he snapped again, clenching his fist and pounding the table.
“I’m asking you—whose fault is it?” he went on. Katie, caught between fear and a rising need to push back, answered before her mother could. “Not hers.”
The man slowly turned his stare on the girl and ground his teeth. A few grains of rice slipped from the corner of his mouth and dropped back into his plate. “And who cooked this?” he asked with a sneer.
Katie instantly understood where this was going. He was going to blame her mother no matter what. “I did, Frank,” her mother said quickly, trying to draw the fire away from her daughter. “See?” he said, triumphant, shoveling another spoonful into his mouth.
“If cooking’s your job, then you answer for what’s on the table. Not your freeloading kid. You.”
He had spent years perfecting that style of argument. In his version of the world, everyone else was the problem and he was the one being wronged. That kind of hypocrisy made Katie’s blood boil.
Sometimes she was angry at her mother too—angry that she kept shrinking herself for a man who had long since stopped acting like a decent human being. Sober, Frank was bitter and always looking for someone to blame. After a few drinks, blame turned into punishment.
It was awful to watch, and worse to live with. Katie understood that her mother’s marriage had come out of desperation more than love.
Years earlier, a boyfriend had left her mother pregnant, with a two-year-old son from a previous relationship, no money, and nowhere to go. Back then, Frank had seemed generous. He took Susan in, along with little Ben and the baby she was carrying. Katie had never met her biological father, but she knew her stepfather well enough. She had spent all seventeen years of her life under the same roof with him.
She had watched him decline year by year, growing harsher, angrier, and more dangerous. More than once, she had begged her mother to leave him. But Susan never found the nerve. She was terrified she couldn’t survive with two kids on her own, and no argument ever got through to her.
Even now, with Ben in the service and Katie finishing her senior year, there was nothing really stopping them from getting out. But Susan refused to make a move. Years of fear and humiliation had turned her into a woman who no longer trusted her own judgment.
She would do anything to keep the peace, even though peace in that house never lasted. Katie had made herself a promise: once she got her diploma, she was leaving for the city. She’d find work, get settled, and come back for her mother.
If she had to drag her out, she would. Katie was determined to get her away from the man who saw himself as a victim of the world. Frank worked at the local heating plant, a hard job, sure—but hard work wasn’t what had made him this way. Katie suspected the roots went much deeper, back into his own childhood and the example set by a controlling father.
Over time, Frank had simply become the man who raised him. Susan often said that in the beginning he had been different. He had been attentive, helpful, good with little Ben, and surprisingly tender with baby Katie…
