Before I could even take the seat beside him, the storm broke.
Eleanor marched over from the dance floor, her heels clicking aggressively against the marble. Beneath her thick layer of expensive, professional makeup, her face was flushed a violent, mottled, furious red.
“What are you doing?!” my mother hissed, her voice a venomous, panicked whisper meant to avoid causing a scene, though her grip on my upper arm was bone-crushing. She yanked me roughly away from Arthur’s chair. “Get him back to his seat right now, Clara! You are ruining the aesthetics of the head table! The photographer is about to take the primary family portraits!”
I wrenched my arm violently out of her grasp, stepping back to create distance.
“He is your father, Eleanor,” I said, my voice shaking, vibrating with a raw, unadulterated rage I could no longer suppress. I looked her dead in the eye, refusing to back down. “He is not an animal. You do not put a human being next to a trash can.”
SMACK.
The sound of her open palm striking my cheek cracked like a leather whip over the quiet room.
The physical force of the blow snapped my head violently to the side. A sharp, stinging pain exploded across my face, and my left ear instantly began to ring with a high-pitched whine.
Several guests at the surrounding tables gasped audibly.
“You ungrateful brat!” Eleanor spat, her voice losing its hushed, panicked tone, rising into a shrill, hysterical screech. The mask of the elegant society matriarch completely disintegrated. “You are embarrassing this family! You have always been a jealous, pathetic disappointment! Get him out of here!”
