Make Me Beg, Daddy

Chapter 16

“They also liked to slip away at just about every family function where they could find fifteen minutes and a broom closet. I bet they did it at some of your houses. Might want to hire a cleaning service.”

Click.

“They said some other stuff, too. Mostly about me. Would anyone like to read them?” I ask.

Not one person budges or makes a peep.

“No? Nobody? Okay, that’s fine. I’ll do it.”

those jeans make her look fkin massive

there’s more of her every year.

Eat-It-All Delilah

“Take your time,” I encourage the stunned crowd. “They did.”

I can hear a fly buzzing around the room, but not one person reacts to it. They’re all frozen in their seats, jaws on the floor. Vivian is the color of milk.

“If that were all they’d done to me, it would be unforgivable,” I say. “But it’s not all. Not even by a little bit.”

Click.

“Apparently, it wasn’t enough to rip apart my family and steal away my husband. No, these two wouldn’t be satisfied that easily. They wanted to take more from me. I found this in my sink.”

The image on the slide shows a corner of paper, burned to a crisp along the top, with V HAVEN HOLDINGS, LLC across what’s left of the letterhead.

“The name typed above that line is mine,” I say. “The signature isn’t.”

Connor drops his beer and whimpers.

“Now, I know what you’re thinking: ‘It’s a burnt-to-s**t scrap of paper. It could be anything.’ I tried to tell myself the same thing. But then I found this in the mail today.”

I take four stapled pages out of my bag with my own dried blood smeared across the top corner where the envelope sliced me. I hold them up over my head so the back of the room can see.

“This document spells out the full terms of what Connor did. He took out a loan for four million dollars, secured against my bakery as collateral. He hasn’t repaid a penny of it, and the lender no longer thinks he will. On the 15th of January, they’re going to come and take it.”

I click and the screen goes to the final slide, pure black.

“So there it is,” I conclude. “My husband has been sleeping with my sister for over a year. The night of my father’s funeral, they lied to all of us so they could go do it some more. And then he signed my name to a four-million-dollar loan and handed over my life’s work as collateral for money I have never seen one penny of. How’s that for holiday cheer?”

Silent Night gets to the end.

Nobody moves.

Every single face in that room is turned toward the screen. Every mouth is agape. My mother has both hands flat on the piano, Vivian is frozen half up off the loveseat, and Connor is gawking in disbelief at a document he thought was on fire.

All of them are shocked… except one.

Off to my right, past the kitchen doorway, the pantry door is open a crack. Two inches. No more.

Through that crack, still cloaked in the darkness, somebody is looking at me.

And smiling.

Nobody moves.

Fifty people and one fruit fly are as silent as the night, pun fully intended.

Then s**t hits the fan.

“SHE’S LYING!” Vivian launches herself up off the loveseat, both arms extended out like she wants to strangle me from across the room. “She’s lying, everybody, she made all that s**t up, that’s Photoshop, that’s fake, you can make things like that⁠—”

“Dee.” Connor is halfway to me with his hands up in a spookily accurate mirror image of his secret lover’s. “Dee, babe, listen to me. Listen. That’s not—that’s not what that is⁠—”

“Sit down,” Ed barks.

“Dad—”

“I said sit the f**k down, Connor.”

“Four million dollars?” That’s Uncle Johnny, on his feet by the piano. “Somebody say that number again for me. Four million?”

“It’s a misunderstanding,” Vivian pleads. “It’s a total misunderstanding, and honestly, it’s disgusting that she would⁠—”

“You were in your sister’s bed, Vivian.” I’ve never heard Aunt Virginia sound so cold, but I suddenly remember that she was a correctional officer for a decade in the Nineties and I understand why she’s always scared me a little bit. “We all just watched it with our own eyeballs. Do you think we’re stupid?”

“That wasn’t me!”

“It was your hip!”

“That could be anyone’s hip! Do you know how many people get heart tattoos in this day and age?!”

Somebody knocks a chair over going for the light switch. My mother has both hands on the piano, blaring out a jarring note, and then the sound dies abruptly because she’s lurching across the carpet at me with her face gone splotchy red.

