“I knew I should have fought harder for his arrest back then,” she mumbled to herself. My breaths suspended, every one of my senses closed off except my ears. I tuned into Mother’s mumbling. “He was a thief back then, and he’s a criminal now. Ten years of living in luxury taught the foolish child nothing.”
I stood to my feet, walking straight past my enraged father. He yelled something in my direction, but it landed on deaf ears. I stopped inches from my mother, who only stared at me sharply, also yelling nonsense.
“It was you,” I said through gritted teeth. They both stopped yelling for a moment to stare at me in confusion. “You’re the woman who had Elias arrested as a child.” I glared daggers into my mother’s puzzled blue eyes. She looked between me and Father, clearly unsure as to why my mannerism had changed. “Ten years ago, you sent a young boy to court, all for trying to survive.” My voice raised and Mother quaked in surprise.
“Yes, of course I did,” she admitted bluntly, still shaken by my boldness. “The boy tried to steal my bracelet. I simply did the proper thing, which was to report him to the authorities. The lucky swine ended up being adopted by Judge Oberon, so in reality, I did the boy a favor. It’s not like it changed him or anything; he’s still as vile as the streets he was raised on.” She snorted at the memory, and my grip on my temper shattered.
I grabbed her by the shoulders and held her face inches from mine. “Do you have any idea what you did to that boy!? The fate you brought upon him!?” I screamed, angry tears streaming down my face. “His whole life could be destroyed, and he doesn’t deserve any of it! You put him there! You’re the reason that heinous family found him! He’s in trouble now, and it’s all your fault!” Mother’s round eyes filled with terror as I shook her relentlessly.
Father grabbed me from behind and pulled me off his wife. Kicking and thrashing, I was dragged away from her as Father threw me back into the chair. My screaming cries persisted, and he slapped me across the cheek.
I sat silently, holding my inflamed cheek with a shaking hand.Did... did that just happen?
“That’s enough.” Father’s voice was stone as he glared me down unforgivably. “This is not how we raised you to behave, and you will cease these outbursts at once.” He raised his hand again, and I flinched, afraid he was going to strike again. Instead, he froze the hand above me, seeming satisfied by my withdrawal.
“Is it true?” I nearly whispered the question, still fearing my father’s wrath. “Are you indebted to the Dugal family?” I lifted my eyes to meet his, still cowering low in the chair. This was hardly the time to ask such a question, but what damage could I do now?
“Yes, Aurelia, it’s true.” He sighed, dragging a hand through his graying hair. His willingness to respond surprised me more than his confirmation did.
“About a year ago, Charles Dugal wanted me to move in on a new business with him. In the lumber mill, many of the employees he hired came with special sets of skills. Charles saw a need in the kingdom for bounty hunters, and felt he had the men capable of doing the job. He wanted us to be partners, but I refused.” He slowly approached the nearest sofa, sitting heavily. “People had been escaping the law for some time by then, and it was growing more prominent on our side of the kingdom, though we couldn’t figure out why. I understood where his proposition was coming from, but it wasn’t my trade skill. All I’ve ever done is pedal furniture, so I did what I always have and purchased his lumber on a bank loan. Turns out it was a bad year to do so. The wood that year was knotted and weak. At the time of purchase, I hadn’t been thinking clearly, so I overbought to convince Charles that I couldn’t afford investing in his project. It was a foolish move, but it was too late.” He crossed his arms, leaning back against the sofa. His eyes were half-slitted as he ran through the memory.
The pieces clicked together in my mind as his story unfolded. No wonder the Dugals had access to such a skilled bounty hunter they had been intended on employing their own. That also explained why Lord Oberon desired a tiff between our two families. If Father and Lord Dugal settled their differences, Lord Oberon’s business would be at risk. The facts dawned on me as I turned my attention back to my father.
“So, you didn’t make enough return on your purchase?” I questioned a little more bravely.
