Chapter 4

• What the hell?
• "Quit my job?" I went with, my voice a weird whisper-sound.
• "Yes. Quit your job. You work for me now."
• Okay. Alright. I took a deep breath, trying to calm my pounding pulse and the swirling feeling in my stomach. It was just a job. A bank job. It was nothing. True, I had worked there for a couple years and I had a lot of respect from my managers, but I could work at another bank at anytime. I could even save face by claiming a family emergency for the reason I had to quit. They knew nothing of my personal life because, well, who wanted to hire a bank employee who existed around huge sums of money when they had a shameless gambler as a close relative? If anything, my managers would probably be worried for me and tell me that they'd try to save my job for me when I sorted things out.
• I could live with that.
• "Okay. But... sublet my apartment and pack my things?" I pressed, always being the kind of person who clarified every small detail to the point of it almost seeming obsessive-compulsive and anal. But, what could I say? When you grew up with a man who would say things like 'I'm going to go out for a bit' and I didn't press for how long, I learned it meant that he would be gone for three days straight God-knew where doing God-knew what while I lied to my neighbors and told them he was sick with the flu so no one got the idea to call child services because I was home alone at eleven.
• To that, Mr. St. James sighed heavily like I was a slow child and lifted a brow at me. "You live here now. Enjoy your last night at your apartment, take the things with you that you absolutely need, things like: shampoo, soap, conditioner, razors, makeup, tampons, a small supply of clothes, indispensable mementos, and leave the shit you don't need: all your books and pictures and sheets and everything else you don't need to survive day-to-day, and then drive here tomorrow morning because you live here now. Is that clear enough for you?"
• It actually was. And, normally, I would have truly appreciated that fact. But, well, he was a complete douchebag so all I managed was to small-eye him and jerk my chin. "Yep."
• "Mack, spend the night with your daughter. It's the last time you will see her for a while. But not," he went on to add as I felt my heart constrict in my chest at the idea of not being able to see my father, "the last time you will see me."
• "You said..." I started to object, pulling my hand from my father's and moving closer to his desk, ready to pitch a holy shitfit if he was going to go back on his word.
• As if sensing my argument and having no patience for it, he held up a hand at me. "We have some things to discuss. I give my word that is all it is for now."
• "Yeah, well... I have no idea how much your word is worth," I snapped, crossing my arms over my chest.
• "It's worth everything," he said in a heavy tone, putting his hands wide on his desk and leaning slightly over it in a way that was so threatening that I had to fight to not take a step back. "Now if you're done acting like an impertinent child, I have business."
• Impertinent child?
• Impertinent child?
• "Let's go, Prue," my father said suddenly, his arm going around my waist as he forcibly turned me away from Byron St.James, knowing because he knew me like no other, that I was seconds from absolutely losing my mind. "We will talk, St. James," my father said, his back to the man in question as he led me toward the hall.
• Any time I tried to speak on the way out of the house to the car, my father actually shushed me. Shushed me. This was a man who was completely incapable of tolerating silence in any way. If he wasn't waxing on and on about something or another, doing so with so much enthusiasm and flourish that you were incapable of being angry about him interrupting whatever you had previously been doing, he was singing loudly to music; if he wasn't doing that, he was reaching for your hand and asking you about your day, about your life, about your hopes and dreams, about your fears... and listening. When Mack Marlow's attention was on you, it was on you and you felt like the most important person in the world.
• Quiet was never something that was afforded me when I was in my father's presence.
• So him shushing me, yeah, that was a giant, blinking, neon warning sign to shut the hell up.
• So I did.
• Until we got into the car.
• Until we got out of the driveway.
• Until we got across town to almost the Atlantic City limits where my apartment was.
• Until we climbed the stairs to my apartment and closed ourselves inside.
• Then and only then did he finally speak.
• "We need to go. Now," he snapped, moving around my apartment, grabbing various items into his arms as he went.
• "Dad... what are you doing?"
• "Mexico. Canada. The islands. Europe. God damn Ukraine. I don't give a damn, but we have to get the hell out of this country right now, Dear Prudence," he said, grabbing my picture off my bookshelf of the time he took me to Disney and we posed with Belle who was, as anyone with a brain knew, the best Disney princess.