“Turn it off!” she screeches. “Delilah Aileen Dorsey, turn that horrible thing off and put the lights on and explain yourself. Right now! Now! Now!”

The screen behind me is black. There’s nothing to turn off.

“Explain yourself!” she wails again, louder and higher-pitched. “In my house…! On Christmas Eve, the first one since your father…!”

“Leanne,” Aunt Virginia interrupts. “Zip it.”

“Don’t you Leanne me!”

Two of Connor’s cousins are arguing behind the couch. One of them says he forged her name and the other says we don’t know that and the first one says look at the paper in her hand and they keep going back and forth like that for a while. Aunt Sherry has started to cry into a napkin, but she’s wasted and always crying for one reason or another, so I don’t take it personally. Uncle Bub cracks the den door, peers out with a curious kid on each side of him, turns pale, and shuts it again.

I stand in the midst of the mayhem and don’t utter a peep.

This is the part of the night I did not and could not plan for.

To my surprise, it’s turning out to be far easier than I ever could’ve expected.

For thirty-one years, I have explained myself in this house. Why I was late and why I was early. Why I couldn’t work a double and then do the flowers. Why this and why that, why here and why there. Why, why, why?

Now, three of the closest people in the world to me are once again demanding answers.

I’m finding that my mouth won’t open.

I think I’m done explaining.

I set the clicker on the side table.

“Delilah,” my mother cries out over Aunt Virginia’s shoulder. “Delilah, you look at me when I’m talking to you!”

I pick up my laptop. The cable pulls loose and the screen dies.

“Where the f**k do you think you’re going?” Vivian screams at me.

She lunges in front of me. Up close, she’s shaking so hard her earrings are shivering.

“You ruined my life!”

I simply swerve around her like she doesn’t exist.

Holy f*****g s**t, that’s the greatest high I’ve ever felt.

For forty-eight hours now, I’ve been brimming over with this cold, hard-edged rage. I thought I wanted to ruin her for everything she’s spent her whole life doing to me.

But now that I’ve done it, it turns out this was the best revenge.

Ceasing to acknowledge her at all.

That’s the one thing she’s always gotten: the spotlight. But if I don’t give it to her… who will?

Her eyes bug out of their sockets. Screaming incoherently, she clamps down on my wrist to stop me from floating away.

I don’t pull back. I just look down at her hand on me, and then up at her. I keep looking until she takes it back.

“Say something,” she hisses. “Say something to me, you bitch.”

I don’t.

I don’t say anything to Connor, either. He calls my name—we can fix this, Dee, we can talk about this at home, you didn’t have to do it like this—as I pass by where he’s arguing with his dad, but it goes in one ear and out the other. Then Ed grabs him by the shirt and pins him against the wall again.

Just like Vivian, he doesn’t exist to me anymore.

None of them do, really. They’re just disembodied voices drifting through me like smoke. My name again, and are you okay, my mother’s wails, my sister’s sobs.

I open the door. Cold rushes in.

“If you walk out of this house,” my mother shrieks, “you will never be allowed to come back in it!”

Well, Mother… that’s no trouble to me at all.

“Merry Christmas, everyone,” I say over my shoulder.

Then I’m gone.

I pause for a moment on the stoop. The night is tranquil. A maze of dark houses with red and white Christmas lights flashing. So many of these windows capture happy families laughing together. Not the one behind me, but that’s alright.

Maybe Dad took the happy times with him.

Or maybe the less-than-happy times were badly overdue.

I thought I’d be tired once everything was said and done, but I’m suddenly full of energy. I want to move.

So I start to walk, winding my way out toward the street.

The driveway is a disaster. People left their cars everywhere, as if the invitation said park like animals—two on the lawn, one blocking the mailbox, somebody’s Honda nose-to-nose with Uncle Johnny’s minivan. My car is in there somewhere, but I’m not going to look for it, because I don’t want to sit down and I don’t want to drive back to a house in Sheepshead Bay that no longer feels like mine.