The Serpent's Bite Read Online Free Page B

it’s not.”
    There it was again, the family thing, a good sign. She wondered if it meant that he had succumbed finally to the guilt of separation. She had hoped it might kick in again one day.
    Many times, down on her luck and desperate, she had invoked family ties, but he had ceased to respond as Big Daddy with the checkbook, which had become her not-so-secret characterization. Often she had begged, cajoled, tried every arrow in her quiver of manipulation, but the string had run out finally in a conversation she had with her father at her mother’s funeral. That had been the breaking point—until now.
    Her father’s reaction to her plea had struck her as an odd disconnect. He was a man to whom charity was gospel. Often he would help a homeless person, dropping paper money in his cup, and his list of contributions covered a large array of causes. In his lexicon of compassion, it meant “giving back,” a posture getting increasingly difficult for her to understand. His politics were liberal, and his feeling for others, she supposed, genuine. He was vocally against persecution, injustice, and unfairness in all its forms.
    And yet, from her perspective he had become far less sanguine about “charity” for his children. She did acknowledge that it was an unfair presumption, since he had been tremendouslysupportive and generous to both his children in the past. But she saw herself now in her midthirties practically destitute. He had cut her off, her brother as well. For a man who bled for the underdog and thought of charity as “sharing,” she characterized his attitude toward her financial well-being as cruel and unjust, and she had dismissed him as a fucking hypocrite.
    She knew, of course, that she was hardened by failure and disappointment, and there was some limit to parental supportiveness, but her dream of becoming a movie star was still as strong and obsessive as ever and permitted no surrender, no negativity, and a ruthlessness that she felt absolutely necessary.
    By blood and tradition, she considered her father’s money her and her brother’s entitlement. She had grown up with the certainty that sooner or later it would be theirs. He and their mother had, in the days before her death and their estrangement, often reiterated that he had made arrangements to divide his estate between her brother and herself. Could he ever muster the will and endure the guilt of cutting them off from their inheritance? Hell, he had already cut off her enabling stipend, why not the other?
    What she wanted was to get her hands on some of it now. Before their estrangement she had tried every trick in the book to get him to increase her stipend, to gift her more money, to settle a regular lifelong lavish income on her. Not to part with it in the hour of her greatest need was heartless, selfish, and mean-minded. Pursuing her dream needed nourishment and heavy maintenance, financially and emotionally. All right, she had not succeeded, not yet, but her dreams and ambitions were as fresh as ever. The spotlight and celebrity beckoned. She knew in her heart that they would come to pass.
    Perhaps she was spoiled by memory. Once he had been proud of her choice, had encouraged her. Always the dutiful father, he had attended all her high school and college performances, fueled the dream, kept her going. In an odd way, she had long ago acknowledged that his and her mother’s cheerleading was partially responsible for enabling her pursuit of this obsession.
    During her student days, she had played many of the Shakespearian female roles and had been heralded as a brilliant talent with an assured future. Her Lady Macbeth was dubbed “extraordinary” by a stringer from the
New York Times
who wrote a compendium of reviews of student productions. She had also gotten standing ovations for her Juliet and Desdemona. She knew in her gut she had the right stuff and was dead certain that one day she