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Chapter One
8 days to Maggie’s wedding...
Rose Howell stared out the car windshield at the two-story clapboard house painted in three different shades of beige. Cheerful flowering bushes lined the path to the porch and front door. The house she grew up in. It looked plain. Ordinary. Nothing special. A family’s house. The picture of normal. No one outside those walls knew the secrets this house held. How those four walls and a roof made a house, but not a home.
Outside was the image of middle-class success.
Inside, a nightmare played out of a family ruined by alcoholism, anger, abuse, unfulfilled dreams and promises, and a gnawing desire to escape even though you had nowhere to go.
Trapped in that house as a child, Rose had felt the walls closing in, but the windows had given her a glimpse of the outside world that seemed vast and peaceful. The tension had suffocated her. And her father’s presence loomed large and scary, a threat waiting to happen.
Rose escaped this particular circle of hell on earth by taking the one opportunity she had worked hard for because it offered her a better life. College.
Her father drilled into her that the only way to succeed was to be better than everyone else. As a child, that meant getting the best grades in school. She did so easily. School was never that hard for her. It was a sanctuary even in the worst of times, though school could be its own social challenge. She graduated third in her class.
Most parents would have been ecstatic. Not her father. She wasn’t number one. In his eyes, she’d failed miserably.
Strange he thought so, since he hadn’t even graduated in the top ten percent of his class.
Her mom revealed that little secret to cheer her up after a particularly blistering setdown by her dad for the B+ she received on an AP geometry test.
Logic didn’t often play into his outbursts and demands for his daughters.
He wanted Rose and her younger sister, Poppy, to be the best at everything, so they wouldn’t be held back the way her father seemed to believe everyone held him back from achieving greatness.
He didn’t get the promotion because someone less productive, less deserving, somehow stole it from him. The boss had it in for him. Someone didn’t like him. They never gave him credit for all his hard work. They didn’t see his potential.
At first as a young girl, she’d thought it terribly unfair thatpeople treated her father so badly. As she got older, she realized the truth. He hadn’t been overlooked or underestimated. He’d simply expected to be given what he thought he deserved even if he hadn’t earned it.
But the hardest thing to accept and understand was that nothing she did would ever be good enough. She’d never win his approval or praise.
She left for college with one intent in mind. To never go home again. To build a life free of her father, this place, and its dark memories.
She’d been gone eight years.
Not nearly long enough to forget.
She stared at the house, her roiling emotions a swirl of anger, resentment, hate, and deep sadness.
I will never forget.
But she’d learned to live with the baggage tainting her new experiences and the growth she’d achieved both personally and professionally.
She lived the life she’d always wanted now. She had friends, a good job, and her own cute apartment. She’d even learned to stop looking at all men and seeing her father. She had stopped thinking that everything they said was some kind of backhanded compliment. Maybe she didn’t wholly trust men, but she didn’t outright dismiss them anymore. Still, she’d never felt loved, never been in love.
Did love even exist? She often wondered about that.
Rose had been sitting in her car outside the house for twentyminutes, unable to force herself to go in. She didn’t want to be confronted with all those twisted memories of when her father had made his issues their problem.
It had taken her a long time to come to the conclusion that her father was a sad man, doomed to failure and loss by his own words and actions. He would never be happy or feel loved or succeed in anything. He probably would have died alone and miserable had he not fallen down the stairs drunk and broken his neck three years ago.
The twisted son of a bitch died a far better death than he deserved.
She hadn’t mourned the loss of the man who brought her nothing but pain. She swore he liked it, hurting them and putting her, Mom, and Poppy down all the time.
She didn’t even attend the funeral.
And now, Rose had come home at last, for her best friend Maggie’s wedding. She also wanted to use this week to reconnect with her mother and sister, hoping they could finally put the past behind them and start fresh. And she hadn’t seen Maggie in a while, either.
