Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 94513 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94513 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Like me, Ares called him Nick. I did it because that was all he would allow me to call him.
When I had heard Iris referring to Nick as Dad to Ares when we were young, I had called him Dad one day. Although I had only been three, I still remembered in detail the scowl he’d given me when he told me that I was to call him Nick. Ares had copied me and began calling him Nick too. The more Nick looked right through me, the bigger the strain on his relationship with Ares. There were times in my life I’d felt guilty because of it, but there was nothing I could say or do to fix it.
Even when Carina came along and called him Dad, Ares never did the same. Carina was almost three when she called him Nick the first time. He picked her up and held her in his lap so lovingly, telling her she was his little girl and that he was her dada.
That night, when we were in bed, Ares asked me why we didn’t call Nick Dad. I explained that I wasn’t allowed to call him anything but Nick, but I was sure that he’d like for Ares to call him Dad.
Ares had shaken his head as he narrowed his eyes, then reached for my hand. “No. If he is Nick to you, then he is Nick to me too.”
At my loneliest, I’d always had Ares. If he were here now, I didn’t know if his presence would give me comfort. Not this time. He was going to be upset about this. The older he got, the worse his temper seemed to get. Iris had said the Army would be good for him. Keep him out of prison one day. I wasn’t sure where his short fuse, which exploded when lit, had come from.
Nick wasn’t one to lose his temper. Why would he when his silence could break you? His ability to walk off as if you’d said nothing of importance and meant so little that you weren’t worthy of his reaction was more powerful than anything else.
Iris had gotten meaner over the years. Yelling more and staying angry were her norm now. She hadn’t been that way when I was young. Nick had broken her. Taken away any and all joy in her life.
She had screamed at him about his whore last week. Carina cried into her pillow. The house was small, and the walls were thin. We always heard every word that she said to him when they fought. She had accused him of leaving to go stay with his whore and her kid. I was going to ask Ares if he knew what she was talking about, but he hadn’t called. Was that why she had left?
I turned and looked back at the bedroom door that held only my things now. No sign of Carina remained. It was bare without all her stuff. I didn’t have nearly as much as she did. Nick rarely told her no and barely acknowledged me. The last time he’d spoken to me was when he barked at me to get him a beer two weeks ago while he sat on the sofa, watching a basketball game on the television.
We didn’t have that television anymore. Iris had even taken that with her. How had she had the time to get everything out of here? I’d worked a double shift today. I did that every Saturday at the fairgrounds. Urban Bistro was a food truck that moved around the city to different events. Tember and Alf, the owners, were successful because they didn’t just wait for customers to come to them. They hired servers to walk around with food items, making the purchase more convenient.
Had that really been all the time she needed to clear the house out and leave? Or had she been secretly packing up and I hadn’t realized it?
If Ares had been here, he would have noticed. He was perceptive about things. He’d have warned me. It would be four more weeks before I could contact him. Even when he got a break to call home, it would be Carina’s or Iris’s phone he called. I didn’t own a phone. When I needed to use one, I always borrowed Carina’s.
The double-size bed that I had shared with Carina was gone. Iris hadn’t even left me a blanket and pillow. She had taken her and Nick’s bed too.
I sank down to sit on the floor, wondering what he was going to do when he returned from storming out after their last fight. He’d be furious. I would be the only one here. Instead of being invisible to him, he’d have to talk to me. Ask me where she had gone. Not that I knew. She’d not even left a note.