Chapter 4 - The Ultimatum
The screen glowed brightly in the sterile fluorescent light of the electronics store.
IF YOU WALK OUT OF THAT STORE WITH HER, DON'T BOTHER COMING BACK. I MEAN IT, MARK. WE ARE DONE.
I stared at the glowing letters, my breath catching in my throat. The heavy box of the drawing tablet suddenly felt fragile in my arms, like a tower of cards built on top of an earthquake fault line. This wasn't just a fight about Christmas morning anymore. This was an ultimatum—a line drawn in the digital sand between the life my father had built with Brooke and the family he had left behind in the cold.
Dad stared at the message for a long, agonizing moment. His thumb hovered over the screen as if he were about to type out a frantic plea for compromise—the kind of capitulation I had watched him perform a hundred times before.
Then, slowly, his shoulders dropped. He pressed the power button, plunging the phone screen into darkness, and slid it back into his winter coat pocket.
"Dad?" I whispered, my heart hammering against my ribs. "What are you going to do?"
He looked down at me, his eyes steady, clear, and strangely calm. For the first time since he and Brooke had married, I saw my real father—the man my mother had married years ago before the exhaustion of life wore him down.
"I’m going to buy you lunch, Lucy," he said softly. Then he looked over at his mother. "And then Mom and I are going to help you pack your things for Cincinnati a few days early."
Grandma June offered a slow, approving nod, her lips curving into a tight, satisfied smile. "It’s about time you grew a backbone, Mark. A house built on deceit and favoritism isn't a home; it's a holding cell."
We left the store and walked back out into the biting December wind. The snow was beginning to spit lightly from the low gray clouds, dusting the windshields of our cars with white powder.
When we pulled back into the driveway of our house on the cul-de-sac, Brooke’s luxury SUV was still parked in the garage, but the front porch light had been turned off—a petty, theatrical signal of disapproval.
Inside, the house was dead silent. The fake fireplace on the television had been turned off, leaving only a black glass screen reflecting our tired faces. Wyatt’s gaming console was still sitting on the rug where he had dropped it, untouched.
Dad marched straight up the stairs, his boots heavy on the wooden steps. I followed him, clutching the drawing tablet under one arm and my little red box of gray socks in the other. Grandma June stayed downstairs, standing guard in the kitchen like a sentinel.
Dad pushed open my bedroom door. My room was small, tucked away at the end of the narrow hallway. The walls were painted a pale lilac that Brooke had chosen, and my desk held my old sketchbook, a jar of dried-up acrylic paints, and a chipped ceramic mug holding my pencils. It wasn't a bad room, but it always felt temporary—like a hotel room where you weren't allowed to unpack your suitcases too deeply.
"Get your duffel bag out of the closet, Luce," Dad said gently, rolling his sleeves up. "We’re going to get you packed. You’re going to spend the rest of the week at your grandmother’s house until we figure out the logistics of your trip down to Cincinnati."
"What about Brooke?" I asked, my voice trembling slightly as I pulled my navy blue duffel bag down from the top shelf.
"Brooke made her choice clear," Dad said, his voice hard, though sadness lingered behind the edges. "She wanted a household where her son’s desires eclipsed everyone else's reality, and she expected me to play my assigned role as the silent provider. I’m done playing."
As we began folding my sweaters and packing my sketchbooks into the duffel bag, the door at the end of the hall creaked open.
Wyatt stood in the doorway, wearing a gray hoodie and holding a half-eaten bag of potato chips. He looked down at the open duffel bag on my bed, then up at my father, and finally at the white box of the drawing tablet resting on my desk.
"Are you... are you running away?" Wyatt asked, his voice sounding unusually small.
"I'm not running away, Wyatt," I said, zipping one side of my bag shut. "I'm just going to stay with Grandma for a while."
Wyatt shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. He looked down at the floorboards. "Mom is really mad downstairs. She’s crying in the kitchen."
"Your mother is angry because she got caught taking money that wasn't hers, Wyatt," Dad said, his tone firm but not unkind. "That’s not something you get to cry your way out of."
Wyatt didn't argue. He knew. Twelve years old was old enough to understand when an adult was spinning a web of lies that had finally collapsed under its own weight. He looked at me, a flicker of genuine regret crossing his face.
"Do you... do you want help carrying your bag down?" Wyatt asked quietly.
I stared at him for a second. For three years, we had shared this house, navigated the awkward terrain of a blended family, and competed for crumbs of parental attention. We weren't enemies, even if Brooke had tried to turn our home into a zero-sum game.
May you like
"Thanks, Wyatt," I said softly. "I can manage."
He nodded, turned on his heel, and walked back down the hallway without another word.
