Page 135 of Just One Look
Unacceptable
Her father stood there,absolutely still. Three lizards here with their neck frills up now, because Angus could clearly be dangerous, too.
The silence stretched out until Baxter finally said, “There’s no point to this. If you want to throw your life away, Elizabeth, that’s your choice. I can’t stop you. When you want to be my daughter again, let me know, but I can’t accept, Iwon’taccept a child who rejects everything I’ve given her.”
“I haven’t—” Elizabeth said, but he held up his hand and kept speaking.
“You say your mother was planning on leaving me,” he told her. “What makes you think I didn’t know that? What makes you think I’d have let her take you back to grow up with the chickens and the pigs? I’d have taken you, and I’d have kept you, because you had the brains for something better. You hadmybrains, and I cultivated them. I cultivatedyou.You’re seriously telling me that now, after all our hard work, you want to cut and run, because being the best surgeon you can be requires too much sacrifice? I didn’t bring you up like that. I brought you up to be strong. Ipushedyou to be strong, and I did you a favor. You have to be tough to make it in this world, and going through life as a silly, pretty, charming ninny is nothing but a path to failure.”
Luka said, “You’re out, mate,” and her father ignored him.
She was standing up now too, though. “My mother was not silly. She wasloving.She wasfun.And why did you date her in the first place? Because she was pretty and charming and loving and fun! And then you decided there was something wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with it, and there was nothing wrong with her.”
Her father drew himself up even more, and his ice-blue eyes flashed all kinds of danger signals. It was the kind of look, directed at someone else, that had always made Elizabeth want to run away, and now, it was directed at her.
Today, though, she didn’t run. She stayed.
“There’s a difference between the kind of woman you date,” Baxter said, “and the kind you marry. She wasn’t the kind of woman you marry. I knew that, I did it anyway, and it was the biggest mistake of my life. It doesn’t matter, though, because you’re nothing like your mother. You’re not pretty, and you’re not charming. You never were. You were a timid, shrinking, overweight little mouse, hiding in a corner, and you still are, however you try to plaster it over, looking like that, dressing like that. But you also have the brains and surgical skill that you inherited from me, and now, you want to stop challenging yourself. Now, when it’s all in front of you, there for the taking, you want to give up, because you’re still that timid mouse underneath, and you’ve stopped fighting it. If you keep going down this road, if you keep lowering your expectations and your ambitions, youaregoing to fail, or you’re just going to slide into mediocrity. You’re going to be good enough, and that’s all. I’ll have to live with my disappointment, and you’ll have to live with knowing you caused it. The same way your mother did, but you knew better. You could have been great, and you chose to be mediocre instead. That’s all you have, and you’re throwing it away.”
She tried to think of what to say and absolutely couldn’t. He said, “Life isn’t a book. It isn’t a movie. That’s fantasy, and it’s worthless. Life is a jungle. You can either be a killer, or you can be killed. Mice get killed, and nobody’s surprised. Nobody’s sorry.” And then he stalked down the stairs and was gone.
Luka said, “I’ll make sure he’s left,” his face like thunder, and took off after her dad.
It was like she’d been standing on solid ground, and a crack in the earth had opened and she’d tumbled in. She couldn’t balance. She was falling.
Lauren reached out a hand, gripped hers, and said, “You did well. You’vedonewell. You can get through this, too.” Her eyes were kind, and so were Angus’s. Because they felt sorry for her. Because her father had shone a light on her, and that light was cruel. They’d seen inside her, and what was in there was ugly.
The earth caved in some more, and she was shaking. The same thing that had happened before, her hands shaking like leaves in the wind. In the cyclone. In the wind and the water that had battered her and her mama, trying to rip them away into the brown water.
She saw her mama’s hands on the steering wheel. Her knuckles big white bumps, her hands shaking. And she looked down at her own hands, doing the same thing.
You’re not pretty, and you’re not charming. You never were.
You’re going to fail.
Mice get killed, and nobody’s surprised. Nobody’s sorry.
Luka came back, took one look at her, sat down beside her, and pulled her into his lap. She was gasping, and then a sob was ripping up from the bottom of her chest, hurting so badly, it was like she was being torn apart from the inside. She was trying to double over, trying to pull herself into a ball, but Luka was holding her. She fought him, trying to curl herself around the pain, and he held her tighter. Saying something like, “It’s all right. It’s all right.”
She said, “It’s not … allright!It’s never going to be all right. You need to go. You can’t see me right now.” Frantic with it. Fighting with it.
He said, “No. I’m not leaving. There’s nothing bad to see here. You didn’t deserve that, and he’s wrong. You’re more than just his daughter. You’re yourself, and you’re enough.”
Her whole body was shaking, and the words wouldn’t come. And she couldn’t stop crying. The flood was trying to rip her away, to drown her. And he was still holding on.
* * *
He hadn’t touchedher father. He hadn’t spoken to him. He hadn’t dared to. If he’d laid a hand on him, he’d have lost control. He’d watched him get into his car and had longed with everything in him to pull him out again.
You had one parent. One. You weren’t good enough for them, and they couldn’t wait to throw you away.
That was alone.
Now, he held Elle as Lauren stood up and said, “Cup of tea,” and Angus said, “I’ll give you a hand.” They went inside, and Luka held Elle through the storm, and when she was done, said, “First thing—don’t tell me I should go. Don’t tell Lauren and Angus they should go, either. Nobody wants to leave. Everybody wants to help, because you’re worth helping.”
She wiped her face on the front of her shirt and drew a shaky breath. “I need to clean up. And possibly perform a frontal lobotomy on myself before dinner with Nils.”
“Shit,” he said. “Dinner with Nils.”
