Kimberly Meter - Playing the Part

“Your hotel sucks,” Carys announced, watching for Lindy’s reaction. “We’ve definitely stayed in better, you know. In places with toilets that actually work,” she added with a sly look. The brat was trying to bait her. If Lindy collected a paycheck she would’ve said she didn’t get paid enough to deal with this crap.

“I take it he’s not here,” Lindy said, cocking her head to the side, openly assessing the kid. “Otherwise you’d be watching your mouth a little more closely. I get your act, kid. You play the sweet innocent girl for your dad but when his back is turned you show your true colors. You’re spoiled, mean, selfish and cruel,” Lindy said, taking pleasure in the way the girl’s face had begun to redden. “Oh, and chances are no one really likes you, which is something you probably know but pretend not to care about because, let’s face it, being a jerk is a lonely life. But let me fill you in on a secret, short stuff, this lonely childhood of yours is only going to get worse because unless you change your attitude, no one is ever going to want to be around you...not even your dad.”

“Shut up,” Carys said.

“Hey, kudos, kid, for the lip tremble,” Lindy said, being quite brutal, probably more than what was required but Lindy was still pissed about the toilet. “Pretty convincing. If I wasn’t already wise to your act, I might’ve bought it.”

At that Carys’s eyes actually welled and Lindy felt a pang of remorse for taking it to that level but the kid had it coming, for sure. Today Lindy was Karma’s handmaiden.

“I’m telling my dad,” she whispered, her voice cracking a bit. For a split second Lindy actually saw something in the girl’s raw expression that smacked of genuine emotion. A moment of doubt crossed her mind as she thought to soften the harsh words but the moment passed as quickly as a tropical storm and suddenly Carys screamed before slamming the door in Lindy’s face, “My daddy is going to sue you for every penny you own for being so mean to me!”

“Yeah, well good luck with that!” Lindy shouted back, forgetting her earlier doubt. Then she added, “Brat!” for good measure.

Well, that hadn’t gone well. But surely Lora had to have known it wouldn’t. Maybe her sister had set her up. Customer service wasn’t her specialty or niche. And curse her own stubbornness. Maybe she ought to have let Lilah handle the situation with Bungalow 2, after all, because clearly Lindy simply wasn’t cut out for this touchy-feely stuff. Damn, damn, damn, Lindy thought grumpily. She had a feeling this wasn’t going to end well for anyone. At this rate, she might’ve single-handedly ruined Larimar’s chances of pulling through this disaster in one day. Good job, Lindy!

* * *

“AND THEN...AND then...” Carys’s voice hitched on a hysterical hiccup as Gabe cradled his daughter as she sobbed in his arms. “And then, she called me...she called me...a bad...n-name, Daddy!”

“What sort of bad name, sweetheart?” he asked, barely holding his temper in check. “Go ahead, you can tell me. I’ll take care of this once and for all if you just tell me what happened.”

Carys ground the tears from her eyes and then wailed, “She called me a...b-word!”

The b-word. Hmm...well, the range could land between a whole lot of different insults from mild to harsh. He’d only been gone for an hour and a half, just long enough for Carys to calm down so they could discuss her behavior, but in the space of that time, that woman had apparently returned to the bungalow to call his daughter names. A small niggling doubt worried at his thoughts even as his temper reached a dangerous place. Carys was only eleven; the woman had no right to call his daughter names no matter what she’d allegedly done to the damn toilet. Still, that one percent of doubt countered with grim logic. Carys was...a handful. The b-word was the least of the insults recently hurled at his daughter. In fact, her last nanny...well, he was pretty sure the woman had called her something quite unpleasant in Swedish.

“Honey, why would she just show up and start calling you names?” he asked, unable to bury that small doubt under his instinct to defend his daughter. “Maybe it was a misunderstanding....”

“Daddy, you don’t believe me?” Carys’s head popped from his shoulder, her eyes hard and mean.

“It’s not that I don’t believe you, sweetheart,” he said evenly. “But sometimes there are misunderstandings.”

“I’m not stupid or deaf. She called me a b-word. How am I supposed to misunderstand that?”

Ah hell, he’d walked into that one. Carys was much too smart to pull off that kind of deflection. He sighed and shook his head. “Carys...be honest with me.... Why do you think a relative stranger would just start calling you names? That doesn’t make a lot of sense. Did you, possibly, say something that might’ve been offensive?”

“Why are you taking her side?” Carys said, openly wounded and rapidly growing angry. “You’re supposed to be on my side! Not hers. She’s a nobody. I’m your daughter! Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“Of course it does,” he said sharply, not liking what was happening between them but it seemed to happen more often these days. “I’m just saying—”

“Don’t you love me, Daddy?” she cut in impatiently, wiping her nose with a quick swipe of the back of her hand.

“Carys,” he warned, disappointed by her obvious attempt at manipulating him. “Stop it.”

Her lower lip trembled and she pushed away from him, the action actually skewering him in the heart. “I hate you,” she said quietly. “Mom would’ve believed me. She was the only one who truly loved me.”

“Damn it, Carys,” he said, growing angry himself, but mostly doubling over inside from the pain of what was happening between them. It was as if Charlotte’s death had taken the light and laughter from his daughter and he’d been left with the dark and dour shell that could neither laugh nor smile and he was at a loss of what to do. “This has to stop. Just stop it already, all right?” His voice almost sounded desperate and if he could hear it, so could she. He moved to the window, a mass of equal parts frustration and despair, as he felt the need to escape. No, he told himself firmly. Fix this. Somehow. “Listen...” He turned to try again, to apologize for being short with her but before the words could leave his mouth, she was running out the door.

“Carys!”

* * *

CARYS RAN AS fast as her legs could take her, as fast as she’d ever run before. Her bare feet slapped on the dark asphalt road as she burst from the private grounds of the resort where her father had imprisoned her; running almost blindly as tears sprang from that empty, yet strangely painful place she held deep inside. She hated it here. She hated her father. She hated everything and everyone. No one understood what she was going through, how every day felt worse than the last.

Her father didn’t care. All he cared about was his business and making money. She hated money. Hated that her father took business calls at all hours of the night, during dinner, when he’d promised to read to her, when he’d canceled their snorkel tour. Everything came before she did—everything!

He probably wouldn’t even care if she dropped into the ocean and sank to the bottom and got eaten by a...a...stingray! A sob broke from her chest and she heaved as her side screamed in pain from the all-out sprint. She held her side as she limped, realizing with a cry her big toe was bleeding. Somehow she hadn’t noticed that her big toenail had been partially ripped off. She sank to the side of the road and held her foot, crying. Nobody cared. Nobody!

“Momma...” she whispered. Just saying the word made her heart spasm with raw grief. Everyone had told her time would heal the hurt, but they’d lied! Every day was more painful than the one before and she didn’t care anymore what anyone thought or said about her. She just wanted her mom again. And if that meant...well, then that’s what she meant.