by A. M. Kusi
“Father, Mother, Liam, this is Ethan Appiah, my boyfriend. Ethan, this is my family.”
Liam stood and held out his hand to Ethan. “Nice to meet the man who has kept my sister’s attention for a length of time.” Liam smiled at her as he said it. It was a glimpse of the good-natured, teasing older brother shining through as the stoic businessman mask he wore slipped momentarily. Joy bubbled inside her that even her brother could see Ethan was special.
“Liam!” her mother snapped.
Isa motioned for Ethan to take a seat next to her when her father made no attempt to shake his hand.
“This is your boyfriend?” her father asked, his face grim.
“Yes.”
“What is it you do?” her mother asked.
“I’m a high school science teacher,” Ethan answered as the servants came in and placed a plate of soup in front of everyone as her family ignored his answer.
“Have you heard from Griffin?” her mother asked her as Ethan’s posture stiffened.
“He’s on a business trip. He said he would let me know about the galleries when he was back.”
Ethan’s white button-up shirt fit perfectly around his muscled torso. He wore a blue tie that matched his navy dress pants. He looked handsome, and she loved him for putting up with the awkward conversation and judgmental looks from her family.
“Do you like teaching?” Liam asked.
Her father’s grip tightened around his cutlery as he stared between Ethan and her.
“I love it,” Ethan answered.
“How did you two meet?” Liam asked, driving the conversation.
Isa smiled at Ethan, trying to set him at ease. “You tell this one.”
Ethan nodded. “We have mutual friends who got married at the beautiful Orchard Inn in Vermont.”
Isa focused on her father’s reddening face. Surely he wouldn’t blow up in front of a guest.
A survival skill of living with two alcoholics was learning how to read people’s emotions well. She knew from years of walking on eggshells that her father was approaching his limits.
Her mother reached her hand out as if to soothe her father’s building rage. “Dan,” she said, almost too low for Isa to hear.
Her father jerked his hand away. “I can’t do this,” he said, slamming his hands onto the table.
Isa turned to face him as she laid her hand to rest on Ethan’s thigh comfortingly. “What can’t you do?” she asked, feeling emboldened by Ethan’s presence.
Daniel stared hard at Ethan, who didn’t flinch under her father’s scrutiny. Ignoring Isa, he asked, “You said your last name is Appiah?”
“Yes,” Ethan answered.
“Yes, sir,” Daniel said haughtily.
“Father,” Isa warned.
“I never thought I would see the day. I thought you were smarter than this, Isa. I guess you’re just like your mother: good for nothing.”
Isa felt Ethan’s body clench. He spoke as if it was taking everything for him to restrain himself. “Isa is an amazing woman.”
“I’m sure you think so. You’re trading up, aren’t you?” Daniel smiled smugly.
Isa’s head snapped to her father as she stood. It was one thing for her father to tear her down, but to speak against her love who was a million times the man her father would ever be was where she drew the line. “How dare you!”
“How dare I? How dare you! You think it’s okay for a daughter of mine to be slumming it with a thug because you want to act out?”
“I—I don’t even know what to say to you right now.”
Ethan stood, placing his hand around the small of her back. She could picture his strength seeping from his body into hers.
“Get your filthy hands off her,” Daniel said, standing.
Liam and her mother just looked between them.
“We’re leaving,” Isa said, taking Ethan’s hand as he led her towards the door.
“You leave this house and I will disinherit you. You won’t see another dime. You will be on your own forever.” Her father’s voice boomed and echoed in the large dining room.
Chapter 27
Ethan stopped, pulling her against him outside the door to the dining room.
“What are you doing?” she asked, confused.
“You can’t make this rash decision in the heat of the moment. You said you were not ready to walk out on your father not too long ago. I can’t have you do this for me. You have to do it for you,” Ethan said in her ear.
“But he can’t talk to you like that. He can’t treat you like that. I love you.” Her own rage bubbled to the surface as tears burned her eyes.
“I love you too. But I can’t be the reason you leave. You have to walk away for yourself. I need you to make sure you’re as angry about how he speaks to you as you are about how he did to me. You will resent me if you don’t. You would have to give up your life for me.” He held her face in his palm, his thumb brushing her cheek lightly. “I’m going to get out of here so that you don’t have to make this rash decision right now. And hopefully that will take some of the heat off you when you go back in there. Will you be okay getting a ride home if I do?” he asked, leaning down and kissing her. She saw forgiveness in his eyes. Did he really think she would choose that monster over him?
Isa nodded. “You’re my life,” she admitted, realizing the statement’s truth as she spoke from her heart.
“Get out of my fucking house!” Daniel yelled.
The room spun. Ethan was telling her to stay. He was leaving her at her parents’. Her father was a horrible human being; she saw that. The way he treated Ethan had been the last straw.
“I’ll see you later,” he promised and turned to walk away.
