An Act of Persuasion(83)
“Why do I need to look at a room I don’t plan on ever staying in?”
Frustration mounting, Mark decided this was one of those moments that necessitated changing tactics. For months he’d been playing the nice guy. Months of pandering to her every desire in the hope that she might give him the time of day. Months of calmly accepting every snotty response to every question he asked. Months of tolerating her incessant eye rolling as if he were the least intelligent man on the planet and only she knew it.
He was done with being the patient, nice guy. She was his daughter. He was her father. It was time she understood the facts.
“Marie. Tell her.”
Marie instantly jerked and looked to Dom for support. “This wasn’t the plan. We said a few more weeks. She’s not ready.”
“She’s not ever going to be ready,” Mark said. “This isn’t working and she needs to know what’s happening in her future.”
Dom nodded his head slowly. “He’s right. We can’t keep putting it off. You might as well tell her.”
Marie opened her mouth but the only sound that came out was a sob. She made her way to Dom. “I can’t do it,” she said. “I just can’t.”
“Fine. I will.” Mark walked over to Sophie, who straightened, suddenly much more attuned to what was happening around her. “Come see your room, Sophie. Now.”
He added enough heat to the last word to actually send her in motion. They walked past the spacious kitchen to the hallway that had a linen closet, a bathroom and two bedroom doors.
“The bigger bedroom is mine, obviously, and I have my own bathroom.” Mark opened the door to his room and cringed when he realized that the bed was still unmade and he’d left his clothes on the floor. Shutting the door quickly, he opened the door to her room. “This is yours. You have a connecting door to the bathroom next to it.”
Sophie didn’t comment. The theme of the room was purple, but it wasn’t overdone. The bed had a musical motif comforter on it and enough pillows to make a harem happy.
Mark had purchased the electric keyboard Marie had said Sophie had her eye on and it was set up with a music stand along one wall. On the other side of the room there was a desk that held the latest iMac computer. Bookshelves framed the desk, but Mark had left those mostly empty. He figured she would want to fill them herself. Same with the closet that he’d had fitted with an organizer to be able to make the most out of the space.
“Okay. I saw it.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Happy?”
“No. No, I’m not happy. I’m not happy your mother died in that car accident. I’m not happy about the kind of father I was while you were growing up. But I can’t change those things, Sophie, and you need to realize that we have to get over this in order to move on.”
She whirled on him with real anger in her eyes instead of the usual contempt. “I don’t need to move on from anything. My mother died and it sucks. But I’m dealing with it the only way I know how. You need to know though that losing her is the only thing that is changing in my life. Do you understand? I will live with Gram and Granddad. I will continue to perform and I will continue to be tutored in my home. I don’t need you. I don’t want you. So you can crawl back under whatever rock you crawled out from. Just because I lost her doesn’t mean I suddenly want you.”
The words hurt. But even more wrenching was the utter grief he heard in her voice. In all his efforts to get her to make a space for him in her life, he’d nearly forgotten that she was still a little girl who had lost her mother at the wrong age.
“You won’t be living with your grandparents anymore. You’re going to live here. With me.”
“What? No way! Gram!”
Mark moved out of the way as Sophie bolted past him. He gave Marie and Dom time to explain the situation. After a few minutes, when he entered the living room tears were streaming down his daughter’s face.
“I don’t understand,” she wailed.
“Honey, you have to. We have to sell the house. We’ve already bought our unit in the seniors’ community. Your grandfather’s health is declining, he needs more care. My lungs aren’t improving. I’m going to need to be on oxygen soon. That big house and the stairs...it’s too hard for either of us to move around.”
“We can get help. You can move into one of the bedrooms downstairs.”
“Sophie, I’m sorry,” Dom said, trying to reach out for her hand, but she avoided his touch. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be better for you. We wish we were twenty years younger. We wish...we wish our Helen hadn’t died.” He sighed. “Sophie, this move to the seniors’ community had been planned long before her death. After we lost her we canceled the sale. Of course we did. We thought we could take care of you together. We thought with you being so mature we could handle raising you. But these past few weeks have made us realize that Mark is a better option.”