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Like the time she was ten years old and had the mumps. She’d known her father would be angry. He always threw a fit when any of them were sick. So when she heard his car in the driveway, she’d hidden under her desk upstairs.
The icy splash of the memory doused her consciousness as if it had only happened yesterday. She could still feel the agonizing fear—cramped in the too-tight space under the desk, her neck swollen and throbbing, her head aching with fever. Sure enough, as soon as her father had come in the door and heard the news from her mom, he’d started screaming. Avery had been at the library, doing research for a school project, so there was no one to distract him. He’d finished by coming to Addisyn’s bedroom and cursing her up one side and down the other.
Actually, she’d been grateful. Grateful that he’d only tossed filthy derogatives at her instead of unleashing his fists.
She hadn’t considered all this in years. After she’d left her father in the rearview mirror, there had been no need to look back. But tonight, she couldn’t get her childhood out of her mind.
And Avery—Avery who had staked everything she’d ever had or hoped for in order to rescue her sister.
Addisyn could remember that night—the night her chains cracked. She’d been in her room, curled up on her side on her bed, hoping she could somehow escape the hurricane that raged around her. By that time, her parents had split, and her mother had disappeared from their lives. Her father was downstairs, swearing at Avery. When she began to hear crashes and thumps, Addisyn had burrowed under her pillow to try to block her sister’s screams.
She must have dozed off, because the feel of a light touch on her arm in the pitch-black room jerked her back to reality. The fright almost caused her to let out a banshee wail, but Avery’s voice stopped her. “Ads! It’s me.”
“Avery.” Addisyn had pulled herself to alertness in a hurry, sitting up on the quilt and flicking on her bedside lamp. Somehow she could tell that something serious was about to happen. “Are you okay?”
“Don’t worry about me.” The corner of Avery’s mouth was swollen, the skin was discolored around one eye, and red marks stretched their ugly fingers up the side of her neck. But her expression was strong. Full of a resolve that was chiseled from granite. Ready to do and be and give anything. “I’m fine. But I’m done letting that man hurt us.”
As if they could flip a magic switch and end the abuse. If only. Addisyn had shrugged, helpless. “What can we do?”
“We’re leaving.”
“What?” Addisyn had been shocked, but her sister’s expression hadn’t changed.
“I mean it. I’m taking you and we’re leaving.”
Avery had been seventeen—serious, studious, but far too young for the weight she’d had to carry. She’d graduated from high school only a week before, and she’d had her own vehicle for six months. Sitting on the foot of Addisyn’s bed, she’d discussed her plan with her younger sister far into the night.
Nothing in all her life had filled Addisyn with so much hope. For the first time, they had a way out. The dark and horrible things were going to be gone.
Two weeks later, they had carried out their plan to the letter. At one o’clock in the morning, they’d climbed out Avery’s bedroom window into the oak tree and slithered down its familiar trunk. Then they’d run a quarter of a mile down the road to the vacant lot where Avery had parked her car that afternoon. She’d told her father it was in the shop getting a flat fixed. Even that simple lie had wrenched at her sister’s overactive conscience.
It didn’t bother Addisyn. She was happy to escape, even happier to be part of a grand adventure. She’d often scoffed at Avery’s anxiety—her terror that their father would somehow track them down.
“I’ll be eighteen soon, and then he can’t make me go back with him,” she’d told Addisyn on more than one occasion, “but I can’t bear it if he takes you back.”
Addisyn had felt her sister’s concern to be quite needless. Why would their father look for them? He hated them.
Now, Addisyn realized that Avery’s fears were well-grounded. But of course, her sister had always been the wise, cautious one—planning ahead and solving problems before they even arose. She’d taken them from their home in Syracuse all the way to a place she was sure would screen them from discovery—New York City.
When they’d driven across the Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan, it was like a whole other world. Addisyn could remember feeling so excited, a teenager standing on the verge of the great tidal wave of the world. The city had seemed so fascinating to her.
Not to Avery. Addisyn couldn’t forget the trapped look in her sister’s eyes, the way she’d cringed when horns honked and looked at the tall buildings like an animal staring at the bars of a cage. But with characteristic resolve, she’d found an apartment and worked day and night, paying the bills and keeping Addisyn in school.
Addisyn could see her sister coming home exhausted, maybe ten o’clock at night, hair in a messy ponytail and still smelling like cooking oil from her job serving at Burger King. During the day, Avery had worked at a law firm as a secretary, filing, answering the phone, and typing briefs and affidavits. In between times she clipped coupons, walked instead of riding the metro, and—Addisyn realized it now—often went hungry so her little sister could eat.
All the memories were making her feel disoriented, unsafe. Addisyn rolled onto her stomach and gazed out the window, watching the last rays of sun squint off the snowpack at the summit of Whistler Mountain. She took a few steadying breaths. She was safe now. All of her past was just that—past. The fact that her conversation with Darius had sent her mind down outdated trails was no reason to panic.
Every bit of that was true. So why did she still feel caught off guard? And why were her thoughts of Avery so persistent tonight?
Addisyn didn’t often think of her sister. Yet tonight she was being bombarded by memories—and one glaring truth. Why had she never realized this before?
Your sister sounds like a great person.Darius’s words rattled around in her soul.
A great person.
He was right.
The story she’d told him had been part of the fabric of her being, as close as her own name. The memories she was replaying now were just as familiar. Yet somehow, she felt as if she were viewing the whole situation with new eyes. Maybe it was being in Whistler, removed from the setting of the events. Maybe it was just being the narrator for once, listening to herself tell the story of her life.