“Enough?” He laughed. “I couldn’t sell even a blasted stool with that measly wood. Since I couldn’t pay off the materials, I tried to sell them back to Charles, but he was too bitter with me to take it. Instead, he paid off the lenders, and left me hanging with a debt to his business. I did better in the fall, but it still wasn’t enough to clear the debt. Charles said he’d take me to court if I didn’t get him his money by the end of spring, so that’s when I proposed the marriage.” He met my eyes, a more regretful look reflecting this time.
“Aurelia,” Mother sat alongside her husband, “we need you to do this, otherwise we could lose everything.” She looked genuinely worried, but something wasn’t adding up.
How did only one season of debt add up to something this serious? Father had always used bank loans to buy his first round of lumber, but his investments never failed before. How did such a large sum accumulate to the point where he required Lord Dugal’s assistance to pay off the bank? A marriage held far more severity than money did. Did he truly owe the lord that vastly?
I suppose none of the details mattered now... the arrangements had been made. My only hope was to convince my parents that this was too great a debt to push on me.
“Mother, Father, I understand why you’re worried.” I straightened, leveling my eyes to theirs. “But that doesn’t give you the right to dictate my choices. Your mistakes shouldn’t be my burden, and I’m sorry if you are faced with consequences, but you could have told me about them long before now. There are other ways to pay off a debt. Why must it be passed on to me instead?” I passed my eyes between the two of them, looking for an ounce of sympathy. Their expression stiffened, not even an inch of mercy displayed toward my position.
“It has already been decided, dear,” Mother said coldly. “It’s your duty to this family to take care of it, just as we have. I’m sorry it’s not what you wanted, but the choice isn’t yours to make.” She rose from her chair, followed shortly by Father.
I sat motionless at her response, my mouth hanging agape. My own mother chose her frivolous lifestyle over her daughter’s happiness. The worst part of it all was that I never expected anything different. I already knew it was hopeless, even during my last plea. They never cared about me, only what I could provide for them. In their eyes I wasn’t their daughter, I was a pawn. My last tether of hope snapped.
“Why?” The word came out more as a plea than a question. “Why have you done this to me? Am I not your daughter? Do you not care for me?” Tears welled up in my eyes, even though I had asked the question, I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer.
“Of course, we care for you, darling.” Mother’s reassurance only pained me more since it felt like the opposite of the truth. “This is what’s best for all of us.”
“By ‘all of us,’ you only refer to yourselves.” I glared at them, no longer wanting to give them the chivalry they didn’t deserve. “I am your daughter. If you had even an ounce of human decency, you would stop being so selfish!” I stood back to my feet, my rage clearing my head of any rational thought. “Am I not your flesh and blood!?” As I shouted my anger at them, Father stood from his seat and approached with fury I had never seen on a man’s face. I looked to Mother and saw that her face had gone ashen.
“You’re not.” He nearly growled the words, a pent-up expression lingering in his maddened eyes.
Not entirely certain what he had just said, Mother rushed forward. “Silas, don’t.” She grabbed his arm, her pale face pleading with him. Father calmly removed her clasped hand from his arm, never looking at her desperate expression.
“You’re not my flesh and blood, you never were.” His words pierced my heart with a precise shot. His eyes never left mine, even as Mother cried hysterically in the corner of the room. I felt the blood drain from my face, my previous anger replaced with a newfound wound upon my heart.
“What are you saying, Father?” My lip quivered as I asked the question. The word “father” tumbled off my lips like a fresh lie.
“Just what I said. I’m not your father.” His words dripped with venom as he spoke, as if he had been awaiting my whole life to drop the fatherly role he’d been barely playing. “You can ask your mother... at least she shares your vile blood.”
I turned my gaze to Mother, but she was far too broken to answer any questions. I looked back to my apparent false father, tears stinging my eyes as I no longer knew what to call him.
“If you’re not my father...” I choked on an impended sob, swallowing it back to finish my question, “then who is?”