Page 55 of The Fix

Posey watched spring burst forth, ripe with life and possibility outside, even if inside, her father continued to wither.

She walked the familiar halls of her same family estate, but she felt different—changed inside. She’d begun to realize that not all questions could be answered, and even more shockingly, she’d started to believe that that was as it should be.

“A software upgrade,” her father said with a weak laugh from the hospital bed that had been brought into his primary suite and where he now spent the majority of his time.

Then he gave her cheek a soft pinch the way he’d done when she was only a child.

Posey leaned into his hand. He was jokingly referring to Posey’s oft-expressed observation that others saw her as a computer, but Posey felt less and less like a machine by the day.

It wasn’t only Tatum’s effect on her rationality; it was the lump that seemed to lodge in her throat each time she came to her father’s room and saw his diminished capacity.

She knew of no machine that moved between wonder and pain in quite such a way.

In late March, her father called both her and Anton to his bedside, where he lay propped on a stack of pillows. His hands, bony and frail, were splayed atop a folder on his lap.

Posey took the chair on one side of his bed, and Anton sat on the opposite side, and they each took one of his hands in theirs.

Her father’s lips tilted slowly in an expression that was simultaneously a smile and a grimace.

Their father had never been one to mince words, and that remained true at the hour of his death.

“I’ve left the family business to Josephine.

The estate and all assets are to be split between you both. ”

“You what?” Anton hissed, dropping their father’s hand and rising from his chair to loom over the man who’d raised him.

“She’s the appropriate choice to run the Kiss enterprise,” their father said. “It is my wish, and it’s already done. My will and testament is signed and filed with my lawyers.”

“Look at her!” Anton yelled, pointing his finger at Posey, rage glistening in his eyes. “She’s a daft freak!” He leaned over their father’s slender form. “And she’s fucking an employee’s son, did you know that?”

Posey’s cheeks filled with heat. “I’ve merely kissed him,” she said, her voice as weak as her ailing father’s.

Her father turned his hand in hers and gripped her gently. “Good,” he said. “Kiss as many boys as you wish, Posey Pose. Dance with them too. I should have danced more often.” He sighed and closed his eyes. “I’ve made my decision. Leave now, Anton. Be well.”

Anton’s face was bright red, and he was vibrating with anger. He gave Posey one last hate-filled glare and then stalked from the room.

Posey picked up the book on her father’s nightstand that she’d been reading to him in the evenings. They were only on chapter eight. She opened to her bookmark, her voice small as she began to speak, throat ever more clogged with that growing lump.

Her father reached for her hand again, and she took it, cradling it gently as she continued to read.

Her father ceased breathing long before the story was over, and yet Posey finished it all the same.

“The end,” she whispered. She put her cheek on her father’s chest, and then for the first time in her life that she could remember, Posey wept.