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Prologue
Liberty
Eleven Years Old
Think about Charleston, think about Mama D’s fried pies, think about summer afternoons at the creek behind Dillard Holler.
Keeping my eyes closed tightly, I tried to focus on all the good things that had once been part of my life. Remembering what I’d had was better than facing what my life was now.
The pain never got easier. How many times had someone told me that time would heal the pain of loss or something dumb like that? I hadn’t believed them five years ago after my grandmother, Mama D took her last breath; or seven months after that, when I’d clung to the side of my momma’s casket; or six months ago, when my dad had been lowered into the ground. They had all been wrong or just lying because they didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t care if my dad was in a better place. He was supposed to be here with me. He was all I’d had left.
My eyes began to sting—an all-too-familiar reaction. I was so tired of crying. I’d done too much of it in the past five years. I tried once again to think about my life before we left our home in Charleston. The pretty yellow two-story house where I’d lived happily for the first seven years of my life. My Mama D’s house sat right across the street. The day we had driven away with all our things in a moving truck, I’d felt like I was losing my mom and Mama D all over again.
That had been four years ago. Dad had promised me that day, as we drove south to Ocala, Florida, that I’d find happiness again. I’d have a new home with new memories. Our family would look different, but there would be love. He thought we couldn’t move on if we stayed with the ghosts of what had once been. I disagreed, but then I hadn’t wanted to move on. I had wanted to cling to what was left.
I’d lost Mama D and then Momma seven months later. It was the hardest year of my life. Dad held me, promising me he’d never leave. We would survive this. One day, we would have a fond memory and smile when we thought of them. He said it was us against the world. And I believed him. Until … he’d moved us.
Opening my eyes, I wiped at the tears that I hadn’t been able to stop and stared at the bedroom that had become mine the week after Dad’s heart attack. It had been my stepmother, Abilene’s, crafting room and the only finished space in the basement of our home in Ocala. Dad had planned to finish the rest, adding a game room and a proper laundry room instead of the washer and dryer that currently sat in the open space across from my room.
The dirty laundry had been dumped on my bed—the single mattress that lay on the concrete floor. There were soiled towels, bloodstained panties from either my stepmother’s period or her daughter’s, along with other gross things that had spilled over onto the worn rug that only partially covered the concrete floor.
Taking a deep breath, I finally moved from the doorway and walked over to it so I could begin to sort them into the correct piles. My dad had always believed in having chores. He had said it taught you to respect your things and instilled a good work ethic. However, now that he was gone, I was the only one doing chores. I was the maid, the cook, their own personal Cinderella.
There had been other changes since my father’s death. My bedroom had been upstairs, looking out over the front yard. Sissy, the sister my father had surprised me with after our arrival to Ocala, had always complained that I had a bigger room. It was a very small difference, but she had pouted about it since she’d moved in after the wedding that I wished had never happened.
Dad had hoped that my having an older sister would help heal the pain of all I’d lost. At least, that was what he’d told me when he explained that she was my actual sister.
Before my parents had met, he had gotten a girl pregnant in college. She told him after a bad breakup, and then she said she aborted the baby.
Six months after my mom’s death, he received a message on Facebook from Abilene, the girlfriend from college, telling him he had a daughter. She had never gone through with the abortion, but he’d moved on by the time she was ready to admit to him she was keeping the baby. So, she had chosen not to tell him, but their daughter had been asking about him a lot lately. That was why he sold our home, packed us up, and moved us to this awful place.
Sissy came for visits at first. She’d stay the weekend. Dad then began inviting her mother.
It had gone from that to an engagement and now this. Me living in a home where I wasn’t wanted.
I heard the footsteps overhead as the doorbell rang. There would be a lot of that this afternoon. It was Sissy’s sixteenth birthday, and all her friends were coming over to get dressed with her. Abilene had rented out a popular restaurant in town for the party. I’d heard them talking about it for weeks. Not once had they mentioned my going. I didn’t want to anyway.
I enjoyed the evenings when they left me here alone. It was the only time I felt any peace in this place.
The door to my bedroom swung open, and I turned to see Sissy walking in, her eyes locked on the laundry I hadn’t washed yet.
“Please tell me you washed my pink Victoria’s Secret bra with the little hearts on it,” she whined.
“I just got home. I’m sorting things now,” I replied.
“God, Lib, can you not be so slow? It’s my birthday—not that you care. You’ve not told me happy birthday or given me anything.”
I wanted to laugh. What was I supposed to give her? She’d taken my bedroom, along with the white furniture that my mother and I had picked out on my sixth birthday together. It was the last birthday that I’d had with my mom. She had taken the television that my dad had bought me when we moved into this house. I had nothing left to give her.
“Happy birthday,” I told her, realizing I hadn’t spoken to her today.
She was my sister. It wasn’t her fault that her mother hated my existence. Sissy didn’t hate me—at least I didn’t think she did. She just wasn’t nice.
She beamed a bright smile at me. Sissy was beautiful. Her blonde hair was the same color as Dad’s, but the rest of her looked like Abilene. I was envious of her blue eyes and tall, willowy frame.
“Thank you, Lib. Now, if you could hurry with that laundry. Get mine done first, would ya?” she said.
The doorbell rang again.
