Chapter Sixteen
Dean
"What are you doing?" I ask Jacob as he brings his laptop to the kitchen table.
"I'm doing my homework."
"At the kitchen table? You never do it there."
"Why do you care where I do homework?"
"I don't," I say with a sigh.
I'm happy he's doing school work on a Sunday but I was hoping to watch football and the TV is in the living room.
Going in the kitchen, I open the fridge and see it's almost empty. I need to go to the store but I don't want to spend the money. I'm already over my grocery budget for the month. Jacob must be in a growth spurt because he's eating a lot more than he did last summer.
The bills are adding up faster than I can pay them. I'm going to have to get a job, even if it's just a few hours a week. I guess I could start looking today since I can't watch football.
"I'm going in the bedroom," I tell Jacob as I close the fridge. "You need anything in there?"
"Yeah, my backpack."
He follows me in the room, which is a mess with dirty clothes everywhere. Add laundry to the list of things I need to do.
Taking Jake's tablet from the nightstand, I sit on the bed and lean back against the wall. We share the tablet, and the laptop. Our school district isn't rich enough to hand out computers and tablets like other districts can, so we have to buy our own. I need to get new ones but I don't have the cash.
"Why are you standing there?" I ask, noticing Jake at the door, staring at me.
He looks down, biting his lip.
"What's wrong?" I ask. "Are you in trouble?"
"No," he says, shaking his head.
"Then what is it? What do you need?"
His Adam's apple bobs as he swallows. "I want to see Dad."
My blood boils, my heart thundering in my chest at the mere mention of the bastard otherwise known as our father.
"What did you say?" I ask, gritting my teeth, my eyes locked on his.
"I said I want to see Dad," he replies in a timid voice.
Tossing the tablet on the bed I get up and go over to him. "Did you seriously just say that?"
"I just..." He looks down, breathing hard as he tries to get the words out. "I want to go see him. Just one time."
"No fucking way I'm taking you to see that asshole!" I shove Jacob aside and go out to the living room. "What the fuck is wrong with you? You seriously want to go see a guy who beats up women for his own sick pleasure?" I storm up to Jacob, grabbing his flimsy t-shirt in my fist and yanking his face up to mine. "That fucker almost killed our mom. He's the reason she took off. He's the reason we live in this shithole and have to take the bus everywhere and don't have food in the fridge. And you want to go see that fucker?"
Jacob's shaking. I hate that I scare him enough to make him react that way but it's the only way to knock some sense into him. He doesn't know what Dad was like. He went to live with our grandmother when things got really bad. I refused to go with him. There's no way I was leaving Mom alone with that bastard. But staying behind meant seeing my father at his worst. Seeing him almost kill my mom. Seeing her lifeless bloody body on the floor.
Jake was shielded from all that. He doesn't know all the gory details. He thinks Dad just made a mistake. He thinks he can be saved. He doesn't get that our father is evil. A sick evil bastard that beats up women and doesn't feel the least bit bad about it. He says they deserved it, and he truly believes that.
"He's not why Mom left," Jacob says, his voice shaking along with his body. "Dad's gone. She didn't have to leave."
I huff. "So now you're blaming Mom? Dad gets a pass but Mom doesn't?" I let him go and walk away before I do something I'll regret. I want to grab him and shake him until I get rid of whatever lingering fantasies he has of our family getting back together. It's never going to happen. Dad's locked away in prison, and who the hell knows if Mom will ever show up again?
