It was exhausting.
“Okay. Well, fair warning, you are about to run out of coffee then,” I told him.
“That’s fine. You do the shopping anyway,” he said.
“Don’t remind me. Your list is obnoxious.”
“Refined is the word you are looking for.”
“Whatever you have to tell yourself to make you feel better about spending over a hundred dollars on cheese,” I told him, making my way out of the room.
We didn’t have any kind of warm and fuzzy conversations, but that was as friendly as I think we’d ever been.
It helped that I was starting to lose some of my bitterness. I never thought that would be possible when I showed up at his massive estate, arms crossed, even more pissed off than I’d been my entire life, and hardly wanting to hear him out.
But then he’d said something that I knew was going to change my life.
It was all going to be mine when he was gone.
That didn’t mean that I’d been overly friendly when I moved my ass across the country and into the little guest house toward the back of the property—a place that was nicer than any apartment I’d ever been inside of in my entire life.
I was just starting to adjust, to work through my shit, so I could interact with the man who was half of my DNA before he was gone.
I caught myself trying to find ways in which we were similar, surly personalities aside.
But I found very little.
We didn’t like the same foods. And why would we, when he grew up with a silver spoon heaping with fish eggs, and I was eating the cheapest shit on the shelves from the corner store.
Salt and preservatives were what really got me going.
For my father, it was his funky cheeses and types of fish I’d never even heard of. I mean even his damn jelly was fancy. No, I’m sorry, his preserves were fancy.
Lingonberry.
I didn’t even know what a lingonberry was until I saw it on the grocery list and looked it up.
And there I’d been, going about my life thinking that the apricot jam people were fancy while I ate my plain old grape that I was reasonably sure didn’t have any actual grapes in it.
Our coffee preference was different too.
My father liked his black so he could ‘truly appreciate the flavor.’
I truly enjoyed the flavor of creamer and sugar and a hint of actual coffee.
So I made myself a cup just that way after bringing my father his cup, and was leaning against the counter, cradling the mug with both hands as I savored my cup as I mentally prepared for more paperwork memorization.
And it was right in that moment of peace that the damn back door opened.
Then there he was.
Frederick bent-dick Lasso.
Which was my new favorite way to refer to him in my head.
Childish? Maybe.
But I had no choice but to play nice with Frederick, and getting to call him names in my head made me feel mildly better about the whole thing.
“Look at you, making yourself right at home. Does Edmund know you are helping yourself to his groceries?”
“He offered it. It seemed rude to turn him down,” I said instead of what I truly wanted to.
I swear I had scars on my tongue from how hard I had to bite it around Frederick.
“I’ve been trying to get ahold of you,” he said, telling me things I already knew. I’d been avoiding him since the whole grocery store thing.
I knew what I was going to hear about it. And I didn’t want to give him the chance to say it.
“I’ve been busy,” I said, shrugging. “Edmund has had a lot of research for me,” I added, waving toward my files, making Frederick’s gaze move in that direction as well.
I wasn’t imagining how his eyes darkened when he saw them.
But that was just too damn bad.
There was nothing he could do about it.
Edmund had made up his mind. And I was doing everything in my power to make sure neither of them had any legitimate reasons to second-guess the arrangement.
I mean, Frederick second and third and fourth guessed it all the time. Luckily for me, though, he didn’t have the final say.
So as long as I could stay civil and keep my business clean, there was no screwing this up.
“None of that is necessary,” Frederick insisted.
“I really have no place to question Edmund’s judgment,” I said, leaving the other words hanging silently in the air. And neither do you.
Frederick brushed right by that.
He had one thing in mind.
And I knew exactly what it was going to be.
“Interesting company you keep, Theodora,” he said, his weak chin lifting up so he could properly look down his nose at me.
“I don’t keep any company. I work. And I work here. That is all I have time for.”