“You know, a lot of young people would give their right arm for the opportunity to attend Harvard, and yet I find it hard to believe you would throw it all away so easily.”
“Fath—”
“Did I not give you everything?” he interrupts. “I ensured you had access to the very best education this country has to offer. Is it so wrong that I would want the best for my only daughter? Why would you want to give all that up?”
“Because it was making me miserable!” I rush out, regretting my words as soon as they come out and I slam my lips shut.
Shit.
My little outburst doesn’t go down well and he narrows his eyes. “Do not raise your voice to me.”
“I’m—” I cut myself short, taking a deep breath. “I’m not going back. I quit. It’s done.”
He slams his empty glass down on the bar and it makes me jump. “It most certainly isnotdone.”
“It’smylife, Father. School was making me miserable and I hated it. Every morning I woke up feeling sick to my stomach because I didn’t want to be there.”
“We all have to do things we don’t want to in this life, Kaia. The sooner you realise that, the better. Quite frankly, you’reungratefulness to my generosity astounds me. Everything I have ever done is to secure a future for you, for our family.”
Of course, he’s making it all about him as usual and I fight the urge to roll my eyes, something I learned to never do in his presence when I was nine.
“A future I didn’t want.” I regret my choice of words instantly but I continue, “I never wanted be a lawyer, Father.Youdid.”
He clicks his tongue, clearly unhappy with my answer.
“I stuck it out as long as I could because I didn’t want to disappoint you, but I couldn’t do it anymore,” I continue.
“Well, consider me disappointed.”
My stomach drops at that word.Disappointed. There’s no worse a feeling than knowing you’ve disappointed your parents, I’d rather he just be angry with me than be filled with this sickly heaviness inside from displeasing him.
He finishes off the contents of his glass and places it onto the bar behind him. “We will continue this later, right now I have somewhere to be.” And with that, he strides out of the room.
Tears prickle at the backs of my eyes. I knew exactly what to expect when my father told me to come home, I knew what reaction I would get, but even that didn’t prepare me for the real thing.
Despite what he might think, I didn’t take dropping out of Harvard lightly, in fact I’d been considering it long and hard for months and it was one of the hardest decisions of my life. Hell, it might have been the first decision I’ve ever made forme.
I never wanted to study law. Becoming a lawyer was towards the bottom of my list of potential career paths. Itwas my father who pushed me into it, wanting me to follow in his footsteps and carry on the family legacy. He studied at Harvard himself, as did my grandfather and his father before him. I’ve always known this was his plan for me, and at the beginning, I convinced myself I was okay with it, that I would get through it and do my father proud for once in my life. I thought I might even grow to like it with time, but I was wrong. As time went on, I knew that law school wasn’t for me and as time passed, I came to loathe it.
A noise has me glancing to the door where my mother hovers, ever the tiny fly on the wall, the silent mouse my father has reduced her to.
“Why, sweetheart? You know how much he wanted you to study at Harvard, just like he did.”
“What about what I want? Does that not count for anything?”
Her gaze lingers on me for a beat before it drops to the floor and without uttering a single word, she slinks back to wherever she came from.
All my life I’ve been waiting for her to stick up for me and fight my corner against my father, just once. But she never does. I don’t know whether it’s out of obligation to her husband or out of fear, but in my nineteen years, I don’t think I’ve ever heard her say a single word against him in disagreement or in anger.
It’s not normal.
The huge empty house seems suffocating all of a sudden and not even bothering to unpack the two large suitcases I left at the bottom of the stairs, I grab my jacket off the hook and head out into the evening.
2
“Fuck you, asshole!” I hear the guy holler out of his driver’s window, his hand pounding on the horn angrily as I blaze past him.
I’m not really sure what his problem is, I was nowhere near him when I overtook him and yet the hand gestures I’m seeing in my rear-view mirrors suggests otherwise.
