“Are you okay?” She looks at me, and she has tears in her eyes.
“I’m just …” I want to tell her that I’m sorry that I brought all this to her. “I was so scared that you were going to be hurt.” She blinks, but a tear falls anyway. “But now I see for my own eyes you’re okay.”
My own tears gather in my eyes when I look at her; this woman, who is as simple as can be, and all she wants is to have her daughter home. My mother, on the other hand, has everything that she can buy at her fingertips, and the last thing she wants is for me to come home.
“Oh, Charlotte,” I say, hugging her. “Thank you for having me, and I’m so, so sorry,” I finally say out loud. “I’m going to make a couple of phone calls tomorrow. I’ll find somewhere else to go.”
She looks at me in shock. “You will do no such thing,” she says. “When you finally get settled, we’ll have a family meeting to discuss whatever is going on. But whatever it is, we handle it here.”
“But I’m not family,” I say, trying not to let the sting hurt so much.
She puts her hand on mine. “Oh, hush your mouth, silly girl.” She smiles through the tears. “You’re one of us now.” I don’t answer her. Instead, I blink away the tears that are stinging my eyes, and all I hear is my mother’s voice.
“Tears are a waste, Olivia. No one is going to want such a dramatic woman.”
“Thank you,” I say, and she gets up.
“You go take a shower. I’ll send Casey to check on you later.” She walks out of the room.
Walking over to the drawer, I open it to grab my stuff, then walk into the bathroom. I turn on the lights, but they’re too bright, so I turn them off and make my way through the dark to the shower. With just the little light shining into the bathroom from the room, I undress and step under the hot water. And as it pours over my face, I let the tears fall.
I sob, wondering how I got myself into this mess. I should have walked away long before Dominic proposed. I shouldn’t have settled, but all I could hear is my mother’s voice.
“Olivia, you never marry for love. You marry for money; the bigger the wallet, the bigger the happiness. You marry a man who has a private plane, not one who cleans them.”
I didn’t even love him. I tolerated him. I mean, in the beginning, he treated me like a princess. He took me on these romantic little dates, but then the dates got less romantic and more extravagant. So I would forget the small stuff, like how he sent me flowers every time we went out the first month, and then they just stopped. God, I was so stupid, and now look at where I am. In the middle of the South trying to make sure the people I love don’t get hurt.
When I get out, it takes everything in me to dry off and put my pjs on. When I open the door, the only light in the room is coming from the little lamp on the nightstand. I walk over to the bed and slide into it. I should tell them I’m okay, but the minute my head hits the pillow, I’m sucked into sleep.
The darkness takes over, and I’m suddenly standing in the middle of my apartment. Except it’s vandalized exactly like it was in the pictures that they showed me a couple of weeks ago. I look around and see that our couches are shredded like people thought we were hiding something in them. The stuffing is scattered around it, and the coffee table is tossed over on its side. I look over at the shattered television. Walking over to the kitchen, I see that all the cabinets are open, everything is thrown on the floor, and the fridge is tipped over. When I turn to walk to my bedroom, I stand in the doorway, seeing my stuff on the floor and smashed to bits. The pictures I had on the wall are thrown on the floor, and the walls have holes in them. My bed is flipped over, and the mattress is cut right down the middle. My drawers are all over the floor, and my clothes or whatever is left are scattered. And I can’t forget the red writing on my bedroom wall.
You’ll get what’s owed to you.
I hold up my hand to the wall, my fingers reaching out to touch it, but I’m suddenly in Casey’s house. I’m standing in the living room, and the writing is on his wall. His whole house is trashed, as I stand in the middle of it. The front door opens, and when I look over, Dominic comes in, looking at me. “You can’t outrun me this time.” He raises his hand and aims a gun at me and then shoots. The sound of yelling makes my eyes fly open when I realize I’m the one screaming.