Free DEBT by Jessica Gadziala Page B

sideways and pretending to put all my attention into checking on the cake inside the oven, "Aaron said you were a nice guy," I informed him. "I figured there must have been some kind of mental manipulation going on there to make anyone swallow and then spew out that load of crap."
    "That high an opinion of me, Miss. Marlow?" he asked, his voice a shade more guarded than it had been moments before, making me almost wonder if I had imagined the softness there, the openness.
    "Can't imagine what I think matters to you," I said, reaching for the spatula and scraping the rest of the cookies off the sheet, feeling almost a little sad that the conversation had taken a turn. But that was so ridiculous that once I finished with the cookie-scraping, I went right to the sink to start scrubbing. Focus, I needed to focus.
    "Who taught you to bake? Mack doesn't seem like the kitchen type," he commented, grabbing another few cookies off the tray which, unfortunately, only helped to improve my opinion of him. I, by principle, didn't trust people who didn't have a sweet tooth. There must have been something seriously evil about a person who didn't appreciate sugar and chocolate.
    "I taught myself I guess," I shrugged, scrubbing the oily traces of the baking spray off the cookie sheet. "We needed to eat and take-out gets expensive when it's an everyday type of thing. I cooked because I had to. I baked because I learned I loved it."
    "And yet you worked in a bank."
    I exhaled, trying to convince myself that didn't smart a little. It was something that kept me awake some nights, thinking about the missed opportunity that was going straight to work instead of attending culinary school. But work was necessary, learning how to bake the perfect, flaky, buttery croissant from a genuine French pastry chef was not.
    "I had bills to pay."
    "And your father to bail out."
    My hands stilled as I looked down into the running water. "Can you not?" I asked, exhaling hard as I lifted my head to look out the window at his expansive property. How could someone like him, someone as well-off, someone financially secure no matter what should befall him, possibly understand what it was like to live in constant fear of having to drain your bank account to settle a debt, to have to borrow from the phone bill fund to pay the water? How could you even begin to describe poor to a rich person?
    As if sensing something in my tone, I could hear his voice soften slightly. "Can I not what?"
    "Act like you have any right to speak to me about my father. You don't understand and you never will. So just... stop bringing him up. We have both done what we have needed to do."
    The oven beeped, prompting me to dry my hands on my pant legs, grab the mitts, and fetch it.
    "Prudence, I don't think you fully understand how unfair..."
    "I said don't!" I shrieked, slamming the pan down on top of the stove, throwing the mitts, and storming past him toward the doorway. "Don't," I snapped again, low, lethal, as I disappeared into the hallway, taking the stairs at a dead run, then throwing myself into my room to worry the floors.
    Fact of the matter was, I knew that. I knew it was unfair. My entire life, I had been trying to quiet the little voice in my head telling me to just... stop. Stop enabling him, stop paying his debts, stop trying to get him away from the tables before he lost every cent to his name, stop being there to take him in when he gambled away his rent and was tossed on his ass. Just... stop.
    But the fact of the matter was, I couldn't.
    I couldn't because my father was a bigger part of me than I was. He was everything. He was in every decision. He was in every worry, every hope, every plan for my future. Him hurting, suffering, sorting through the rubble as his life exploded around him because I didn't step in and take the wire out of the bomb... yeah, I couldn't live with that. Even the idea of it made my chest hurt.
    But that didn't stop me from having a moment here and