Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 69452 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69452 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
When she’d left, my heart had sank.
When my grandmother had explained that she thought that she was the sweetest girl ever, but was scared of her own shadow, my stomach had soured.
I wanted nothing more but to go to that house and ruin the man that dared put that look of defeat in Merriam’s eyes.
But my grandmother had cautioned me when I’d told her what I suspected.
Give her time, sweet potato. She doesn’t trust easy. If you can just be there for her, she’ll come around.
Sweet potato.
Even my grandmother’s cute pet name for me wasn’t enough to fix the feeling in my gut that I’d done something terribly wrong.
I’d left them both there, alone, with that man that beat his daughter.
Maybe he didn’t beat the kid.
But why the hell did that little girl only whisper? Why was she afraid of her own shadow?
I really didn’t like the picture my mind was painting. I also didn’t like that she felt like she was stuck, with no way out.
Ultimately, that’d been why I’d given her my name, address and phone number.
I wanted her to know that she had an option.
My phone rang, and I absently pulled it out of my pocket and answered it.
“Hello?” I called.
“Hey,” Grams said. “So guess what I’m doing?”
I frowned. “I’m hoping you’re staying inside and out of trouble.”
I wouldn’t put it past her to walk her happy ass down to Noel’s place.
“I’m inside,” she quickly assured me. “But I’m also watching Merriam throw clothes out the window.”
“Really?” I asked. “Why?”
“I think she’s packing her car,” she admitted. “I’ve watched her make about a hundred back-and-forth trips.”
“Where’s her daughter?” I wondered.
“In the car bundled up,” she answered. “Now she’s taking her pillows.”
“Whoa,” I said. “That’s good, right?”
“Yeah,” she said, “but I’m scared that she’s about to wake the asshole in his recliner.”
“Maybe she won’t,” I replied hopefully.
“I think this must be her last trip, because her back hatch is full, and the only thing she had in her hands this trip through her window was the cutest little snow boots,” she answered.
Snow boots that I’d picked out with my own two hands.
That made me happy that she was leaving.
Though, as soon as that thought hit my head, it made me freeze.
I studied the roads.
They were really bad.
The snow had been falling all night, and there was a good six inches of it all over everything.
“She’s already made it out and back once,” she said, reading my thoughts. “Where do you think she’s going to go?”
“Maybe her friend’s place,” I replied hopefully.
I was hard pressed to believe, though, that Gisela knew about Merriam’s circumstances and didn’t fight to do something about it.
The way Gisela came off to me, if she’d known about Merriam’s troubles, Gisela would’ve already had her ass in her place.
“She’s gone,” Grams said. “I can’t tell you how much better I feel that she left that disgusting man.”
“You knew?” I asked.
“I knew.” She sighed. “There’s only so much hiding of bruises you can do, just like you saw yesterday. This has been going on for the entirety of my living here.” She started to laugh. “The little minx left her bedroom window open.”
“Good,” I said. “Maybe he won’t notice that she’s gone and it’ll ruin his house.”
“Nobody is that lucky,” she grumbled. “That man is disgusting.”
“Thanks for calling me, Grams,” I said. “That makes me feel better that she got out of there.”
“I just hope that she stays gone,” she sighed. “It reminds me of your mother’s situation.”
I felt my stomach sink.
My mom had met my father when she was eighteen and he was twenty-four. They’d gotten married about six months after meeting because Mom had found herself pregnant with me.
That was the beginning of the horror show that my mother would live with for the next fifteen years.
It was only when I was fourteen, Noel was twelve, Ginger was eleven, and Christopher was eight that my mother left my father. She’d been gone a whole forty-eight hours when my father had caught up with her and murdered her on the side of the road for all of us kids to see.
Then, with his gaze on mine, he’d taken his own life.
That’d been the deciding factor in my life for me—the reason that I’d tried so hard to crawl out of the hell that my father had put us in and give my family the best life that they could get.
Noel and Ginger were now very married. Christopher had a kid on the way, and Noel had three youngsters. Ginger was married, but only newly so, and had no immediate plans for a kid.
I, on the other hand, was the only one left that wasn’t happily married.
I’d been so focused on making sure that my family had what they needed that I hadn’t focused on my own life.