Isa’s body shook with rage, confusion, and a nervous ball of anxiety. Her chest tightened, making it hard to breathe. The rug had just been pulled from under her. The wool had fallen from her eyes in the same instant.
She turned and went back to the dining room to face her father’s smug smile. Isa clenched her fists so tightly her nails broke the skin of her palms. She welcomed the pain. It kept her in her body, grounded her. Tears pricked her eyes as she took a ragged, shaky breath.
It all came to a head. Every memory of her father putting her down. Every moment her mother chose her abusive, cheating husband over her children. Every time her father pit her against her brother. The way he’d looked at Ethan as if he was the scum of the earth. The way he’d dared speak to her love like he was anything less than perfection.
“Looks like she does have a little sense,” her father said before taking a swig of the amber liquid in his glass.
“I’m done,” she said, her voice shaking with each syllable as she spoke the words that roiled in her stomach and itched under her skin, fighting to be heard.
“Good. You need to find a better man who your family can be proud of,” her father said.
“You’re the last person I will take advice from about who I share my life with,” she snapped, growing in confidence.
Her father’s glare turned to ice. His dark blue eyes sent darts of disapproval towards her as his pinched face reddened with a fury she hadn’t seen before. He wasn’t used to people talking back to him, much less his daughter.
“Darling, let’s be reasonable. What can this man offer you?” Her mother tried to play peacemaker as usual.
“That man will offer me something you never had: pure and real love.”
Both her father and mother laughed while Liam turned to look at her, his expression showing sympathy.
“I’m so fucking done with you. You are a monster. A horrible human being. You are not half the man Ethan is.”
“You are dead to me,” her father snarled. “You hear me? Dead!”
“I don’t care anymore,” she said.
“You little ungrateful bitch. I gave you everything you could ever want and this is how you repay me?”
Isa met his violent stare. “You gave me everything except what I truly needed and wanted. I don’t owe you a goddamned thing. A parent is supposed to love and provide for their children. You don’t give and hold it over their head like they owe you. You chose to have me. I don’t owe you shit.”
She saw Liam give her a slight nod, like she’d just earned his respect.
Isa turned and walked out the front door on shaking legs. Her knees wobbled, her body trembling with adrenaline. Her father screamed after her, but she didn’t hear his words. She was done caring what he thought about her. Standing up to him was the most terrifying and freeing thing she had ever done in her life.
Isa walked past the gate. Ethan had already left. She pulled out her phone and ordered herself an Uber. The driver showed up a minute later and she let out the breath she hadn’t known she was holding.
She couldn’t believe she’d just done that. She’d told her father off. She was now disowned and penniless, and she couldn’t be happier.
***
Ethan parked in his parents’ driveway, hoping he’d done the right thing. He knew Isa loved him, but to give up her family and her usual level of comfort for him was more than he could ever ask of her. He walked into his parents’ house, defeated. His mother came to greet him first.
“That was quick,” she said, eyeing him warily.
“Where are the kids?” he asked.
“Max is napping and Joy is watching something with your father in the living room . . . What happened?”
He rubbed his face and stepped into the kitchen before taking a seat by the bar. His mother followed and stood across from him.
“Her father told her if she left with me, they would disown her. We didn’t even make it through lunch.”
His mother sighed. Her eyes glistened and her brow furrowed as she spoke. “I know you care deeply about this girl. Maybe I should have told you sooner, before you developed these feelings. I figured it would work its way out naturally.”
“Told me what?”
She placed her hand on his and took a deep breath. The struggle was written on the lines of her face. A pit grew in his stomach. He knew that look.
Bad news was on the horizon.
***
Ethan wasn’t home yet, so Isa waited on the front porch with her coat wrapped tightly around her. The crisp wind blew the few leaves left that were not weighed down by the light dusting of snow. She had a key, but she preferred to sit out here, the fresh air grounding her.
Her breath burst like a puff of cloud from her mouth in the cold air, replaying everything she’d said to her parents. Isa had really done it. She had stood up to them and walked away from every comfort she had known. She knew Ethan would be her safety net. Regardless, she would need to find a job.
His car pulled into the drive and excitement fluttered in her belly. She wanted so much to be in his arms and have him tell her it would all be okay, that they would get through this together.
He got out of the car without looking her way. He unbuckled Joy first, and she came running over to Isa.
“Isa! I made fufu with Nana today!”
“Oh, that sounds fun.” She smiled, not having any clue what the little girl meant.
Ethan walked up to them hesitantly with Max in his arms. “Hey.”
He wouldn’t look her in the eye. Did he really think she would choose her family over him?
“Hi, guys,” Isa said.
Ethan unlocked the door and let everyone in. She helped Joy hang her coat and stack her boots before removing her own. Joy grabbed the iPad and started playing one of her games. Max walked on wobbly chunky legs from one end of the sectioned-off play area to the other.
