“Beautiful,” he murmurs. “Sit.
Then he looks to the nameless, twenty-something lackeys who drove me here.
“Leave us,” he directs them.
He waits until he hears the door close.
“So,” he begins. “You look well.”
“Papa.” I smile. “You just saw me last week.”
“Can’t a father take comfort in his only daughter’s good
health?” he asks.
“Yes, Papa,” I say in my best ‘daughter’ voice.
“So,” he says. “I want you to take a little vacation, a little
leave of absence if you will, just for a little while.”
My eyes fly open.
“When, please?” I ask, trying my best to remember my manners.
“Now,” he says with a nod.
“I have a class I’m taking at NYU,” I say, knowing it
was for nothing. “But I guess I can take it again in the fall.”
“For your graduate degree thing, right?” he asks.
“It’s not important,” I say, bowing my head.
It is just a coveted program that only a few people make
it into. Now I have to leave without giving word or notice when another student can slip in and take my spot.
“I guess there’s no sense in asking if I could email my professors?” I ask.
He shakes his head no.
“No sense at all. There will be other classes,” he says in a hushed tone. “So, the gentlemen who picked you up, polite? Respectful?”
“Of course, they were,” I assure him.
“Of course, they were or else,” he says, with a look in his
“Of course, they were or else,” he says, with a look in his eye that makes my blood run cold.
That ‘or else’ means that those two men would be history if they were anything but. That’s about all he ever needs to say to me. I can usually fill in the blanks all on my own. My sudden trip is because something has seriously gone wrong or volatile in his world. The world that pays for my lifestyle. Anxiety rifles through me. I try not to show it because that will tip my hand that I suspect something. I have never come out and acknowledged what my dad does for a living. We maintain this game, and any sudden nervousness would ruin that illusion.
A shiver runs down my spine as I put two and two together and suspect he is hiding me out to save me. To protect me. My eyes meet his, and I realize right then and there, I am my father’s daughter. And I can see in his eye, he knows I know.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Just cold,” I lie.