Page 96 of Incisive

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It’safter dark when we land in DC.Marine Oneferries me, Jordan, Leo, and my parents back to the White House, while a car takes Casey-Marie home.

“I’m certainly gladthat’sover,” Dad says while staring out the window at the landscape below us. “Maybe now we can go back to Stella ignoring us. Life is calmer when she does that.”

I struggle against all the angry words I want to say about Stella and finally swallow them. “Thank you for agreeing to spend the night tonight,” I say. “I know it’s a little inconvenient for you but it’s good to have you here. I’ve missed you.”

Mom reaches over and pats me on my right knee—the good one—as she smiles. “I’m sorry we don’t visit more often but we don’t like to make you go through the trouble. Besides, we’re usually pretty busy with the farm.”

It’s on the tip of my tongue to suggest they retire and sell but I don’t want to push my luck too far tonight. “I know, Mom. It’s okay. I understand.”

“I hope Stella doesn’t expect us to drop everything and fly to Florida whenever she feels like she needs us for family photos,” Dad says. He turns toward me with his expression full of storm clouds. “I don’t need her flaunting Ellis’ money in our faces. Bad enough he’s a pompous jackass who keeps his nose pointed higher in the air than a hog at feeding time. I don’t like how he looks down on us. I cannot understand what Stella sees in him. He’s nowhere near her age, he’s not good-looking, and he doesn’t have a nice personality. His own family hates him. I hope his money’s worth it to her.”

“I wonder if they’ll have babies,” Mom says, obviously trying to divert the topic.

I snort. “I have a feeling she’s not, Mom. Stella’s not exactly maternal. Besides, she’s forty-one.”

“Well, you do have a point there. That would be a high-risk pregnancy.”

“She probably wouldn’t let us see them even if she did,” Dad says, turning back to the window. “Probably afraid we’d teach them to eat with the wrong fork or something.”

Where he sits across from me, Leo catches my eye and gives me the slightest of head shakes. I know what he means—don’t engage or encourage.

Because I know what I’ll do, and that’s get angrier than I already am, go after Stella, and in the process possibly inadvertently hurt my parents even more than they’ve already endured today.

Then Mom speaks again. “And what was with thosehideousoutfits her friends were wearing?” She literally shudders. “That poor maid of honor. Stella must have really hated her.”

And like that, tension floods out of the cabin as we all start laughing. I don’t bother correcting her that those were Stella’s paid assistants and not her “friends.”

“Looks like she raided one of those fruit bouquets for ideas,” Dad adds.

I snort because picking on the outfits is safe territory. “I was thinking about that. Lemon, lime, tangerine—they were awful.”

“Maybe she’s trying to turn herself into a Florida Woman,” Dad says, making us all howl with laughter.

By the time I retire for the evening after Mom and Dad go to bed, with Leo and Jordan safely locked in the bedroom with me, our moods have lightened considerably.

At Stella’s expense, of course, but I’ll take it.

“Feeling better after today, pet?” Leo asks from the middle of the bed, where Jordan and I have sandwiched him between us.

There’s more than just that simple question floating in the darkness between us.

I know what he’s asking me because he—and Jordan—both know the driving force behind my meteoric rise to this office I now occupy.

“Yes, Master. A little.” I close my eyes and deeply inhale, savoring Leo’s warm scent filling my lungs. I feel Jordan’s hand brush against my abs where his arm is draped around Leo from the other side.

Leo nuzzles the top of my head and his warm breath lightly blows across my scalp. It soothes and anchors me to the present, clears my mind, and calms my soul.

Maybe I don’t need to hear those words from my father.

Maybe what I really need to work on is figuring out how to adjust my expectations of him and accept him for who he is and where he is, and accepting our relationship as it is now. Today was proof my parents and I can band together. That they love me and, yes, even my sister.

If they didn’t love us they wouldn’t give a shit about us and my sister’s actions wouldn’t have bothered them so much.

The pain in my mother’s eyes and my father’s accompanying anger—and hurt—over it wasn’t just my imagination.

I don’t know what Stella’s long-term plans include but if acting like she did today is part of it, it wouldn’t surprise me if my parents distance themselves from her.