Chapter Thirty-Nine: Bitter

“No.”

I answer without much thought as to what that kind of money will do for me.

“You have a family, two daughters; how can you not give them that after they lose their breadwinner.”

“You are soft, you are pathetically soft; if I gave Veronica that chance, she would have leapt on it! She has a good sense of when to say yes.”

My father spits.

“Yes, she does; hence, she knew when to say ‘no’ to you.”

“Didn’t I teach you enough?"

He asks pointedly, with a disapproving frown on his face.

When I don’t answer, his hands fly to his waist, and he looks up at the bright sky that seems to have dark clouds gathering.

“When I was in the hospital, they said that the medicine would have worked had there not been traces of arsenic in my blood. Arsenic.”

He repeats with a laugh.

“That bitch has been poisoning me.”

“Pity is not something I can feel for you; you know that, right?”

I ask.

He has shared too much with me for me to give a proper reaction. My father, the cause of my nightmares, is going to