"Don't talk about my father like that," he growled.
"He was absent in your life or he would have mentioned you to me," I said.
Not necessarily. He'd never been very forthcoming about personal things, not with me, anyway. Honestly, that was fine. I didn't want to know any more about him than I already did.
"It's complicated," the man muttered. "I didn't know what happened until recently. You killed him and you got away with it. Until now."
I shook my head and sat down heavily on my piano bench.
"I didn't kill him." I looked up into his eyes, brown, unless I missed my guess. "Is that what you've come here for? You think I killed him so you're going to kill me?"
"That's exactly what I'm going to do," he said. "If the police won't make you pay, I will."
"I'd rather you didn't," I said.
I lifted my chin and pushed myself back to my feet. As I rose, I brought the stool up with me and around my body.
I held it in front of me, the legs out, putting space between us.
"I didn't kill him."
I lost track of the amount of times I thought about it. The times I'd held a knife in my hand the way this guy was holding one right then. I could have walked up behind him and stabbed him in the back of the neck. I could have poisoned his food. I could have wrapped one of his ties around his neck and strangled him with it…
Okay, I know that's harder than it sounds; he was bigger than me. Besides, he would have made me pay if I'd tried, which was why I hadn't. Fear and a healthy dose of self-preservation.
Forrest was right. I was a survivor.
"You think that is going to stop me?" he asked.
"Sure," I said lightly. "Why wouldn't it? What could be scarier than a piano stool?" I jabbed it toward him, almost poking him right in the groin.
He snorted and swept it out of my hands with his arm. The stool flew a couple of feet before landing on the floor with a thud.
"Okay, well, that was only plan A," I said.
I didn't have a plan B. Apparently I was going straight to plan F. As in I was completely fucked right now.
I backed up until my back hit the wall.
"I'm starting to see what he saw in you," he said, "and you repay him by murdering him."
"What did he see in me?" His father seeinganythingin me was a compliment. I didn't want Wolfgang to have liked anything about me. I likednothingabout him.
"You have sass," he said.
If he knew his father, he'd know Wolfgang hated sass. He liked meek and scared. Small and quiet. Like a statue on a pedestal in the corner. Pretty but silent.
"I've been told that before," I said. "You're not going to kill someone with sass, are you? I mean, doesn't the world need more sassy people?"
I cocked my head and smiled, hoping like hell he found it endearing. At least endearing enough to turn around and walk out the door again.
"The world needs more sassy people who don't kill my father," he said.
"So that's a yes," I reasoned. "I mean, he's dead. I can't kill him."
Neither could Forrest. No one could. Thank goodness for that. The idea of Wolfgang as a zombie was horrifying. Or worse still, a vampire. Knowing him, he would have turned me, because he knew how much I'd hate it. I'd grab a stake and use it on myself. After I used it on him.
Sable the Vampire Slayer has a ring to it, don't you think? Yes, I'm exactly the nerd Savannah accused me of being.
