Shame clouded around her. “No, I’m not that.”
“I’ll bet you aren’t even going to that church we picked out for you while you were in college, are you? The minister started calling us after your first year, asking why you weren’t in church and why you hadn’t made a pledge for that year.”
Everything was wrong. Colleen’s shoulders hunched as the weight of her father’s words settled on her. “I didn’t like that church.”
“If you hadn’t stopped going to church, maybe you wouldn’t be such a slut that I walk in and find a man has been sleeping with you in your apartment overnight. Are you still a virgin? Are you still a virgin before God? Where’s your purity ring? I paid forty dollars for that. Where is the purity ring that I gave you when you pledged your virginity to me until I gave you in holy matrimony to your husband?”
Words and ideas and vows jumbled up in Colleen’s head, and what had seemed like good arguments now wouldn’t organize themselves in her mind. She muttered, “Virginity is a construct. A man’s penis doesn’t have the power to change who I am or what I’m worth as a person.”
But she didn’t say it very loudly, and she didn’t think her father had heard her because his voice rose as he pointed at Tristan. “I can’t believe that I come here and you have fallen so far that you have a man in your apartment. Pack up your things. You’ve proven that you can’t handle life away from home. Your mother was right all along when she said you shouldn’t go off to college. She said that if you left home, you’d turn into an embarrassment for the family. And look at this place. You’re living in a hole with a mattress on the floor. You have nothing, and you’ve done nothing with your life. You need to come home with me. We’ll get you straightened out.”
Colleen’s hands cramped from hanging onto each other so tightly. When she looked at the situation through her father’s eyes and saw her tiny apartment and Tristan sitting on her bed because they’d woken up together, she was a failure and a disgrace. She’d rejected everything that was important to her family and thrown it back in their faces.
Her father continued, “You’re a disappointment. I always knew you wouldn’t be able to get along by yourself. You need to come home because we have provided for you with the feed store. If you come home with me now and apologize to everyone you’ve wronged—me, your mother, your brothers, and Pastor Williams—then you can take over running the feed store for us so your mother and I can retire.”
Colleen had heard his words dozens of times in different orders and different contexts, and her future closed around her and clicked shut.
He said, “It’s a good thing your mother and I are going to provide for you, what with running the feed store for us, and you can live in our house and take care of us as we get older. I mean, look at you. You’re worthless.”
“Are you going to pay me to run your store?” she asked.
“Well, no. You can live with us, and we’ll give you an allowance or something.”
Colleen whispered, “And after you’re with Jesus, after I run the store and take care of you, are you going to leave me the feed store and the house?”
“Of course not,” he scoffed. “We couldn’t cheat your brothers out of their inheritance. That wouldn’t be fair.”
They were going to take everything away from her again, everything that she’d tried to do in her life, and then they were going to leave her with nothing and throw her away.
Not that she had done much with her life. She’d managed to go to college until they wouldn’t give her access to their tax information for her FAFSA federal student aid form anymore, so she couldn’t get tuition loans for her last two years.
But even after that, she’d managed to take care of herself, make the payments on the loans, and pay her bills.
And she’d built a tiny community of friends online and in town who seemed to give a damn about her, even after she’d dropped out of college.
She’d helped people, saving the minnows in the Sherwood Forest forums from the predatory Killer Whales who would cheat them out of their life savings.
And then there was Tristan, who was sitting in the snarled sheets of her bed with his arm resting on one knee, watching her. His blue tee-shirt was a few shades grayer than his eyes. His fist clenched, and the corded muscles in his forearm bulged. His other hand held onto her sheets as if he would otherwise have leaped to his feet. His gaze was steady, and he wasn’t smiling.
Her father continued to rant, his tone becoming harsher. “Hurry up and get your things together. You were always so slow to get going. I can’t believe we’ve been so patient with you. You’re an idiot. You’ve always been a clumsy idiot. Now quit being a dumbass and do the right thing for once in your life.”
Tristan’s jaw bulged, and he didn’t look away from her eyes as if he were trying to pour his restrained strength into her. He said very quietly, “Say the word, and I’ll jump in.”
Colleen’s father was pacing as he snarled his words. “I said get your shit together and get your worthless ass in my truck.”
“No,” Colleen whispered.
Her father spun and glared at her. “What did you say to me?”
Colleen continued to stare into the blue fire of Tristan’s eyes. He wouldn’t let her speak that way about herself, and her father shouldn’t be doing it either. No one should.
She swallowed hard and lifted her head to look at her father. “I said no. I’m not packing up, and I’m not going with you. I’m staying here. And stop calling me an idiot. I’m not an idiot. No one should call me an idiot, not even you.”
“You have nothing here. Look at this shithole.”
“I’m making a life for myself. I managed to go to college until you sabotaged me so I couldn’t get any more student loans because you wanted me to come home and work for you for nothing. I’m not your cow to milk or chop up into beef. I’m not your bags of grain, or saddles, or baby chicks to sell, and I’m not your inventory to put on a shelf or put on sale or use me up and throw me away. I’m me. I’m mine. I belong to me, and you can’t take that away from me and use it up or sell it to someone else. You never owned me, which means you never had the right to throw me away.”
“We didn’t throw you away. You ran away.”
“You wanted to use me up and throw me out.”
“You still can’t get those Pell Grants and loans to go to college without us. You’re stuck here like this, or you’re stuck with us.”
Colleen shook her head. “In six months, I’ll have lived on my own long enough that I won’t need your tax information anymore for the FAFSA form. I’ll fill it out by myself next year with just my numbers, and I’ll get grants and loans and enroll in college again in the fall.”
He sneered, “Are you going to get yourself deeper in debt and keep throwing good money after bad to go to college? A college education isn’t even worth anything these days.”
Last night, Tristan had slept curled around her, his warmth permeating her down to her heart. Her body was still warm from his. “It is. It’s worth a lot. It’s just that more women than men are enrolling in college now, so people like you are devaluing it because it’s not just for men anymore.”