STONE by Theodora Taylor

Author:Theodora Taylor [Taylor, Theodora]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rom Tell That

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Luckily, he’s not there when I come out of the shower. He probably decided to get in a gym session before breakfast. He does that sometimes. Not just sometimes, usually, I note. He’s usually long gone by the time I wake up. Today was a fluke.

Stop hoping, Almonte, I chide myself. The pills change nothing. It will always, always be the same.

He eventually appears about an hour later, just as I’m feeding Garnet mashed plantains in her high chair and explaining to Cami and Talia that some of the many more presents that appeared under the Christmas tree after they went to bed last night are actually from Santa. Ho, ho, ho!

“I don’t believe in Santa. He doesn’t really make sense,” Talia tells me, eight going on eighty.

At the same time Cami asks, “Why would you do that? You shouldn’t have gotten us gifts.”

“Cami,” I answer, laughing. “Seriously, it’s no big deal.”

“Yes, it is a big deal,” Cami says her eyes flaring with conflicted pride. “You’ve already done too much for us. And there’s no way for us to ever pay you back.”

“Well, she likes doing too much for you, me and everybody else,” a voice says before I can respond. Stone enters the kitchen, dressed in the New York Knicks Christmas sweater, I put under the tree for him.

”You might as well get to opening all her gifts.” He drops two rectangular packages I didn’t wrap on the table in front of them, “Mine, too.”

The presents are beautifully wrapped in the kind of heavy gold paper, I only ever see in department stores and in the suggestion column on Etsy.

But Talia suspiciously eyes the gift, as if Stone’s set a radioactive bomb in front of her. “What do I have to do to open this?” she asks.

Dead silence.

And Aunt Mari shakes her head confused. “What do you mean what do you have to do, mija?” she asks her partner in watching telenovela crimes. “It’s a present. Haven’t you ever gotten a present before?”

Yes, she had. That was the problem. I curse myself in that moment for not anticipating this.

Presents must have been part of Talia’s grooming. A transactional exchange designed to get the little girl to do things she didn’t want to with her father.

Disgust fills my stomach as I realize how she must be interpreting Stone’s gift. One day I might feel some regret for helping Cami cover up that creep’s death after she killed him, but it isn’t today.

“Talia…” I start to say.

But Stone rolls right on over my carefully crafted response to tell her, “If you like it, say thank you. But other than that, you don’t owe me shit.”

I cringe at his still way-too-foul for children language.

But Talia begins to tentatively open the present, like she doesn’t quite believe Stone’s words. And her expression doesn’t change much when she sees the top-of-the-line tablet inside.

“I don’t want it,” she says, shoving it away.

“Talia!” Aunt Mari gasp. Then she lets loose with a stream of Spanish about ungrateful children.

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