Make Me Beg, Daddy

Chapter 6

Yeah. So does your sister and your husband doing the nasty behind your back.

I’m finishing up the last bite when Connor’s phone starts ringing on the counter. He gets up and grabs it, frowns when he sees who’s calling, then slinks back into his office to talk.

I sit and wait. He doesn’t take too long.

“Sorry,” he says when he re-emerges. “You’re not going to believe this.” He’s stepping into his shoes as he talks to me and tucking his phone and keys into his pocket. “Tony’s car battery died.”

I wrinkle my nose. “Who’s Tony?”

“Tony. From my bowling league? He’s out in Gerritsen with no cables and AAA is quoting him four hours because nobody’s working on the holiday. I’ve got cables in the trunk, though, so I told him I’d do him a solid.”

“You want me to come?”

“Oh, please, c’mon now. You’ve been up since yesterday.” He comes close enough to bend down and kiss the top of my head. “Nah. Go to bed, Dee. No need to wait up for me.”

I sit in the chair and listen.

The garage door whines all the way up and all the way down. His car engine gets fainter, fainter, gone.

And then the house is mine.

I count an extra hundred seconds just to be safe, then I jump to my feet.

I put on dish gloves, step up to the sink, and go into the wet char with a spatula. I work a layer at a time, sifting through for anything usable. Most of it comes up as paste. Two pieces hold their shape for a second and then give up.

My phone lights up on the counter.

CONNOR: Might be a while. He needs a tow.

Poor Tony, I write back. Drive safe.

Then I go back into the sink. I try a few more promising pieces, but they all die just like the first couple. I’m starting to think of backup plans. How does one undo a fire? Could I lay out the somewhat whole bits on a sheet pan and dry them out in the oven?

Then, yahtzee.

I find a folded corner pressed flat against the side of the basin, where the water never reached.

First, I photograph it where it lies, wedged in the char, before I put a finger on it. Then I lift it out, flatten it on a paper towel, and photograph it again.

The top edge is burned to lace. What’s left of the letterhead says V HAVEN HOLDINGS, LLC, and the first word of that name is ash. There’s no address or date left on it. Two broken lines of boilerplate survive in the middle of it, and all that’s readable on them is PROMISSORY and the undersigned.

Underneath those is the signature line.

The signature on it is...

Mine.

What the hell?

But it is. Delilah A. Dorsey, with the big loop on the D, the dashed-off dot over the i, the little squiggle at the end. That’s my signature.

Right above a line that says BORROWER.

Problem is... I never signed this.

When I look closer, I see that it’s off in ways I’d never miss. Yes, the D loops, but it closes at a weird angle. Now that I’m squinting, I see the dash in the i is actually aimed in the wrong direction.

This is a forgery. A good one, but fake nonetheless.

Why was Connor burning a borrowing form with my forged signature on it?!

“I’ve been meaning to clear the office out.”

Sure you have, buddy. But the accountant isn’t the one who told you to do that, is he?

I get a freezer bag out of the drawer, the good kind with the double seal, and put the corner inside it. Then I photograph the bag as an extra precaution.

Then, once that’s done, I tuck it inside the zip pocket in my work bag.

But I’m not satisfied. I need more answers. So I strip off the dishwashing gloves and go to the next place in the house most likely to have them.

Connor’s office.

He said he was clearing it out, but there’s still plenty in here. Beneath the poster from last year’s poker tournament in Atlantic City, in which he won three hundred bucks back against a two-thousand-dollar entry fee, there’s a hulking filing cabinet.

I open the top drawer and start flicking through things. I’m reminded as I do so that he is definitely still a hoarder. I’m almost positive I’m gonna find his elementary school report cards any second now.

Until I come across an empty folder in the back.

It’s unlabeled, but I can just feel in the marrow of my bones that this is what held the stuff that’s now wet ash in the sink.

Dammit.

Onto his desk then. Top drawer is pens and chargers, second drawer is his cherished poker chip set, third drawer is empty.

Underneath the desk, behind it, nothing, nothing. I even lift up the mousepad, just to be sure.

But nothing appears that would make any sense of V Haven Holdings.

I probably shouldn’t be surprised. Connor isn’t stupid or careless. Not like Vivian is. He’d never leave something so incriminating out in the open. He certainly wouldn’t upload it to a shared album.

My phone pings with a new text.

CONNOR: Almost done here. Home soon.

Shit. Clock’s ticking.

I turn and go through the closet on my knees, hauling out a printer we replaced in 2022 and a box of his old college textbooks.

At the back, behind the winter coats, still encased in the dry cleaner’s plastic, is Connor’s black suit.

He wore it in February. I was in a black dress and pillbox hat. We stood together at the front of the church, holding hands, while he hugged Vivian with the other arm. “He was a good man,” he told her. “Nobody should go that young.”

I slept at Mom’s that night to make sure she was okay. Vivian sobbed that she needed to be alone and went home. Connor said he’d drop her off on his way back. I’d thought nothing of it at the time.

Acting on instinct, I pull it out of the plastic wrap.

It smells like the church a little. Or at least, I imagine it does.

My heart is thudding harder and harder as I go through the pockets. The breast pocket is empty, but the inside...

The inside has something.

I pull it out, a thin sheet of paper folded over.

It’s a hotel receipt. A bill for room service and a movie from the New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge. Two steaks, two sides of fries, two ice creams.

The date is the day we buried my father.

My mother opens her front door while I’m still wrestling my father’s projector up her steps.

“Careful with that,” she says. “It was your father’s.”

No hello, no how was the drive. Instead, I get a safety briefing on behalf of a machine that’s older than I am.

“Merry Christmas Eve to you, too, Mom.”

She shows no sign of having heard me. “Set it on a towel, not on the good table. There’s coffee. And don’t disappear on me—I need you on the guest list before you start.”

It is Dad’s projector. It’s roughly the size of a Buick and it hums like it’s preparing for takeoff. I’m the one who boxed it up last spring, when Mom couldn’t stand to open his study and Vivian was “too devastated” to lift boxes.

Do-It-All Delilah took it home in her trunk. Now, it’s late morning on Christmas Eve, and I’m hauling it back, along with my laptop bag, a pulldown screen in a nylon tube, and a tote of extension cords that has been in my trunk for God knows how long.

Is it easy to carry all those things at once? No, it is not. (Especially not on three hours of sleep, for the second night in a row, if anyone’s counting. Obviously, nobody is.)

But does Leanne Dorsey offer me any smidgen of help?

No, she does not.

I wouldn’t be subjecting myself to Mom’s usual barrage of insults and weaponized incompetence—after all, where do you think Vivian learned it from?—if it weren’t for this morning’s very clear mission statement:

Get set up and ensure that everything is ready for tonight.

I can’t afford any surprises. Mom will balk if I push too directly, so I need to be subtle as I suss out the planned order of operations for the evening, confirm who’s coming, and make sure all the pieces are in place.

“You’re always so early,” she adds as she steps aside to let me enter her house. The tone of her voice makes it clear that is not such a redeeming quality in her eyes.

“You said eleven.”

“No, I said eleven-ish.” She tsks. “Well, harm’s already done, I suppose. Wipe your feet. The girl came yesterday.”

I bite my tongue. “The girl” is a kind German woman in her sixties named Maria who’s been cleaning Mom’s house for pennies for the last four decades.

And then I have to bite my tongue again when I get into the foyer and am reminded of exactly what this place is.

Not a house. Not a home.

It’s a museum. An altar, really, given that there’s a distinctly religious vibe to the way everything is arranged.