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Prologue
“Dad,” Ivy Greene yelled. They’d been in Haiti for about a month and she was bored out of her mind.
“I’m busy right now,” her father said when he walked into the house.
“Ivy,” her mother said. “You know Dad just got home. Let him clean up and finish his paperwork.”
“But, Mom,” she argued. It was bad enough that it was only her and Chase now. She was closest to her sister Jasmine, at just two years older than her. But Jasmine was in Georgia and starting college.
She knew this day would come. One by one, her siblings turned eighteen and went to America to live a life she’d felt she’d been deprived of. They’d all been deprived of.
She’d been the baby for a full five years before Chase came and now she still couldn’t get any attention being the oldest in the house.
Or not the kind she wanted.
“No,” her mother said. “Help me cook dinner, please.”
She wanted to stomp her foot. She knew it was immature, but the frustration inside of her was building. “How come Chase doesn’t have to help? When I was eleven I had to do all sorts of chores, but he gets to do what he wants.”
“He’s with your father right now,” her mother said.
“That’s not fair,” she whined. Chase had followed her father to the other room to do some work she was sure.
Her mother looked at her. “Don’t get upset. Wipe your eyes.”
“Dad never spends any time with me,” she said. “Ever. It’s always with Chase. I bet even if I said I was interested in learning what he does all day, he still would spend it with Chase.”
Her mother sighed. “Ivy. You know as well as I do that your father is a very busy man. Chase is helping him. If you showed any interest you could too, but you’d just get underfoot.”
“But what if I was interested?” she asked.
Her mother narrowed her eyes at her and picked up the knife for her to move over and help with dinner. “Are you interested or just coming up with another excuse to be with your father?”
She hated that she had variations of this conversation with her mother all the time.
“I shouldn’t have to come up with excuses to be with him,” she said, starting to sniffle. “It’s always all about Chase.”
“That’s not true,” her mother said. “Your father spreads his time out as evenly as he can. We are still new to the area and I know you’re bored.”
“Why can’t we go into town?” she asked. At least when her sisters were around she had someone else to do things with.
“That’s what you want, isn’t it?” her mother asked sternly. “To ask your father to take you into town because you know we can’t go without him?”
Ivy pursed her lips tightly. She was going to get in trouble if she said yes. And if she said no, her mother would know she was lying.
All they did was move from one poverty-stricken country to another.
It wasn’t safe half the time and they could never go anywhere alone.
Some areas were better than others, and as long as she was with her older siblings in a group, she’d be fine.
But Mark, Dahlia and Jasmine were all gone. That just left her and Chase and now she was spending more time doing all the chores that still existed and having no fun at all.
The safety group she had to do things with her older siblings was gone too and no one felt she was responsible enough to take Chase anywhere so she was stuck until her parents could do it.
“When can we go?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” her mother said. “I’ll talk to your father later tonight. Help me get dinner ready. Or you can go and take the wash off the line.”
