“Tobias—” Cecelia starts.
“These are your parents,” I say definitively, doing my best to make it easier on her, which wins me nothing but another scathing glare. I frown at her as she blazes her eyes down my frame before lifting her wrists one by one and straightening the cuffs on her pajamas—in threat.
She smirks when she sees me conclude that she knows exactly what she’s been doing to me with those fucking pajamas.
What. The. Fuck?
Timothy clears his throat before finally commenting on the growing tension. “If we’re imposing, it’s no problem. We can just cruise on a little earlier.”
“It’s no imposition,” I counter, making my stance clear as Cecelia sinks in her seat.
“Are you sure that’s best right now?” Cecelia slings, insinuation rolling off her tongue. She seems to be prepping for war when all I’m trying to do is make peace. I’m tempted to pull her ass aside and redden it before I lick it or simultaneously do both. “Yes,” I nod for emphasis, cutting my hand through the air. “End of.”
She narrows her eyes. “Don’t you dare—”
“Cecelia,” Diane cuts in with the voice of a patient mother, “why are you—”
“I’m done,” she snaps and stands, hauling her plate to the sink and tossing it in before looking back to Diane. “And done pretending too. You haven’t even told him, have you, Mom? Your new husband.”
“Husband?” I ask, surprised by the news and taking first note at the rings on their fingers. It must have been in one of my recent reports. In my defense, I’ve been busy the last eight months.
“Yes, husband,” Cecelia clarifies, her eyes trained on her mother. I’m expecting blood-colored eyes and a moving crown of snakes to appear any second with how she’s behaving. I make a mental note to see how far away she is from her sugar pill days in her birth control.
“Haven’t you learned anything? How do you expect to get through a life with him with secrets like this?”
Timothy calmly sets down his silverware and eyes me. “Can someone please tell me what I’m missing?”
“Unfortunately, your wife and I share some tragic history.”
A tear escapes Diane’s eye, and Cecelia plays immune, but I know the strain in the relationship is hurting her, so much so it’s metastasized to uncontrollable anger.
“He knows,” Diane lifts guilt-sick eyes to her daughter. “I told him on the drive home the last time we were here, after I signed the papers for the restaurant and the house, even though you refused to tell me why I was doing it.” Her gaze flits to mine. “And also after you refused to tell me why you’d lost fifteen pounds you couldn’t afford to lose.”
Insinuation clear, that revelation strikes me where intended, and Cecelia fires back. “Don’t play concerned parent. It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?”
“Never, you’ll always be my child. And I had no idea what you were going through because you didn’t share it with me.”
“We all have our secrets, don’t we?” She says, none of us safe from that jab.
“Look at me, baby.” Cecelia lifts her blazing eyes to mine, so much hurt shining in them, I want to shield her with my body. “What hurts you, hurts me.”
She fists a tear from beneath her eyes. “Tobias, this is too much.”
“It’s not. I promise you, Trésor, it’s not.”
The slide of Diane’s chair has us all turning her way as she offers a barely audible ‘excuse me’ before she scurries out of the kitchen, grabbing her cigarettes on the counter before rushing through the back door.