I Am Keeley

Chapter 18: Fancypants

"So this is my fault?" I laugh at him. "I'm sorry, but I'm not the one who can't keep a fucking promise."

I shook my head in disbelief as I turn and begin to walk towards the door, already pissed off at the day.

"Dammit, you're just like your mother," he said almost as if he was realizing something for the first time. I abruptly turned around and gave him the same look he had given me earlier: cold, blank, and a bit pissed the fuck off.

"Don't ever compare me to that poor excuse of a woman. I am the furthest thing from her," I snapped. He let out a humorless chuckle as he slowly stood from his chair and rounded the desk. My father stood in front of me and stared down at me with his cruel, blue eyes.

"That poor excuse of a woman was my wife and your mother. Lose the attitude and show some fucking respect, would you? And for the record, you are just like her. You look like her, you talk like her, and you've got the damn-near same attitude that she had." His voice was growing louder and more frustrated as he spoke to me, the right side of his jaw ever so slightly twitching.

"Yeah, the only difference is that you loved her and you couldn't care less about me." 

His body tensed up at the words I spoke, like I had just thrown a bucket of freezing water onto him.

"Is that what you think?" he asks me quietly but still with that underlying coldness I'd always seen from him when he talks to me, but never my brothers.

"It's what I know," I tell him while gently shaking my head.  "Am I supposed to think differently after years and years of being ignored? Of being looked down on? After being thrown into the hands of somebody else because you didn't want to deal with your only daughter who was grieving over a mother who never loved her? Tell me: am I truly supposed to believe that you love me?"

"I do love you, Keeley-" he starts but I'm quick to cut him off.

"No, no you don't!" I stepped back from him like I had just been burned.

"Listen to me!" he shouted as his hands slammed onto the desktop, his anger taking over just like mine was. The bang echoed off the walls of the room, the only other sound coming from the fake fireplace in the wall. 

I was fuming. This morning has only gotten shittier thanks to a woman who's not even living.

"Your mother was going to leave me and your brothers," he began. His voice quiet, but yet still held an authority to it that he uses when addressing his men.

"Good. You should have let her lea-"

"Would you just close your damn mouth for one moment?!" he shouted at me. I flinched at the tone he was speaking with and tried to hide my discomfort by crossing my arms over my chest. I kept my mouth shut.

"She was going to leave, but then we found out she was pregnant with you. She didn't want another child, but I begged her on my hands and knees to not only stay, but to keep you as well. I promised her the world and more if she would just do this, and she agreed. And then we found out you were a girl." My father's voice had softened as he reminisced on my mother's memory.

"Did you know your mother had two sisters?" He looked at me and I softly shook my head no. I was always told my mother was an only child whose parents died when she was young.

"She was the middle child, and her sisters were terrible to her. When we first got married, she told me she never wanted a girl for fear that that child would turn out just like them. But me, I'd always wanted a daughter. A little princess, I would tell your mother, who I could spoil and protect, somebody who I hoped would need me. I was excited, but she wasn't, and she made me promise I would never love you more than I loved her. Yet again, I agreed."