Sasha looked at her father, who hadn’t said anything as usual. When he said, “Happy wife, happy life,” it was incredibly sinister, because the only thing that made her mother happy was keeping her children under her thumb. “We didn’t sign anything.”
He was right. Unlike the business loan that he’d given her, they hadn’t signed anything with respect to the house. And he wouldn’t put up a fight if her mother wanted to take the place away from her.
She looked around. She loved her home and the memories she’d made inside it. After college, she and Hannah had moved in and gone to work together at a big event-planning firm in the Loop. The place she’d grown up wasn’t home—this was.
“Coffee?” Sasha had to suppress a laugh at Patrick offering her parents coffee while wearing her pink robe and too-small pajama pants. Her parents looked shocked to see that he was still there. Sasha was so happy that he was.
“I don’t think I owe you an explanation, but the long and short of it is that Patrick and I are in love. He left the priesthood, and we’re together now.”
Her dad made some grumbling noise, took a sip of coffee, and then his mumbling became less disapproving.
“It’s a scandal.” Apparently, her mother wasn’t going to let this go. “I can’t let this happen. How will I explain this?”
Patrick had moved to her side, and Sasha leaned into him even though it made her mother’s nostrils flare. “I don’t care how you explain this.”
Right on cue, her mother ripped open the cabinet where Sasha kept liquor and pulled out a bottle of Bailey’s. Patrick squeezed her waist, and it was a good thing because Sasha felt like she was going to crumble. She looked up at him, and he must have seen something disturbing because his brow furrowed. He couldn’t comfort her now, though. They had to deal with her parents first.
“You barely even know Patrick. Just get to know him, and you’ll realize how good he is for me.”
Her mother, free pouring, said, “I don’t need to know any more. Last time I was here trying to prevent one of my children from ruining their life, he was a priest working as a part-time bartender. Now he’s your boyfriend?”
Boyfriend didn’t seem like the right word for what Patrick was. He was everything.
Her mother didn’t need to hear that, though. “Dad, can you do something? Why did you even come?”
“Your sister was concerned about you,” her father said. Thanks, Madison. So much for solidarity. “She said that if we were so concerned about how you were doing and why you were still unmarried, we should visit you ourselves.”
So, her sister hadn’t betrayed her; she’d just been rather careless. Forgivable. “Why do you two still live in the Dark Ages? I don’t have to get married, either.”
She glanced up at Patrick then, and he winced. They hadn’t really talked about getting married to each other. She didn’t know exactly how that worked for laicized priests. Apparently, fornication hadn’t been a big no-no for him, but she didn’t know how he felt about anything else. All of that would have to wait until she’d gotten rid of her parents.
“You’re shacked up with a priest.” Her mother pointed at Patrick, as though she needed to be reminded. “That’s something right out of The Borgias.”
“Believe you me, I’m tempted to do some poisoning right now.” Sasha looked pointedly at her mother’s coffee cup, which Moira put down immediately.
“Just coffee. Poison-free,” Patrick said with a smile.
Sasha looked over at her father again, and he seemed like he was trying very hard not to laugh. And then she caught the giggles but couldn’t stop herself. Soon, she and her father were both laughing out loud while Patrick and her mother stared at them in horror and bemusement, respectively.
“Well, I never.” Her mom was so pissed that it just made Sasha laugh harder. “Stephen, stop it this instant.”
Her father stopped on a dime, and Sasha was able to gather herself then.
“If you don’t end this immediately, then your father and I will have no choice but to cut you off,” her mother declared. “You’ll have fifteen days to vacate the premises, and we’ll have our accountant call on you to audit your books on the business.”
“Stop treating me like a business associate.” The fact that her mother had come up with this plan to excise her from their lives so quickly made Sasha feel as though she was being stabbed. Unlike the tiny wounds she’d sustained all her life from her mother’s barbs, these felt like great, gaping wounds. This was the thing that she’d spent most of her life trying to avoid. She felt hollow as tears formed in her eyes. She didn’t want to let them fall, but she wasn’t sure she could stop them. “You’re my family.”
Never had those words felt more untrue to her. Despite the fact that she’d been in therapy for literal years figuring out the ways her family had warped her and her worldview, she’d harbored some hope that they loved her and cared about her.
She’d chalked their controlling behavior and rigid standards up to wanting her to be happy. She’d thought that they’d just had no idea what would actually make her happy. Now that she’d figured it out—that being with Patrick would make her happy—she realized that they’d only ever cared about how things looked to outsiders. They would never care about whether she was content, only about whether her life made them look bad.
Stunned, she stared up at Patrick. His eyes were filled with anger and unshed tears. She felt as though she’d been torn open, and he was seeing all of her insides. At the same time, she felt like she didn’t have to walk on broken eggshells around her parents. She could stop the bleeding.
And she had to take a stand now because there was a question behind the righteous anger in Patrick’s gaze. He wasn’t sure that she was going to choose him over her family. She wasn’t sure where they would live or how her parents would try to fuck her business over, but she was sure about choosing him. She was sure about choosing love.
“Get out.”
Her mother rolled her eyes. “Don’t be difficult, Sasha. Just do what you’re told; say goodbye. We have brunch reservations.”
“I’m not going with you, and I’m not saying goodbye.” When she said that, she felt the tension melt out of Patrick’s body. “You can send accountants and kick me out of here. But if you do that, you know you’ll never see me again.”
“If family means that little to you—”
Sasha put her hand up. “You might be able to convince Marlena to cut me off, but that just means that she doesn’t want to be my family. And, if you don’t want to accept me as I am—imperfect, scandalous, insufficiently cowed into living under your stupid rules—then you’re not my family. That’s not what family does. It’s not what it means.”