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PROLOGUE
“How was the test?”
Elise Kennedy looked at her college roommate. They got along just fine, but Sandra was not someone she felt she could get close with. Not someone she’d completely confide in.
Heck, she realized there wasn’t anyone other than her father and brother she could ever feel comfortable enough to confide in.
She put one foot up on the stool, her hands on the mattress, lifted and plopped her ass on the top bunk of her bed. Under it was a desk where she did her schoolwork.
“It was fine,” she said.
“I’ve got that class in two hours,” Sandra said. “Want to give me your notes?”
“Sure,” she said. She didn’t care. It was only a social studies elective. She was a business major. Sandra was an English major and offered to help her with those classes.
Her phone was ringing yet again. Then it stopped after a minute and started to buzz with texts.
“Someone wants to reach you,” Sandra said.
“My mother. She’s being a pain as always.”
There was no lost love between her and her mother. Not when her mother tried to turn her into a girlie girl that she’d rebelled against.
Nope, she was a Daddy’s girl and liked it that way!
Give her jeans and sneakers, work boots too, and she was happy as a pig rolling in the dirt.
She’d gotten dirty helping her father on the construction site enough as a kid. But that wasn’t what she wanted to do with her life.
Not what her mother wanted either when Becky Kennedy left her father and decided she didn’t want her kids dragging her down.
“Are you going to answer it?” Sandra asked.
“Why not,” she said sarcastically. “Might as well start my weekend off right.”
She was done with classes for the day. She loved her early Fridays, but Sandra had a two o’clock class and would be done by three thirty.
“Can I witness this or do you want me to leave?” Sandra asked, grinning.
“I’m here for the entertainment factor,” she said, shrugging.
Sandra laughed and sat on her bed on the opposite side of their small room to face Elise.
She hit the button to call her mother back. She’d had a peaceful month at college not having to talk to her mother and she knew it wasn’t going to last forever.
“Why don’t you ever answer my calls, Elise?” her mother asked before she even said hello. No surprise there.
“Because I’m in college and busy,” she said. “I know you don’t work, so you don’t understand the rest of us have things going on during the day.”
“Steve is home at night,” her mother said. “I spend time with him.”
Because Becky Kennedy-Vern’s kids always fell to the bottom of the priority list. Her mother couldn’t take ten minutes out of her night to call her kids when they might not be in class if it was an inconvenience to her marriage. Steve would probably welcome the few minutes of solace.
“Good for you,” she said. “What is going on?”
“I can’t call to see how you’re doing in college?”
“I’m doing fine,” she said. “Just like I have for years in high school. You’d know that if you ever reached out. Or reached out at a reasonable time when a kid might be available.”
