Chapter 4

At first, the thought was just a faint idea, but with each slap, it became stronger and clearer.

I blamed everything on Scarlett.

I blamed her, even though she screamed and tried to stop my dad when he burst into my room, dragged me out of bed, and threw me on the floor.

In a panic, she grabbed his arm and tried to stop him. She even stepped in front of me a few times, only for him to shove her aside.

Her white nightgown smelled nice, and it made her face look even paler.

She shook as she raised her arm to stop my dad and repeatedly tried to defend me and plead for me. She was so nervous that she almost bit her tongue.

“No, no… don’t hit her, maybe I made a mistake…”

She tried to say nice things about me, even though we had barely spent any time together.

“Pearl is a good girl. She’s very polite. She even helped me with the dishes. She’s been doing her homework. She probably just wanted a break. Maybe she wasn’t playing on her phone.”

I watched her, and her fake concern made me sick.

My stomach twisted, and I started to gag.

I still blamed everything on her.

So, one night, I took the 20,000 dollars my dad had locked in the drawer and put it in her coat pocket.

My dad was a downright working-class person.

He liked to smoke, drink, gamble, and take his anger out on me.

Since he could not hit anyone else, he hit me.

Even at his age, he did not have a stable job. He just took whatever work he could find.

Sometimes, he fixed pipes; other times, he worked at construction sites.

He earned money only when he worked.

After divorcing my mom, he had been looking for a decent woman to settle down with for the rest of his life.

The first time I met Scarlett was when my dad forced me to go to a dinner with him.

He forced me there because she liked kids, especially girls.

He treated me like a gift to her.

However, I was quiet and boring, so Scarlett did not spare my dad a glance because of me.

She sat next to my godfather and often served him food, but he ignored her. She kept trying, though.

Not long after, my godfather died in an accident. He got drunk, fell off a ladder, and badly injured his head.

It happened in a corner of an alley. He lay there from 2 a.m. until 7 a.m. when a janitor found him and called an ambulance.

The doctors said he was brain-dead and that even if he survived, he would have been in a coma.

His wife quickly decided to turn off the life support.

At his funeral, there were no tears. People just sighed and looked numb.

I only looked at him from a distance. I saw someone put a coin in his mouth.

My dad said it was to stop him from talking after death.

My dad did not show much emotion about his friend’s death, even though they were as close as siblings. He just said, “He would be a burden to his family if he were alive.”

Scarlett did not go to the funeral. She just sent a condolence gift through my dad.

Looking back, I guessed she knew she was not welcome, or maybe she felt that after my godfather died, he no longer had any value to her.