Running for my life - The maner

The Performance

Chapter eighteen

The last email on her screen was the kind that pretended to be polite while sharpening its edges. A vendor “following up,” a department head “circling back,” a reminder that time, always time, was the only currency anyone respected. Catalonia read it twice anyway, not because she needed to, but because the repetition gave her something to hold. Her office was quiet in the way a sealed room was quiet, the hum of the air vent, the faint click of her keyboard, the soft drag of her pen as she underlined a line in the facility schedule she’d already memorized.

She kept her desk immaculate. Not out of preference, exactly, but out of strategy. A clean surface left fewer things to be judged. The framed photo of the boys sat angled just so, their faces bright with a joy that never lasted long enough in real life. Beside it, a slim folder labelled with the facility’s name in crisp block letters. She had built the day into a sequence of manageable pieces, calls, approvals, lunch, the visit, each one a step she could take without looking down.

Still, her body knew what her mind tried to deny. The tightness at the base of her throat. The faint ache between her shoulder blades from holding herself upright for hours. She rolled her shoulders once, subtly, and returned to the screen, forcing her attention into the neat columns of time slots and names. Half an hour later, there was a knock on her office door.

Looking up, she found her father standing in the doorway, staring at her. He didn’t lean on the frame or hover uncertainly like other people did. He occupied the threshold as if it belonged to him, shoulders squared, chin lifted, his coat still on despite the warmth of the house. His expression was set in that familiar, unreadable line, neither anger nor kindness, just assessment.

Her body responded before she could decide to. Spine straightening. Shoulders drawing back and down. The corners of her mouth lifting into a smile that reached the exact distance it was supposed to reach and no further. **Old habits came back to her like they had never changed** not a feeling, not a choice, but a practiced performance she’d perfected over years of learning what pleased him and what provoked him.

He didn’t speak right away.

The pause stretched, weighted and deliberate, as if he were letting the room introduce her on his behalf. His gaze moved in slow increments, the desk, the chair, the tidy stacks of paper aligned to the edge, the photo of the boys. He took in the office the way he took in everything, measuring, cataloguing, deciding what it said about the person inside it. The air seemed to thicken with his attention, the quiet turning from neutral to charged.

Catalonia held her smile in place and kept her hands still on the desk, fingers lightly interlaced. She could feel her pulse in her wrists. She watched him without appearing to watch, reading the set of his jaw, the slight narrowing of his eyes. Was he irritated? Impatient? Already disappointed? She ran through possibilities the way she ran through schedules, if this, then that, preparing herself for the direction his mood would take the conversation.

She drew in a controlled breath through her nose, careful not to make it visible. The scent of her office, paper, coffee gone cold, the faint citrus of the hand lotion she used to keep her palms from cracking, felt suddenly too intimate, as if he could smell her effort. His stare didn’t soften. It didn’t need to. It only needed to land.

When he finally spoke, his voice filled the room with the same certainty his presence did, no greeting, no preamble, just the assumption that her time was already his.

“What time are we going through to the facility? And have you organized lunch for us?” His words came clipped, efficient, as if he were reading from a list she should have handed him. The questions weren’t really questions. They were statements shaped like questions, a test disguised as logistics.

Catalonia’s smile held. Inside, something tightened, an old, reflexive bracing, like the moment before a door slammed. She had organized lunch. Of course she had. She had organized everything. But he asked as if the default state of the world was her failure, and her competence was something she had to prove anew each time he entered a room.

He didn’t wait for her to answer. His gaze flicked past her, toward the photo, and his mouth pressed into a thin line that might have been disapproval or might have been nothing at all.

“I know you won’t take the boys, obviously they’re too young to deal with anything there.” The word obviously landed like a stamp. It wasn’t concern, it was verdict. He spoke of her children as if they were variables in an equation he understood better than she did, as if their needs were self-evident and her judgment was predictable.

Catalonia felt the heat of a response rise, sharp, immediate, then she swallowed it down so smoothly it barely registered. Her face remained composed, eyes steady, posture perfect. She let none of it show, the irritation at his certainty, the sting of being told what she would do, the quiet fury of being reduced to a set of expected choices.

He continued without pause, as if her silence were permission and her office were a courtroom where he was both judge and witness.

“Tell me, is Evan at the facility at the moment? I would like to have a word with him.” His tone shifted slightly on Evan’s name, less neutral, more pointed. Not affection, not familiarity. Ownership. The kind of interest that came with an agenda.

Catalonia’s fingers tightened together under the desk, nails pressing into skin. Evan. The facility. The boys. He was already arranging the pieces into a story that cantered him, that made him the corrective force in a family he considered mismanaged.

“I believe he has been spending too much time at the facility and not enough time home with his sons.” The phrase too much time carried accusation, as if Evan’s work were indulgence rather than necessity. As if the facility were a distraction from the only role her father deemed legitimate.

Her father’s eyes stayed on her face, searching for a c***k. Catalonia kept her expression neutral, but inside she felt the familiar split, the part of her that wanted to defend Evan, and the part that knew defence only invited more pressure. Evan had been trying. Evan had been exhausted running two homes Scarlet's and hers. Evan had been doing what needed to be done for her. None of that mattered to a man who measured fatherhood in hours logged and authority displayed.

“They need a strong, real male role model.” He said real as if it were a correction, as if the men in their lives were counterfeit until proven otherwise. The implication slid neatly into place, that Evan was insufficient, that Catalonia’s choices had produced weakness, that her household required his intervention.

Then he delivered it, almost casually, as if it were an obvious conclusion rather than a deliberate cut. “Not all this female fussing over them.”

The sting was immediate. **Female fussing** a dismissal of tenderness, of care, of the daily labour that kept their children safe and seen. It reduced her to noise. It reduced the boy's needs to inconvenience. Catalonia felt her jaw want to clench, felt the urge to lift her chin in defiance. Instead, she softened her mouth into the same controlled smile, the one that said she was listening, the one that said she agreed enough to keep the peace.

She let the insult pass over her face like wind over glass, while inside it scraped. He had positioned himself, again, as the authority on her family, on her marriage, her parenting, her life, without ever asking what it cost to hold it together.

Catalonia took a deliberate breath, slow enough to steady her pulse, quiet enough to remain invisible. She chose her words the way she chose her clothing for meetings, tailored, neutral, impossible to misinterpret. If she gave him emotion, he would take it as evidence. If she gave him explanation, he would turn it into argument. So she gave him only what he asked for, nothing more, nothing less.

“Lunch will be ready in five minutes,” she said evenly. Professional. Efficient. A tone that belonged to a director of operations, not a daughter being evaluated in her own office. “Yes, Evan will be at the facility. I’ll make sure there’s a scheduled appointment for you to speak with him when we arrive.”