Chapter 2

My father finally broke his silence. "Dad, that's enough. She was being thoughtful."

"Thoughtful?" Arthur laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. "She's being manipulative. Just like her mother. You never learned how to control your wife, Tom, and now you can't control your daughter either."

That was it. The final straw for my dad. He had taken decades of abuse aimed at himself, but the attack on my mom and me pushed him over the edge.

"Don't you talk about my wife," my father said, his voice low and dangerous.

Arthur stood up, leaning over the table. "I'll talk about whoever I want in whatever way I want! This is my party! You all owe me respect!"

He turned his fury back to me. "This is your fault," he snarled, and before anyone could react, he lunged across the corner of the table. He didn't hit me, but he shoved me hard. I stumbled backward, my heel catching on the leg of a chair. I crashed to the floor, my arm smacking against the hard tile with a sickening crack of pain.

A collective gasp went through the family.

My mother shrieked, "Ava!" She rushed to my side, her face pale with shock and fear.

But it was my father who truly erupted. The sight of me on the floor, hurt by his own father, flipped a switch in him. The years of pent-up rage, of swallowed insults and silent suffering, exploded out of him in a single, primal roar.

"You son of a bitch!" he bellowed.

He lunged forward, not at his father, but at the table. With a sweep of his arm, he sent the magnificent cake I had baked flying. It hit the wall with a wet splat, sliding down in a messy heap of yellow and white. The entire restaurant fell silent, all eyes on our table.

"You touch my daughter again, and I will kill you," my father said, his voice shaking with a fury I had never seen. "I swear to God, I will end you."

Arthur looked shocked for a moment, genuinely taken aback that his meek, long-suffering son had finally fought back. His face contorted with rage. "You would threaten your own father?"

"You stopped being my father a long time ago," Tom shot back. "You're just a bitter, old man who enjoys hurting people."

Aunt Carol, who was trying to help me up, was sobbing. "Dad, how could you? How could you?"

Arthur, seeing he was losing control, clutched his chest. "My heart... you're trying to give me a heart attack." It was an old trick, one he used whenever he was cornered.

But no one was buying it this time. Not after he had physically assaulted his own granddaughter.

He pointed a trembling finger at the ruined cake on the floor, then at the other gifts piled on the table. "None of this is good enough! You all think you can buy my forgiveness with your cheap trinkets? You're all worthless! The lot of you!" he screamed, his voice cracking. Even his fake heart attack was forgotten in his all-consuming rage.