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I swallowed hard. “But I ruined everything. I just… I didn’t know how to tell him.”
“Tell him what?”
“What it was really like growing up. In high school at least, I mean.”
“Why don’t you start by telling me?”
I huffed out and swiped at my eyes, but it wasn’t the worst idea I’d ever heard. My secret was out anyway. Obviously, all the men in the Order knew my circumstances, and they were the most important men in town. What reputation was I trying so hard to protect with my silence anymore?
“It started right after Daddy died. Mama and I found out he had a gambling problem. A bad one. We were in terrible debt, and there was nothing—no money, no bonds, and barely any assets to pay it off.”
Mrs. H’s hand went to her chest. “Oh, honey. What on earth did you do?”
I shook my head. “At first, nothing. Mom was in denial. I was a sixteen-year-old brat, used to having everything on a whim, having my meals prepared by a cook and everything cleaned up by a maid. They were the first to go, obviously. When the first debt collector showed up at the door….”
Well, that night, I’d walked in and found my mother on the floor with the pills sprawled all around her. Terrified, I dragged her limp body over to the toilet and shoved my finger down her throat until she started gagging and then throwing up. The pills she spewed into the toilet still looked mostly whole, so apparently I’d gotten there right in time.
I’d wanted to take Mom to the hospital, but she’d gotten desperate, saying no, we didn’t have the money. She was sorry, she’d sobbed; she’d never do it again. She’d been weak.
“Did things get better?” Mrs. H asked after I gave a quick overview of Mom’s first attempt.
I shook my head with a sigh. “I wish. No, every time things got harder, I had to go on Mom-watch. When the red notices started showing up for the house, I came home and found her in the bathtub, trying to slit her wrists with dull razor blades. There were shallow cuts all up and down her arm, she just hadn’t been able to bring herself to commit. It was right around senior prom, I think. On the outside, I was barely keeping my shit together, but it was this part I was playing now.
“My real life was home with this broken woman, trying to keep her from offing herself while our world fell down around us. And during the day, I played at being a bitchy teen girl, this fictional version of my former self. But I clung to it even harder, because somehow, if no one knew what was happening at home, it was like it wasn’t real. Like I wasn’t sleeping at the foot of Mom’s bed because I knew her depression got worse at night and if I was there, I could keep her from trying to take matters into her own hands.
“The hours at school, I was constantly worried about what I might find when I went home. And every day I found her alive was both a victory, and it also meant another exhausting night keeping her that way.”
“Oh, honey,” Mrs. H interjected. “How did you manage to go on like that? You were just a child.”
“Well, I couldn’t stay one for long, could I? I dragged my mom into the bank and forced her to face renegotiating the loan and consolidating the loan on the house. It meant we were mortgaged up to our eyeballs and couldn’t leave the property even if we wanted to. But as long as we paid a little each month, we were able to stay there.”
“Okay, that’s great,” Mrs. H said. “So you found a solution.”
“It was just a short-term solution, and only because my father had been part of the Order. The banker we went to was a fellow Order member, and the deal we struck that day was for five years. The understanding amongst all at the meeting was that I had five years to find a rich husband as a long-term fix for the situation.”
“Oh,” Mrs. H said.
“Oh,” I repeated. “Exactly. I think it was Mom’s idea for me to come here, but it could have been the Order’s as much as hers. I don’t even know. I don’t know if they’re trying to control Emmett because they think they could control him if they gave him a wife like me—who theoretically will play by their rules. Or maybe they didn’t think I’d cut it and thought we’d both fail out.”
I flopped on my back on the bed. “I don’t know anything! I just know I’ve never been able to live for myself or do what I want. Except within these walls. When I’m with Emmett, for the first time in forever, I feel like I’m truly just me. Like all the other voices in my head telling me to be perfect because it’s what everyone expects finally shut the hell up, and I can just be… me.”
