AllFreeNovel
Share Us
This time I made it out the door. I wore a sappy look on my face all the way to my vehicle, enchanted by Baron’s protective instincts. No one had ever done something like that before. Not even my parents. Dad was always working and simply assumed we were taken care of. Mom was always busy reigning over the Manhattan elite… until she wasn’t.
My forehead creased in a frown as I left campus and made my way along the route that would carry me to my sister. I was still so pissed at her. She had literally disappeared after my father’s trial. He had gone directly to prison, and she was nowhere to be found. The cowardice of the move had left scars, and I didn’t see them disappearing any time soon.
It had really hurt Eleanor. She’d only been fourteen at the time, an age where she was still very dependent on her mother, even if that mother was not the most attentive of creatures. I’d thought briefly about selling my vehicle to pay for a private detective, but had ultimately decided against it. We needed the car. And too, there was the fear of what a detective might uncover. She could have simply cut and run, unable to deal with the fallout of Dad’s actions. Maybe she had family we didn’t know about, or an old boyfriend.
Or she could be dead.
I didn’t want to consider that possibility, but it was a real one. Dad hadn’t just robbed socialites and investors of their life’s savings. He had embezzled from the men he laundered money for, a move so rife with stupidity I found it difficult to believe. They were dangerous. You didn’t mess with them.
In all honesty, I was surprised he had lasted as long as he had in prison. I had expected him to wind up shanked within the first week. The fact that he was still apparently whole and healthy bothered me on some level. It made me worry that maybe this wouldn’t be ending with Dad in prison.
Pushing the thoughts away, I flicked on the radio and listened to hits from the seventies for the remainder of the drive. It was just after ten when I pulled into the trailer park where Eleanor was living with our uncle, Rick. As it did every time I made this drive, my lip curled at the general scuzzy sensation I had upon passing beside the signpost made with four-by-fours and plywood painted a cheery yellow. Its red lettering advertised Scott’s Mobile Home Park and twelve trailers that had seen better days were staggered behind it in a loose formation along the rutted drive. I pulled up to the third on the left and took a deep breath before stepping out of the car.
As always, I prayed she’d be able to hack it just a little longer here.Just get through this school year, and then we’ll be done.
The ‘porch’ was a small cement stoop set about two inches away from the lip of the trailer. Stepping up, I knocked briskly on the door and waited.
I didn’t have to wait long. The door swung open almost immediately and Eleanor, bristling with visible nerves, exited. “Hi, Jude, bye, Rick,” she said in one breath, rushing past me to the car. I looked past her to see our uncle lounging back upon a sagging velveteen sofa in a forest pattern. He tipped a can of beer in my direction, the faded blue of his eyes traveling up and down my body.
“Hello, niece.”
With a tip of my chin, I pulled the door shut and went to the car. Rick wasn’t our blood uncle, which in his eyes probably made it okay for him to leer at us the way he did. He was our father’s stepbrother and the only living relative of either of our parents the state had been able to find. I’d tried to argue for custody, but as I was still in college and had no home or full-time job, I’d not been considered a good candidate at the time.
For some reason, Rick had been considered the better alternative. He’d worn a suit, had the trailer cleaned, and produced verification of full-time employment, all ostensibly so he could get the pittance the state offered for foster care.
It was fine. Give me a few more months and I’d be free to chase a job and assume guardianship. And in the long run, if we could keep Rick away from her, Eleanor would benefit from my degree as well as I would. It would enable more opportunity and higher wages, which would mean I could provide better for her.
In the car, I backed out and turned around, holding my tongue until we’d left the trailer park behind us. Then I looked over at Eleanor, sitting rigidly beside me. “What happened?”
“Nothing.” The set of her chin was obstinate.
“Don’t give me that, Lens. I can tell that something happened.”
Attention on the highway, I felt, rather than saw, Eleanor turn her face to the window. “If I tell you, you’re going to get upset, and start kicking your own ass, and there’s nothing we can do about it anyway.”
With difficulty I reined in my temper. I wasn’t angry with her, anyway. I had no doubt something was happening with Rick. “All that may be true,” I answered. “But I still need to know about it.”
She sighed heavily. “He was drunk.”
“He’s always drunk.”
“He tried to get in my room.”
The car swerved when I jerked and I quickly righted it. “Explain.”
“It was okay; nothing happened. I had my door locked, and I heard him coming down the hall. When I realized he had passed his room, and then the bathroom—” Her voice was reedy with remembered fear. “—I was in the bed. I jumped up and stuck my desk chair under the doorknob.”
“Eleanor…”
“And when the door started rattling, I picked up the bat, and I stood on the other side of the door until he gave up.”
Blindly I reached across, took her hand in mine. It was curled into a tight fist on her jeaned leg, but when I grabbed hold she turned it up and gripped mine tightly in hers. “How long?” I asked.
“He knocked and twisted the knob and pushed against the door for half an hour before he finally quit.”
“Jesus.”
I didn’t push for any further details, instead driving out to the farm in silence. I had to get her out of that place. She couldn’t stay there. Maybe she could stay at the farm, and we could figure something out about transportation to school, and food and groceries and such.
