Hidden hurt

“Jerry…what…what’s this about?”

“You’ve got some nerve,” he said, pushing past her to enter the living room. Behind him, four other men entered. They all did their best to avoid making eye contact with the woman despite having let themselves into her home. 

“Who are these people?”

“The movers. Get the books off the second and third shelves,” he said.

“Honey, I—”

“Don’t call me that,” he said, snapping despite the lack of necessity for such hostility. “You don’t get to call me that, not after what you’ve done.”

“Daddy,” Valerie tried, too cautious this time to reach out for him. “Where are you going?”

The man gritted his teeth. “I’m not your father, despite what your whore of a mother’s led you to believe—the things in the third bedroom from the stairs, too, men. I want the nightstand, the dresser—leave the bed. That slut’s done too many things on there while I was at work. She can keep that for the next time she runs into