40 Selfish Daughter
Fiona ignored her mother’s painful grunts for help, choosing rather to sit and stew in her own
Sorrow.
The woman should just die, and stop stressing me. She thought, as she tore another tissue and wiped her running nose.
When Ewan dismissed her earlier in the hospital, she had thought it a joke, she had thought she was dreaming.
She had pinched herself to awaken from the nightmare, yet she had retained the same position, had remained in the reality where Ewan shunned her.
It had never happened before!
He had never shunned her that way in public!
He had even annulled their engagement!
That one tore at Fiona’s heart the most.
An engagement she had waited for, sought for, killed for, and now sh
Ewan himself?
No! She couldn’t take it!
Ewan couldn’t do this to her, not after her many labours!
She wouldn’t accept his decision! She just couldn’t, no matter what!
Fiona stood up from the sitting room sofa and started pacing.
How could she avert this? How could she change Ewan’s mind?
The more she thought about it, the more apprehensive she became.
was being cut away by
So when her mother’s grunt for help came again, she paused and glared at the staircase leading to the upper room where her mother was kept.
Just die, woman!
Fiona was glad that her father wasn’t around.
She didn’t know where he had gone, abadoning his precious wife, and she didn’t really care.
If he had been around when Sandro had dumped her rudely at the front porch, he would have raised a storm.
Not that Sandro would have cared…
Sandro was another person she had added to her list to deal with it, when she finally became
Ewan’s wife, but the dream too had fallen like a pack of cards.
Fiona shook her head. Her story just couldn’t end like that. No, something had to be done.
40 Selfish Daughter:
Right then, she heard the sound of her father’s car coming into the compound.
Quickly, she opened the front door a little, left it like that, and hurried upstairs to her mother’s
room.
In the
dimly lit room where her mother was kept, she held back a hiss of disgust as she saw her mother writhing on the bed like a wounded snake.
When her mother saw her however, the woman stopped writhing and smiled widely, and a tear escaped from her right eye.
“You… finally… visited… me?”
Fiona nodded meekly. “I heard your painful sounds. Do you need anything?”
She held back from vomiting the next second, when she saw discolored spittle dripping from the right corner of her mother’s mouth, which was temporarily misshapened by the disease.
The woman’s face was like an ugly artwork filled with gray patches; and she was as skeleton- there was not a single flesh on her body.
Fiona couldn’t wait to leave.
“I…” The woman couldn’t speak again.
She pointed, with a shaking finger, at the cabinet where the drugs were kept.
Fiona hurried over to the cabinet, hearing her father’s footsteps.
She wanted to be in her father’s good books, before delivering the bad news to him.
However, when she opened the cabinet, and saw the drugs, she almost fainted out of fright.
The drugs in the cabinet was similar to the one her father had taken yesterday!
Fiona’s hand clasped her cloth tightly, around her chest region.
Her father had the discase?
Does it mean she has it too?
Fiona shook her head. She couldn’t believe what she was s
secing.
Her hands shook as she collected the medicines.
When she turned, she noticed her father watching her.
She hadn’t even heard him come in, nor had she heard the door’s sound.
The sadness in his eyes told her that he knew of her knowledge about his sickness.
“I’ll fight it.”
Fiona started crying again.
If her father died, how would she survive?
How would she take revenge on Athena?
No, he couldn’t die yet!
40 Selfish Daughter
Alfonso sighed weakly, hearing his daughter’s almost silent sobs.
He walked up to her, and hugged her….
Or rather he tried, but Fiona backed away.
“How is it that you both have the disease? Is it contagious?”
Alfonso, slightly peeved that his only child had treated him like a plague, said nothing at first.
He said nothing until his wife grunted a response.
Fiona didn’t understand it, but seeing her father breathe out harshly then, she knew he understood what her mother had just said.
Did the
e come with a seperate language for those it afflicted?
“We are not actually sure. They claim it isn’t contagious, but I’ve seen people get it by means of contact. You need to return to your house. Only come here when Athena arrives…”
This brought Fiona back to her problem.
“There’s a problem, Dad.”
Alfonso’s heart fell. Had Athena refused to treat them?
His hands quaked, and he stared at his wife in utmost sorrow.
When he noted his wife weeping silently, only evident by the tears streaming past her eyes, he hurried to her side.
“I’ll beg her, my love. I’ll kneel if I have to…”
Fiona balled her fists, hearing her father’s words which she thought was pathetic.
Athena has caused this. She thought, walking to the door.
The whore had made her father be like a dog.
Before she left though, her father called her back.
“Where are you going? You haven’t told me the problem?”
For a second, Fiona thought of running away without giving her father an answer.
She knew how he might react to the news, and she wasn’t exactly in the mood for his tantrums. But she needed his help….
“Ewan cancelled the engagement. Sandro dropped me off with my bags some minutes ago.”
Pin–drop silence echoed in the room.
Alfonso, who had sat on his wife’s bed to console her, stood up and walked to Fiona, in confusion.
Fiona took two steps back, in fear.
Her mother grunted again. And she wondered what the woman was talking about. When she saw calmness descend on her father’s face, she concluded the woman had just
40 Selfish Daughter
pleaded her case.
It didn’t lessen tte disgust she felt for the latter, but she was glad.
“Let’s meet in the sitting room… start talking now…”
Fiona obeyed instantly. She started with the gifts basket as she and her father left the room.
Fifteen minutes later, Fiona was done narrating her experience, in a way she believed would bring her father to her side.
They were standing in the front porch, each lost in their own thoughts.
She watched her father sigh intermittently, and wondered what he would do next.
What he finally did next, shocked her.
He slapped her, before she could say jack!
“Dad…”
He slapped her again.
His face was a board of fury, and Fiona knew she had really done it this time.
Yet, she hadn’t expected a slap….
“You are so selfish! Get out of my house!”
Fiona shook her head Lears flow past her eyes again. “I can’t! Where will I go?”
Alfonso glared at her. “Did you know that our stocks has plunged to zero value now? After our meeting this morning, did you check things out?”
She shook her head, aware of the evil foreboding that now clouded her.
“Did you know that only Ewan’s stocks has risen back to almost normal, after the mishap of this morning that even affected Zack. One of our workers mentioned that he saw Ewan in a restaurant with Athena this morning… reason for the swift change of his stocks‘ status…”
Fiona kept silent. She didn’t know about that too.
Her father hissed in disgust.
“You’re a sorry excuse for a daughter and a wife! You don’t know anything about your fiancé, nor do you know anything about our company. Of what use are you? Apart from spending money recklessly?”
Fiona gritted her teeth in anger and balled her fists.
What had Ewan offered Athena in exchange for the restoration of his company? Marriage?
“I sent you to plead with her, for the sake of our family and company, and yet you couldn’t do such a simple thing. Now, you’ve lost your fiancé too.”
Alfonso shook his head in unbelief.
“Leave here, Fiona. I don’t want to see your face.”
