Page 13 of The Marriage Clause

There’s barely enough in checking and savings to cover next month’s rent, plus utilities, groceries, and gas. Not to mention there’s Brookhaven to pay for. It’s almost ten thousand a month. The kind of money that made me stay late, come early, grind my teeth through every dismissive look Everett threw my way.

Without this salary, I can’t afford it. We already sold my childhood house to pay off his medical bills for the month he was in the hospital after the accident, and the final funeral costs for my mother. My father will have to be moved back to the memory care facilities that his insurance will cover. But those are basically glorified adult daycares.

The four weeks of severance pay will at least give me one more month to try to find a replacement job, but there’s nothing out there with my skill set that will pay that kind of money.

A sob catches in my throat, and I let it out, harsh and desperate. The steering wheel absorbs the impact of my forehead. Once, twice, until the pressure in my chest finally cracks open and everything—every held-together breath, every swallowed comment about his grimaces, every morning I showed up hoping to prove I was worth noticing—comes pouring out.

I sit there and cry like an idiot for what feels like hours but is probably only ten minutes.

When I finally pull back, the tears draining out of my body, I try to shake off the shock and gut punch that I suppose I knew was coming.

I could sell the paintings that I moved to a storage unit, along with all my parent’s things when we sold their house. The art curator keeps calling, asking if I’d sell them to a collector who loved them at my showing, but I can’t bring myself to look at them.

Not since that night. Not since my opening night as a real artist is the reason my parents got in the car accident that killed my mother and left my father in memory care facilities.

I don’t go home.

Instead, I drive to Brookhaven. The drive takes thirty minutes. I use them to compose myself, wipe the tear streaks from my cheeks, practice a smile in the rearview mirror that doesn’t quite work. My hands are still shaking on the steering wheel.

Gladys sees me coming, and her smile falters. She knows that face. She’s seen it before, the one families wear when they’re bringing bad news.

"Aria, sweetheart. What’s wrong?"

I can’t tell her. If I tell her I lost my job, then it means that it really happened, and I just can’t face reality seeping into the rest of my life right now. I just need an hour with my father where I don’t have to think about it.

"Just a long day," I say instead. "Is he having a good one?"

Her expression softens with something like pity, and that’s when I know the answer before she gives it.

"Actually, it’s been a long day for him. He had occupational and physical therapy. He’s pretty wiped out. He’s resting in his room. Be patient with him today."

A long day of therapy means that his brain is fried from all the exercises they worked on today. And "be patient with him" means that his brain might be too tired to remember me. Of all days, today is the day I need him to be okay. I need him to tell me that everything will be alright.

I push through the familiar hallway with its warm lighting and fresh flowers and soft music playing from somewhere I can never quite locate.

Everything is the same. But it all feels different now—borrowed. Something that’s about to be taken away.

The Kauffman plaque catches my eye, but this time I want to rip it off the wall and throw it through a window. Though being mad at Everett for having more assistants than he needs isn’t his fault either. Life just isn’t fair, and today, I feel that stronger than most.

If life were fair, my father wouldn’t need this facility, my mother would be alive, and I would be a thriving painter living in the French Riviera like my mother and I always dreamed I would be.

Instead, pictures and memories are all I have left of her, and the paintings from my first gallery opening sit collecting dust in the storage unit.

My father’s door is partially closed. I knock gently and push it open. He’s in his recliner, hands folded on his lap, staring out the window at nothing in particular. For a moment, he doesn’t notice I’m there.

"Hey, Dad," I say softly.

He turns, and I see the moment his eyes try to place me. The slight frown as his brain works to fit this stranger into a file it can’t quite open.

"Hi there," he says, polite and distant. The way you greet someone you’re supposed to know but don’t quite. "Are you… Do I know you?"

The question lands hard against my chest. I sit down in the chair across from him and smile through the pain.

"I’m your daughter, Aria," I say gently.

He blinks for a second, and then when he opens his eyes, there’s something more familiar in them this time.

A smile starts to form on his lips. "Right, of course, Aria," he says, reaching out a hand. "I’m sorry, I—"