“Well maybe I’ll just call Rachel to confirm that.” He pointed at where my cell phone rested screen-down on the table and only showed the colorful music notes on the deep greencase.
“Dan.” My mom’s voice was horribly weak and deferent, almost as if she were afraid to speak up against him. Which, of course she was. The man was horrible, terrifying. The worst kind of alpha male mixed in with what I swore were sociopathictendencies.
I had no idea why she’d married him. No wait, that wasn’t true. I understood it, in a way. When they’d first met, Dan had been different, though I’d always sensed an undercurrent of somethingoff.He’d wined and dined my mom, made her feel like a million bucks when she’d been lonely and depressed before. And then, slowly, almost so slowly that it was hard to spot at first, he began to change. The small snide, off-hand comments about her figure. The random comments about other women flirting with him. The slow and methodical alienation from her other friends. He made her think she needed him and that she was lucky to have him, when really it was the other wayaround.
And now she wastrapped.
I wasn’t even sure she realized it, but I did. And that was why he hatedme.
He dropped his fork on his plate and levelled his eyes across the table. Immediately, she flicked her gaze down to the flowery tablecloth, something she’d only bought since Dan came along. Before she’d met him, she wouldn’t have been caught dead buying anything sofeminine.
“Now, listen, Adeline. You said yourself that Norah needs to have some more discipline in her life if she’s going to freeload off of us like this.” He gripped the edges of the table, his eyebrows furrowing. Anger simmered off of him, like his body was full of a darkness so profound that it couldn’t hold all of it inside ofhim.
“I’m not freeloading,” I said. One thing I’d learned over the years: don’t talk back to Dan. But sometimes, like now, I couldn’t help myself, particularly when that rage was directed toward my mother. “I pay rent on myroom.”
He sneered, taking his attention away from my mom and placing it firmly on me. “You give us two hundred bucks a month. Do you know how much this apartment costs? Electricity? Cable? Internet? And let’s not forget this damn food.” He pointed at the cast iron skillet in the middle of the table, full to the brim with a delicious paella my mom had made from scratch. A dish that none of us were enjoying because of the dark tension in the room. “We live in Manhattan, for fuck’ssake.”
“Dan,” came my mom’s pleading voice. “Please. Let’s not use that kind of language in front ofNorah.”
“She’s eighteen years old, Adeline, and she’s a high school graduate. You need to stop babying her. I’m fucking tired of her freeloading with no consequences. She either needs to get another job or get out.” He shoved his finger at the paella. “Now serve me some of that food, or I’ll start packing up her shit rightnow.”
“Dan.” My mom’s eyes had gone glassy, and her knuckles were snow white where she gripped the napkin in her lap. “I think that’s enough. Norah is my daughter, and she’s not going anywhere. Not until she decides it’s time and she has the means to supportherself.”
I sucked in a sharp breath and sat up straight in the stiff dining chair. Well, this was certainly a first. Mom never stood up to Dan, not even when he transformed into the inner beast we both knew was beneath the handsomeface.
His face darkened, and his voice dropped into a strange, eerie, quiet calm. “You pay less a month than she does,Adeline.”
A quiet threat, one that made my mom blink in shock. I’d seen him do this before. Anytime it might seem that Mom was grasping for some kind of control over a situation, Dan would turn the tables on her before she’d managed to find her feet. I didn’t believe for a second he would ever kick her out, and maybe Mom didn’t either, but there was enough fear there that it shut down her every objection. Because he was right. He supported her, fully and completely. She was broke withouthim.
“You know what?” I asked as I pushed back my chair and stood. “I’ll serve you some paella. How’sthat?”
He pursed his lips, his gaze still locked on my mom, but then he nodded. “Maybe you aren’t so useless afterall.”
Lovely.
Before Mom could object, I grabbed the skillet and moved to stand beside Dan so that I could spoon some paella onto his plate. But the moment my skin came into contact with the handles, the world became cloudy around me. Frowning, I blinked. Everything remained shifting blobs of dark andlight.
I gripped the handles tighter, taking deep breaths in through my nose. I couldn’t have another panic attack, not right now. Talk about the worst timing in the world. My step-dad would probably have me committed if he knew just how bad the attacks had become. But it was no use. Nausea churned through my stomach, my head felt light and full of swirling clouds, and my palms went slick withsweat.
And then I lost my grip on the skillet. It fell with a heavy thud onto the hardwood floor, and rice and seafood soared through the air. Some of it splashed into my face, but I didn’t care. I needed some fresh air. I needed to sit down. I stumbled away from the dinner table, in the direction of myroom.
But a strong hand shot out and wrapped around my arm. It lurched me back. His grip was so tight that it sent sparks of pain through my body. “Where the hell do you think you’re going? You think you can just walk off and leave your mother to clean up your damnmess?”
“Dan, please.” My mom’s voice was soft,pleading.
“I’ll clean it up,” I said. “Just give me a minute. I feeldizzy.”
I hated admitting that to this man, but I didn’t have any other choice. If he didn’t let me sit down, I might passout.
“Fine.” He let go of my arm. “Sit down in your chair and have some water. And then clean itup.”
I estimated that I had maybe five minutes to recover before he lost his patience with me. At least it was better than nothing. With a heavy sigh, I slid back into my seat and closed my eyes, trying to reign in the fogginess that had filled myeyes.
I almost immediately felt better. It was so strange. The second I’d picked up the skillet, I’d felt as if the entire world was going black, but the instant I let go, the nausea began tosubside.
There was something strange about that, something I couldn’t put my finger on. And it was as if the answer was somewhere deep within my mind. It was a thought that niggled at me, but one I couldn’t find. There was something causing my sudden nausea, but what? The doctor had called it a trigger, but how could a dish full of paella be a trigger? Did my body not like spices? But that didn’t make sense. My mom had been making me paella all my life, and I’d never had a negative reaction untilnow.
Just as I took in my last deep breath and opened my eyes, the doorbell rang. Dan let out a grunt and threw his napkin onto the table, standing so abruptly that his chair almost toppled to theground.
