The cicadas still sang outside, unaware of what was going on in this small house. Outside, the world kept turning, even though it felt like Swiss and I were the last people in the universe.
“I met Preston three weeks after my stepfather died.”
I considered that statement, rolling on my heels and steeling myself against my body aches.
“Three weeks,” I repeated, shaking my head as I realized how little respite I’d had between evil men. “I was a mess. Grieving over the loss. Relieved that he’d never touch me again. Scared of being alone with my mother. She was bearable because she was grieving. That meant sleeping until two in the afternoon and walking around the house humming showtunes with her sunglasses on. She thought a big payday was coming. Insurance,” I scoffed, thinking of my mother.
She had not shed one tear.
Well, apart from at the funeral, obviously. She’d howled. Sobbed. Lifted the lace veil she wore over her face to blow her nose loudly with a silk handkerchief one of his business partners had given her.
My mother knew how to play her part well.
Once we were behind closed doors, after everyone left, Mom was cheerful. She was nice to me.
Nice.
She told me about the new house she was going to buy. The car, the clothes. All for her, of course.
For a short period of time, my mother forgot that I was the complication that ruined her life and had anchored her to our small town. Her mind was on the riches that she was sure were coming.
Me? I wasn’t so sure. Hal had worked at an insurance agency. One of the three in town. He made decent money—not up to my mother’s standards, something she told him often. But enough so she didn’t have to work. Mom was sure that working at an insurance agency, he would surely have some big-ticket life insurance policy.
Maybe he did. But I also knew he did not live a healthy lifestyle. He was a smoker who loved fast food. Although I wasn’t exactly worldly. I’d left our town exactly three times, once on a field trip to Washington DC, another time to the funeral of a great aunt I’d never heard of, and lastly on a trip to Roswell with one of Mom’s boyfriends who was obsessed with aliens.
No, I wasn’t worldly at sixteen. But I liked to read. Research. Mom always told me how stupid I was, so I’d made it my mission to learn as much as I could about anything and everything. I got straight A’s. Mom used my report cards as ashtrays.
But I knew that an insurance agency wasn’t likely to give mid-level employees huge policies. And even less likely to pay out if they could find an excuse not to.
I also knew that the money would be a good thing. Sure, I’d likely never see any of it, and certainly none would be going to a college fund. But I was getting scholarships anyway.
All I needed was for it to be enough to distract my mom for two more years. Two more years, then I could move across the country and never ever come back. Two more years of her being so preoccupied with the money that she’d forget I existed.
Yes, that would’ve been a good thing. A great thing.
I might not have been a worldly teenager, but I knew great things did not happen to us.
So the money was not going to come.
I was grieving, I was relieved, I was trying to come to terms with the feelings left on my skin after being assaulted. And I was terrified.
Preston was the quarterback.
One of the most popular boys in my grade.
His father owned the bank in town.
Ownedit.
His family was rich. Super rich. In a way I couldn’t even comprehend.
It had been established that my family was not. My mother didn’t exactly have the reputation of being trash, but she’d been through three husbands. That kind of thing wasn’t looked kindly upon.
I wasn’t popular at school, but I wasn’t bullied either. I had friends I sat with at lunch, nothing more than that, though. I didn’t get close to people. Didn’t trust them. Especially after what started happening with my stepfather.
I was pretty, though. I knew that. Knew on some level that was why my mother hated me so much. As much as she tried to fight it, her looks were fading, and I was just growing into mine.
Boys had asked me out before, but I’d always said no, uncomfortable in my own skin, at the idea of my stepfather finding out.