AllFreeNovel
Share Us
29
Addilyn
“Guilty,” Lloyd told me while pulling me into his arms.
I sobbed, knowing doing what he and Mother had ordered sent Gideon where he didn’t belong. I should’ve lied. Should’ve stood up for him. That desire to sink into the floor flooded through me again, and I truly hated myself in that moment. Hated that my father had wanted a child. Hated that my mother had gone through the bother of carrying me inside her body for almost ten months.
Hollowness took over my chest where my heart shouldn’t beat. I resented my body’s disregarded of my emotions and the way it continued to fill my lungs with life-giving oxygen.
“How long?” I asked, my hands clinging to Lloyd’s suit coat, even as Mother hissed at him to let ‘the whore’ go.
“Ten years.”
Another sob ripped from me, and Mother grabbed hold of my arm, yanking me away from the man she’d tried to replace my father with, a man she obviously didn’t want her impure daughter touching.
“You can’t put your hands on her like that in public.” Her low tone wouldn’t reach those in the courthouse’s foyer around us, but her actions had earned us some questioning glances.
I swiped my tears from my cheeks, fighting for calm. Bad enough everyone around us knew what I’d done, what Gideon had done to me…and now they got to see Mother’s unfounded jealousy.
“Come along, darling.” Lloyd hooked his arm through hers, patting her hand. “Let’s go home. We can process later.”
Mother whispered harshly in his ear, but he continued to murmur, coddling like always. She eventually quieted, and I followed on their heels, knowing I would get an earful for my whorish ways, how I’d soiled myself for my future husband.
“Addilyn,” Jenny called from behind us, but I didn’t acknowledge her.
We stepped outside into the spring air, and I wrapped my sweater tighter around me.
“Addilyn!” Jenny hollered again.
My best friend. The one I’d thought I could trust. I found someone to lay the blame of Gideon’s sentence on since I couldn’t bear shouldering it on my own. Ignoring her came easily, and I climbed into the car and slammed the door as she hurried forward in my periphery.
“Addilyn?” Lloyd questioned, eyeing me in the rear view.
“Just go.”
He started the car and left Jenny behind—and Mother didn’t breathe a word, simply sat seething, her entire body tight and perfectly poised in the passenger seat.
Jenny tried calling a dozen times over the next few days while I wallowed in clashing emotions. She texted twice as much, and I ignored those attempts to reach out to apologize too.
Everything but guilt with its sharp claws turned into a muted gray color in my mind. Numbness replaced my disappointment and anger toward Jenny, but my shame lingered.
Mother drank which meant she passed out more often than not, ignoring the fact I breathed which was fine by me.
I couldn’t drag myself out of bed, refused to go to school, and gagged while trying to eat.
A quiet knock on my door on day three? four? let me know it was Lloyd.
“Yes?” I called from where I lay curled on my bed, reliving the courtroom scene and hating myself for doing as I’d been told.
He stuck his head in, catching my gaze. “Jenny is here.”
The numbness inside me dissipated like smoke with a strong breeze. I exhaled a heavy sigh and clung to the rekindling anger.
I wasn’t surprised she’d shown up. Jenny was like a bulldog and wouldn’t let my silence go.
“Is Mother in the parlor?” I asked.
“No. She’s resting in our room.”
