carpets and tearing out sagging cabinetry will do that to a guy.
True to his word, he arrived at zero nine hundred with coffee and beignets in hand—and the gift basket Maggie left on my stoop at some point during the night, because despite the hurt I caused her, the woman is still the epitome of grace and tenderness. My headache had ratcheted down to a manageable level. And once again, I’d psyched myself into moving forward withThe Plan.
It was shaping up to be one hell of a good day.
Should’ve known it wouldn’t last.
“Stay frosty,” I warn Luc now.
“For what?” he asks even as he adjusts his grip on the hammer.
I hitch my chin toward the Mercedes. “Daddy Dearest.”
The bastard still hasn’t gotten out of the car. He’s probably sitting in there making pacts with the devil.
I take the flask from my back pocket, needing fortification. I’m on my second swallow when the driver’s-side door opens and out steps the man who sired me.
I won’t call him “my dad” or “my father.” He’s never been either. The only connection we share is the lucky sperm that made its way to my mother’s egg one night when he was too drunk to pull out.
I know this is how I was conceived. He made sure to tell me every chance he got.
I’ve been using a four-pound sledgehammer to tear out drywall. When Luc wrestles it out of my hand, I realize I’ve raised it like a weapon.
“Best not to brain him, doncha think?” he says. “It’d be a shame to trade the army for an eight-by-ten.”
“Will you get a load of this guy?” The sight of my sperm donor makes me feel physically ill. Or maybe that’s the combination of whiskey, beignets, and coffee. “He’s put on sixty pounds. Atleast.”
Luc hitches a shoulder. “Years of indiscriminate butter use will do that to a body.”
Like me, Richard Armstrong has always been a sizable man, rangy and big-boned. Strapping, some might say. Unlike me, now he’s nearly as wide as he is tall.
His pinstripe suit cries out for mercy, and his leather monk-strap loafers groan as he lumbers up the five steps outside. Then he’s here. Inside my house.
Should’ve paid a Voodoo priestess to ward the place against evil spirits. Maybe it would’ve been enough to bar Rick’s tar-black soul from crossing the threshold.
“You’re not welcome here.” I hate that my words don’t sound as firm as I’d like.
“Guess the army couldn’t beat the smart-ass out of you,” he says, barely sparing me a glance before letting his eyes wander around my house. The timbre of his voice makes my hands clench into fists.
“Sorry to disappoint,” I tell him. “Oh, wait. No, I’m not.”
He pulls a short, thin cigar and a Zippo from his breast pocket. After he shoves the stogie into his pie hole, I wait until he gets the lighter’s flame a few inches from the tip of the cigar before saying, “No smoking in my house.”
“Not much of a house, if you ask me.”
“I didn’t.”
