Page 55 of Daddy to Go

I walked over to the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge. “When’s Mom getting home?”

My sister sighed.

“Hell if I know. Why don’t you call her and ask?”

I held my tongue over her negative attitude. Over the last year our relationship, which obviously had never been great, deteriorated even more. Melody had never been very supportive of my pregnancy, and at one point actually gloated about the fact that I was going to become a single mother.

She thought she was so much better than me, but that wasn’t even what bothered me the most. What bothered me was the fact that she only felt good about herself by putting other people down. Who does that? Nor was I the only victim, I was merely the most convenient one. Melody knew I didn’t like confrontation, and she knew I didn’t want to put stress on our mother, so she knew she could pretty much say whatever she wanted without me returning fire. She was one of the most pathetic people I had ever met, and the fact that she was my sister was becoming less and less relevant as the days went on.

But I held my tongue again. I looked at her outfit, which consisted of a pair of leather short shorts, and a top held up in the back by just a single string. Her straw like blonde hair was flipped to the side and she wore very heavy makeup.

“Are you going out?” I asked in a civil tone.

She didn’t look up at me. “Yeah, I can’t just sit around here all the time.”

“What about Derek?” I asked.

After all, Melody was now going out with Derek McHutt, the very guy she said had been obsessing over me forever. I wasn’t interested, seeing that I had just been pregnant and given birth to a baby. The last thing I wanted was a relationship with a man.

“Please, I only dated him for a few weeks.” She snickered at the thought. “I had to dump him and fast. He was so lame. Besides, I have much bigger fish to fry and I don’t want to be tied down.”

I lifted both eyebrows, just staring as she talked. It seems that after she dumped Derek, she became quite the wild child. Evidently, she went out constantly, and usually with a different guy every night. Moreover, Melody even got a job working as a bartender at a strip club. What happened to regular jobs like being a cashier or working at a call center?

“Yeah, I make great tips,” she bragged.

I swallowed hard.

“Melody, that place is a dump. The customers are idiots, and your co-workers are strippers. Nothing wrong with that, but can’t you be a bartender at a regular place?”

My sister shot me a disgusted look.

“The tips are betterbecauseit’s a strip club, and please, stop acting like a prude. It’s like you’re eighty years old, Abby. Just because you have a baby now doesn’t mean that you have to act like you’re so high and mighty.”

I held my tongue once more, knowing that words were useless. Melody figured that because she wasn’t stripping, her job was okay. She was just pouring drinks, albeit doing it in a bikini and five-inch heels. Of course, guys gawked at her and groped her every time she came around the bar, but then again, I was pretty sure she liked the attention.

Melody looked back down at Mattie as he yawned. She smiled at him and then glanced up at me.

“Mattie’s really cute. He must take after his father.”

I pulled up a chair and sat down. “Thanks. Babies’ facial features are indeterminate, so he might look completely different later on in life.”

She snickered, clicking her pen. “Yeah well let’s hope he takes after his dad.”

I rolled my eyes, trying to not respond to her dig. Besides, clearly Melody had no maternal instincts at all. Watching her pull a clean diaper from the box and hold it with two fingers at arm’s length was enough to tell me that she should probably never have children. The unfortunate part was, if she didn’t grow up, she would most likely end up with several.

My sister took a deep breath and shrugged her shoulders.

“I mean I guess it’s better for you than me. You’ve never been the kind of girl that cared much about her future. I have things to do in my life and I can’t imagine being saddled with a baby.”

I smiled frigidly.

“You know, you should probably not make comments about things that you have no idea about. Until you’ve walked in my shoes. Until you’ve held that positive pregnancy test in your fingers. Until you’ve had a relationship that actuallymeantsomething, you should keep your opinions to yourself. Because I’m going to tell you right now, no one is going to care what you think. You have no experience when it comes to this kind of thing. You have no idea what kind of love there is between a mother and a child. You can’t even appreciate the fact that our own mother loves you.”

Melody’s jaw clenched and she narrowed her eyes at me. She stared at me with hatred for several moments. I could tell I’d really gotten to her. It wasn’t very often that I stood up to her, but I was tired of her dissing me with every chance that she got.I get it. I made a mistake. But now I had this beautiful baby, which I didn’t regret in the least, and I was tired of hearing it out of her mouth every five seconds. She needed to come up with a new routine.

But then Melody turned away, completely disinterested, and I grew frustrated again. Clearly, my sister just didn’t care. She had no emotional feelings toward me, and every time it happened, I swore I would not let it bother me. But every time it happened, itdidhurt and stabbed me to my core.

I closed my eyes for a moment and decided to move forward, trying to make conversation with her. After all, we were sisters, and one day I hoped that she would see that our relationship was important.