CONFRONTATIONS 1

"Better drop the gun down, my child. You do not want to make a mistake that you will forever regret. Your mother is gone, and your father is gone, so I am certain you don't want to end up in prison for the rest of your life. What will become of this family that you love so much?"


The nerve!

"First, I have never been your child, because we never got along well from the very fucking beginning, Gracia! And second, I am an adult, capable of taking responsibility for all my actions. But you are right," I say, lowering my gun. 'I can't risk doing something stupid because I am the only member left of the Riccaford family. I have to make sure you don't succeed in your plans to ruin this family," I state.

"Who said I want an arrogant bitch like you in my family? Don't be delusional," Gracia fires.


And who said I needed her? I never needed her, and I never will. She was the one who stuck here even when she knew she had neither a home nor a place here. "Yet you bore being around me for more than five years. You never tried to even get along, but still, you stayed. You were never welcomed here because I could tell even my father was never interested, yet you forced yourself. Why, Gracia?" I ask.

"Smart brain, Ellie! You are right. There is an incentive for everything I do in my life, which means there is also a good reason why I condoned your intolerable bitchy self for all these years." She fumes, her eyes glimmering with rage, and detests the night lights.


I was right all along! She had a motive, and finally, she has admitted it.

"Why, Gracia? What are your fucking reasons?" I fumed, dropping the gun from her head.

She emits a bittersweet chuckle, shaking her head. "You won't understand," she says, her voice soft but coated with ice.

I won't understand. So there is a reason? "Try me! Maybe for the first time, I will understand you. I want to know why you came into our lives at the perfect time when my mother suffered that horrible accident and tried fixing yourself here even when you knew you were never needed. Whay?"

She snaps at me, turning more cold. Why? Does the demise of my mother trigger something in her? Come to think of it, she introduced herself as both my mother's and father's friend, but never even once did she ever mean my mother with respect, sympathy, or love. She hated her actully. I also remember her telling my father that she would be there for him all the way, yet I never saw her show her concern for my father. All her actions betrayed the picture that she portrayed that fateful day in the hospital. Except that even back then, I never liked her. Something about her riled me up.

"Guess what, Ellie?" she starts, cutting my tour around this puzzle short. 'I don't feel like telling you anything right now. I want you to go crazy battling to connect the dots, and at my own fucking time, I will drown you into lunacy with the truth that only I know. Until then, good luck on your way to insanity!"

What? The truth that only she knows? What truth? So this is all her plan? To drive me insane as I search for the truth? And what truth is this?

"Now, fuck off my way! I need to rest." She fumes, trying to move past me, but I don't budge.

Where was she in the midst of all this chaos? Why is she dressed like an assassin on a mission? Why is nanny Aisha's murder bringing back my mother's memories of the condition she was in after that faked accident? How coincidental was it for her to appear to me and my father on the exact day my mother died? Why did she stay with my father all this time, even though it was clear that he didn't care? And when Dad came, she was so quick to arrange everything, including how she wanted him to be sent off. And after that day, we burried our father; she has beel all over the place, causing chaos and posing a threat to me. Ooh, yeah, I still don't know who her informant at the hospital was who told her about my father's demise. It is still all confusing to me. She is a walking puzzle!

"I said get out of my way!" Gracia yells, snapping my brain back to this world.

I want to make you go crazy trying to connect the dots.

So she... could she be...

I take two steps back, and she prepares to start walking away, but I raise a gun to her head again, making her halt in her steps. "Where are you coming from, Gracia? Where have you been?" I ask, the gun pointed at her head, and I am shaking—not because I am afraid of this gun, but because I might lose my cool on her at any given minute and blow her fucking brains out.

"Why? Am I the only person out here? I could ask you the same thing, Ellie. Why were you going to my quarter with a gun? Planning to kill me in cold blood?"

Twisting the subject to evade the subject is the nature of the guilty ones; so is she? "I am not a cold-blooded murderer, but I would love to, Gracia! I would love to pull this trigger and dismantle this fucking empty skull of yours with bullets, but..."

"But you can't, am I right?"

No. Well, I really don't know, because on one side, I am indeed not a murderer, and I wouldn't want to stain my hands. But on the second hand, I never lose my cool with anything the way I lose it with this woman and her miniature. I doubt that I would be able to think straight if she got on my nerves.