Taking the Blame

“You can’t sell my things! I won’t ever allow that…” my mother countered as her face transformed into a mask of shock.

“We don’t have any other choice. Stop acting so selfish!” my father screamed back.

“Me? Selfish? How can you blame this on me when you’re the one at fault!” she shouted back while pointing her index finger at her husband accusingly.

“Contact your brother or someone from your family. I’m sure they have some money to lend us,” my father suggested.

“Stop! I won’t let you embarrass me any further. This is already bad enough for me…” my mother said through gritted teeth.

I had never seen her so openly angry before and she never spoke this way to my father. Normally, she was obedient toward him, and it seemed like the only person in our family whom she would direct harsh words toward was me. I felt my sister’s arms around my waist as she hugged me close. That was when I realized that I was scared of what was happening and also about what was going to happen to us in the future.

My mother suddenly walked past us toward the large wooden worktable located at one end of the room. She was soon rummaging through some papers inside a drawer until she found the pile of papers that she had been looking for. Mother stomped back toward Father and basically threw the papers into his face.

“What on earth is wrong with you?!” he yelled as he swatted the papers away from his face.

“Do you truly think that I know nothing at all about all your debt and your gambling addiction? Look at all these papers demanding for payment and look at all this interest! No wonder people have been giving me looks and whispering behind my back every single time I go out to events. You know, just the other day Lady Hammoth just asked me when you will repay the debt that you owe to her husband. Can you even begin to imagine how embarrassed I was? I didn’t even know what kind of face I was supposed to make!” My mother spoke so fast before she ended up shrieking.

After that episode, my mother started sobbing and then she began wailing loudly. Instead of comforting his wife, my father grabbed the lamp from the nearby table and threw it hard onto the floor. Dina let out a scream and hugged me even tighter than before. By then she had started crying while I was too scared to tear my eyes away from the scene unfolding in front of me and my feet felt glued to the spot.

“Please follow me this way…”

I turned to see a very distressed-looking Lauren, one of our housekeepers, approaching us. Without saying any more, she ushered us out of the room. When I glanced back at our parents, they were still too focused on arguing with each other to pay attention to either my sister or me.

Although my parents never got a divorce that day and remained married up until this day, it was like their marriage came to an end from that moment on. Phillip, the leader of the Alnault family could no longer keep the family afloat, and blaming Catherine, his wife was the only thing that he could do. Funny enough, I could tell that my mother also blamed my father and never felt an ounce of regret for her actions. To her, she was just playing the role that she was supposed to play.

Around a week after that, my parents announced to us that the Vulkan family had expressed interest in engaging their only son to my sister. Less than two weeks later, a contract was drawn up and signed by the head of both families that finalized the engagement between Dina and Anthony. After that, money was no longer an issue for our family and the Vulkan family got full access to our aristocratic connections and all that came with it.

…

“Do you know why we called you back here?” my father asked curtly.

“To find Diana…” I replied in short.

“Do you honestly have no idea where she is? Is this happening because she is stressed about her upcoming wedding? Is that it?” my mother asked and for the first time in a long while, I could sense genuine worry in her tone.

“I honestly have no idea where she is. I mean, I wasn’t even here in the same country as her so how am I supposed to know?” I replied with a careless shrug of my shoulders.

“Always talking back with that disrespectful attitude. I guess after all this time, you still haven’t learned any manners…” my mother hissed through clenched teeth.

“I don’t know where Diana is,” I stated factually while deciding to ignore her words of disapproval.

“All your life, you’ve been a failure and a bad influence on your sister. You always get her in trouble and convince her to do the most outrageous things. Just how many times have you put your sister at risk? What about this time? Did you convince her to run away from her wedding as well?” my father asked with narrowed eyes.

“I have no idea what you’re going on about,” I replied emotionlessly.

I had no idea how many times I’d been through a conversation like this with them. They both had a habit of putting the blame on me instead of their poor parenting whenever my sister misbehaved or when something unfortunate happened to her. When I was younger, I felt so unloved, and that the world was so cruel and unfair to me. As the years passed, my skin naturally got thicker and my mind and heart more resilient. Every word felt like a slap to my numb face because it didn’t hurt, not anymore.

“You will have to take responsibility for this! If you can’t find your sister and make sure that she turns up to the wedding, I’m going to make sure that you take responsibility for it!” my father yelled at me at the top of his lungs.

--To be continued…