Page 24 of Sweet as Puck

eight

Cara

“Do you have any idea how frustrating it is?” Dad asked me.

I did. He was complaining to me about the very thing he said Mum was doing to him—complaining. “I have an idea,” I muttered, only half listening as I reread the paragraph I’d just written.

“I don’t think you do. Your mother has had it easy. She worked shorter hours when you were young so she could be there to pick you up from school. She now only works part time.I’veput in the long hours.I’vebusted my ass making this company what it is, and now she’s telling me she doesn’t want to work at all?”

He was genuinely frustrated, but he didn’t even see that he was the one who’d caused the problems. I didn’t even think he could hear himself and the ridiculous things he was saying.

“It’s unbelievable. She’s moved into the guest house, and now she wants to quit her job. I’m so sick of this. She either needs to come home or—”

“Or what, Dad?” I asked, snapping at him. He’d been ranting and raving at me for half an hour, and I was done listening. Hewas actually upset that Mum had moved her things out, but he was the one bringing his mistress home. Did he expect that Mum was going to put up with it? Did he think she’d forgive him and let things go back to how they were so he could keep cheating?

“I’m not going to fund her lifestyle anymore. I’ve done enough.”

“You know, Dad, all you had to do was not cheat on her. Mum loved you, and you broke her heart.”

Dad huffed as if I was wrong, and it lit a fire under me, making me even more determined to tell him exactly what I thought. I needed to pop that deluded bubble he was living in—the one where he thought he was in the right. I wouldn’t stand by and let him treat Mum like doggy doo-doo.

“Mum was practically still a kid when she met you—she was definitely under eighteen when she fell pregnant. The whole time you were together, she showed her loyalty and love to both of us by sacrificing her career and being at home whenever she could. Mum didn’t want to be an acquisitions manager for a sporting goods store—”

“Warehouses, Cara. Not just one but—”

I rolled my eyes. Hard. Now he was correcting me on what Delaware’s Warehouse was when I was trying to drive home what Mum had given up for him. What the heck was wrong with him?

“Iknow, Dad. We have seventeen warehouses across the eastern states.” I’d probably get a talking to about my sarcasm, but right at that moment, there were more important things to focus on. “But how many warehouses you have is irrelevant. Mum wanted music to be her life. You knew she’d been accepted into university to study music and had received an offer from the Australian Youth Orchestra. You knew that she wanted to travel with them. But she gave it all up. She walked away from herdreams when she fell pregnant. Now she’s walking away fromyourdreams.”

“How am I going to find another acquisitions manager in six months?”

His frustrated growl had me doing a double-take.Six months?She’d given himsix months,and he was complaining?

“Isn’t that what you have HR for? Promote from within. Heck, poach someone else’s acquisitions manager.”

My phone beeped with another call coming through, and I jumped at the chance to end this ridiculous conversation with my father. “Dad, I need to go. I’ve got someone from the team calling me.” I didn’t give him a chance to respond. I ended the call immediately.

I looked down at the screen and groaned. It was Mum. I loved my parents, but I didn’t have the mental bandwidth to be their punching bag when they were fighting like this.

I let the call go to voicemail, but it started ringing again immediately.

“Hi, Mum,” I answered with a sigh.

“I want to kill that man,” she growled. “Can you believe—”

“I’ve heard the whole story from him already, Mum.”

“Seriously? He’s, what, ringing you to complain about me?”

“Pretty much.”

Mum wasn’t taking the hint.

“Six months, Cara. I gave him six months’ notice even after what he’s done to me. He’s still sleeping with her. He’s still bringing that woman home to our bed while I’m in the bloody pool house. I’m not going to do this. I’m not going to live like this. I deserve to do something that I want to do, don’t I?”

“You do, and he’s being self-centred and unreasonable thinking that you won’t resign.”

“I ought to take him to the bloody cleaners—”