Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 141255 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 706(@200wpm)___ 565(@250wpm)___ 471(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141255 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 706(@200wpm)___ 565(@250wpm)___ 471(@300wpm)
Soon after I got to the office, my brother arrived and then we headed to the board room to put on our game faces and talk to the Kruna scumbags. I had the phone call recorded.
I dreamt about Thailand, about the time before Kruna.
Jason was tall, dark, and handsome. He was rich and charming and obsessed with me. He was a devil in disguise. He liked the power of running the bar and his powerful uncle at his back. But I didn’t think he was a bad guy. It was like he’d snapped, been pushed when he got aggressive about me marrying him. Like he was stressed to the limit. And when he shot the cleaning lady? It threw me. For all this time, I hadn’t allowed myself to think deeper on it. I think he was a little bit of a spoiled rich kid caught up in things. And he tried to stop them from taking me in, but they thought I knew too much. And because of that they punished him by making him watch them work at breaking me that first day. Jason cried that day. I saw him crying. And then his uncle repeatedly brought him in to watch while I was abused.
I dreamt about the few dates we had, the laughs we had. And then I woke up. I stayed in bed.
I thought back to when he proposed to me and wondered if I’d just said yes if he could’ve protected me from what’d happened over the next two years. But if he’d done that and I’d somehow managed to stay in the dark about the existence of Kruna, my life would’ve been a lie. I’d have been married to a liar. And I’d never have met and fallen in love with Dario Ferrano.
I let my mind wander even farther backwards for the first time in a long time.
Two Years Ago
“Angie! There’s mail for you!”
My little sister Holly thrust the envelope at me, saying, “It’s thick. It’s gotta be a yes!”
My application to teach in Thailand had been accepted. I was stoked! I was leaving in two weeks. I’d arranged for Holly to move in with her grandmother in Anchorage a week later and I was getting the heck out of Alaska.
I met up with some of my friends at a bar that night and we toasted my journey. When I got home, I was a little tipsy, but I’d taken a cab. No harm; no foul. My mother, though, she was not impressed.
“So, you’re leavin’ now and you think you can break all the rules, huh?” she sneered at me, clearly way drunker than I was.
“I decided you can go now,” she mumbled, staggering to the sink to put her glass in. “I started packing for you.”
She wandered away, bouncing off walls all the way to the staircase in her threadbare cotton nightgown. I flipped her the double bird behind her back, took a deep breath, and walked into my bedroom, which was off the kitchen.
Everything from my closet and from my drawers was piled on my bed. Every drawer in my nine-drawer dresser was open and empty. Books, clothes, shoes, papers, all on the bed. Posters from the wall ripped off and thrown on top. Curtains from the window? One half hanging by one remaining hook, the other on top of my bed.
I texted my best friend Laurie. “Can I crash at your pad tonight? She is off the charts.”
She replied straight away. “Come! Slumber party. Yay!”
I snuck quietly upstairs to Holly’s room and shook her gently,” Holl, c’mon. We’re sleeping at Laurie’s.”
I had to get my sister to come with me. If Mom came back out, something she often did before finally passing out, and couldn’t find me, she’d start on Holly. The only reason I hadn’t moved out already was because of Holly. She was 15. She was from Mom’s second marriage and I hadn’t met her until I moved here when my dad died, but she was the reason I stayed.
I bought groceries, helped her with her homework, and she and I did our best to stay out of Mom’s way. Her grandmother promised that Holly could live there with her when I went to Thailand and said she could stay there until I finished my teaching contract. After that was up, we’d go and move to the farm my dad had left me down in Charleston. The farm was being looked after and it was all organized.
I suppressed the urge to go to Mom’s room and scream in her face. I suppressed the urge to scream at the top of my lungs at how awful of a mother she was. I just got an overnight bag together and me and Holly took off to walk to Laurie’s studio apartment about five blocks away where we could crash on her pullout sofa bed.