A New Resolution Read Free

those officers had the answers. Lore watched as the car carefully pulled away from the curb, her father cuffed and locked in the backseat. Once the car was out of sight, she turned and walked back into the house. An officer handed her a towel to dry herself off. She didn’t thank him, just walked back into the living room where a few men were questioning her sniffling, inconsolable mother.
    “Did you know of your husband’s activities?”
    “Where is the client list kept?”
    “How did you think your husband made all his money?”
    All through the night it went on, an endless barrage of questions Lore and her mother couldn’t answer. Her father had always been a bit mysterious about his business practices, but he’d seemed like an upstanding citizen. He preached to her about being a good person, about doing what was right, getting the best grades to go to college. Would a criminal, a criminal that required this amount of police officers to arrest him, really attempt to mold his daughter into such a decent person?
    But her mind couldn’t stop flashing to the other things. Those days Lore and her father would go out, just the two of them. She always thought they were insignificant details, little criminal things like sneaking into a double feature without paying, conning a carnival man to give her a bigger prize when she hadn’t even earned the smallest. It had all just been a game. But maybe those little details lent themselves to something bigger, something she had been too blind with love for her father to see. Could her father really be a criminal?
    A commotion sounded from the TV. Cheering. Singing. It was the stupid song she had joked about, the one she and her father sang every year since she was little. Would she ever get to sing it with him again?
    Through the questioning and the cold wet of her clothes and the singing on the TV, all she could hear was her father’s voice.
    “What is it, pumpkin? What is your New Year’s Resolution?”
    Watching the celebrating people in the overcrowded streets of New York, she knew no matter what her resolution had originally been, it would never be the same again.

Chapter One
    Seventeen Years Later
    “C’mon, Lore, live a little,” Kathy said, her perfectly coiffed blonde hair fluttering around her face like a Playboy Mansion doll. “Undo that tight bun of chastity and put your goodies on display.” Kathy leaned against the kitchenette counter toward Lore, wiggling her eyebrows. “I bet you’ve got some decent goodies underneath your proper pantsuits.”
    Lore would have liked to laugh at Kathy’s exuberant nature, but that wasn’t who she chose to be at the office. “I do not have goodies, Kathy,” she said, focusing on stirring her hot chai tea.
    “Every woman has goodies.” Kathy snorted into her coffee mug. “Big or small, doesn’t matter.”
    Lore put her mug down before tossing the spoon into the sink and shooting Kathy her best disdainful expression. “Whether or not I have goodies is irrelevant, as we are at work and this conversation is inappropriate. Drop it.”
    “Oh, I’m sorry.” Kathy threw her hands up in exasperation, a gesture Lore was all too familiar with during these exchanges. “I forgot your female mind is stuck in the nineteenth century. Welcome to the modern world, Lore. Oh, and surprise, but women talk about this shit all the time. There is no more inappropriate, no more hiding behind kitchen aprons as we wait for our husbands to bring home the bacon. You really need to come out of that shell.” Kathy’s gaze passed over the door and back, switching from her outgoing nature to something meeker, something Lore had grown to pity. For all her talk of feminism and women no longer struggling under the chains of the patriarchy, they were just words. Precious ideas Kathy needed to hold on to in order to wake up each morning and come back to the office. “But you’re right; we shouldn’t have this talk at work or the Lech might