Ethan went to the fridge for a beer. She glanced at the clock, it was only one in the afternoon. Isa walked over to him and wrapped her arms around him. She infused her embrace with every bit of love and appreciation she had for him, hoping he would absorb it through osmosis. Ethan’s body was stiff, though he wrapped his arm around her and rested his chin on her head.
Isa pulled back to look at him and he dropped his arm. “What’s wrong?” she asked, seeing turmoil in his eyes.
“I need some time to think about what all of this means, especially now that I have more than just me to think about. My family’s approval is important in my culture. The kids, their futures, they are my priority,” he said, looking past her, sounding as if he was talking more to himself than to her.
“I know they are. They should be.”
“You can’t do that for me. You can’t give up everything for me.”
“What?” she asked, trying to understand why he, of all people, was pulling away from her. She wasn’t her father.
“There’s something else,” he said before draining the rest of his beer and setting it on the counter.
“What do you mean?” Her stomach twisted. She was instinctively afraid of his answer. Was he going to tell her he didn’t love her anymore? That Sarah fit into his plans and his family better than she ever would?
“Do you remember what happened to my parents when they first immigrated here?” he asked, his voice trembling slightly.
“Yes.”
“The company they worked for was Crown Shipping.”
Isa took a step back.
“Your father was the man who made sexual advances on my mother.”
The breath was sucked from her lungs as her guts knotted.
“He was the one who blacklisted my father when she wouldn’t give in to his demands.” His voice dripped with righteous anger. His jaw tensed and his hands clenched by his sides.
She knew her father was a horrible human being, but this? Ethan’s family would never accept her. They had been doomed from the start.
Tears stung her eyes as she processed what this meant. Her stomach roiled at the thought of her father victimizing Esther. It was no wonder she was taken aback when Isa had said who her parents were. She had rubbed salt into an old wound and not even known it.
There was no way that this honest man would ever be able to choose her over his family. He’d made it clear from the beginning his family’s approval and support was everything to him.
“I don’t know what to say except that I am so sorry . . . for everything. I had no idea he was . . . I had seen the way he treated women and people of color before, but I guess because it didn’t directly affect me, I didn’t pay attention. I know that sounds horrible,” she admitted. Her heart was breaking, splintering into a million jagged pieces. The pain of loving Ethan was outdone by the sheer torture of knowing she was losing him.
“I just need some time to think about this. I think we need a break. Maybe when you get back from Europe we can talk,” he suggested.
A break. Maybe we can talk. He was breaking up with her. The floor disappeared, ripped out from under her, and she fell into a tailspin of heartache and chaos.
It was over, just like that. It didn’t matter how hard she had tried; in the end, it never worked out. She would never love again. She would have done anything to make this work, but he didn’t even want to. He’d given up on them.
He was right about one thing; these kids were his priority. He needed his family’s support raising them. She was replaceable. However, she also knew that he was a man of honor. He wouldn’t ever forgive himself if he knew she had already walked away from her family with nothing. Sweet Ethan, always wanting to do the right thing. He would betray his better judgement and stay by her, giving her a place to land.
She wouldn’t do that to him. As much as she was angry about the situation, she wanted him to be happy. She only had love for him, and hatred at the situation. Anger and understanding.
His family had lost their daughter and son-in-
law, been blackmailed by her father, and forced to give up everything. If she needed to pay for the sins of her father in order to bring this family some peace, then so be it.
He walked forward and wiped the tears that she hadn’t realized had begun to fall. She had to hold it together until she got home. Reminding her heart that home was no longer here, no longer Ethan, brought an emptiness to her pain. Right now, the kids and Ethan needed her to be strong and walk away.
Her body craved more of his touch. Just one more kiss. One more breath. One more night. Her self-control had its limits. She leaned into his hard chest, hoping he wouldn’t reject and refuse her this last thing. She sighed when his arms wrapped tightly around her, and she inhaled his scent. Isa squeezed him against herself. This would be the last time. She was saying goodbye.
Her tomorrows had come to an end.
Chapter 28
Ethan had changed her life for the better in so many ways. As much as it hurt, she would never regret it or stop loving him. But she had to find a way to live without him because they could not be together. Their families were pulling them apart. Hers had damaged his irrevocably. Now Ethan was ending things between them like everything that happened between them didn’t mean as much as she had thought—as if he wished they could rewind time and never run in to this.
She pulled away. Anger and rejection kicked in, mixed with the need to push him as far from her as possible. She knew he would be free from any sense of duty to her if she did this. She reminded herself that he had rejected her first. He’d called it quits first.
He winced. “Isa—”
She could tell he was holding back, unspoken questions written in the hard lines and shadows of his face. Memories shone in those obsidian eyes. Hope died and was reborn as regret.
“I get it. Truly, I do. I’m going to go grab my things.” She went upstairs, the bed they’d shared for the better part of the last two months taunting her with memories. Ethan’s scent lingered in the air.
