Chapter 6
Chapter Six
I think he’s old enough to be changed to Ryan Goose now…
— Merriam’s secret thoughts
MERRIAM
I . Was . Screwed .
I’d meant to be home well before Dad had gotten home to see that I’d gotten a babysitter, but Dad had decided to get home early.
And he was pissed that I was out for the night, instead of at home taking care of my daughter.
I had a two-and-a-half-year-old little girl named Anleigh .
Anleigh was the light of my life. The one ray of sunshine in my perpetually cloudy day.
Four years ago, when I was young and dumb, I was a broke college kid desperate for a way out of the hellhole of a life I’d had.
I’d decided to defy my father’s wish of taking over his candy store and had decided I was going to use my business degree to become a teacher.
I’d become so dead set on it that I hadn’t realized that my father had caught on to my plans—leaving the mail I’d received on the counter had been so stupid—until he was already finished ruining them.
One second I was a twenty-four-year-old woman with plans to become a teacher, and the next I was in debt up to my eyeballs.
My father, the man that was supposed to take care of me and love me unconditionally, had ruined me.
He’d taken out all kinds of loans in my name. He’d ruined my credit. And to make matters worse, he’d rented an apartment under my name, trashed it, and then ruined my chances of renting an apartment ever again while he was at it.
I was literally stuck.
I still had so much debt I was drowning and couldn’t see a way out.
So , one night, in a desperate attempt to feel something besides dread, I’d gone out with Gisela .
I’d gone home with a man at a bar.
I’d woken up in his bed.
The moment that my eyes had opened, he’d kicked me out, and I’d been left to do the walk of shame in a neighborhood that I was incredibly unfamiliar with.
I’d had to walk to the bus stop which was miles away.
Luckily , Gisela had her phone on, and she’d come to pick me up.
That night I’d lost my virginity, my cell phone, and what was left of my will to live.
I’d actually been so far gone that in the next few weeks I’d contemplated suicide.
I would’ve probably done it, too, had Gisela not forced me to take a pregnancy test.
She’d noticed in the last month that I’d changed a lot.
I had, but not for the reasons she’d been thinking.
But I’d decided to humor her and take the test and had been flabbergasted to find out that I was pregnant.
That was when I’d realized that my life had become more difficult.
One , I had no clue who the father was. Two , I had no clue how to find him again. Three , my father was going to kill me.
Four …well, four, I had to figure out how to keep a tiny human alive in the midst of everything that I was going through.
Truthfully , if there was one thing in the world that I didn’t want to do, it was bring a baby into the situation that I’d found myself in.
I’d been considering adoption, even though it broke my heart to think about giving my baby up when my dad had again found out.
This time, it was because he’d used his friends to spy on me to find out why I was having appointments that were keeping me from working.
Those same friends of his had looked into my patient files at the hospital, and they’d shared with him that I was pregnant.
That had been the last time I’d tasted freedom.
Now , I had to sneak around to get that freedom.
Kind of like tonight.
I’d intended to go out and do something fun with my friends, something I absolutely never did, and dropped her off with my elderly neighbor that adored her.
I’d intended to get back before my father came home from the candy shop, but I’d failed.
“ You okay?” Gisela asked.
I looked at all the Christmas lights as we passed by.
Everything in Hooker , Oklahoma , was beautiful at this time of year. The threat of the pending snowstorm made everything else feel just…magical.
Too bad I had to go home to a horror show.
“ I’m fine,” I lied. “ Thank you for the ride.”
She stayed silent as she turned down the street that would lead me to my father’s place.
My jail cell.
“ You’re welcome,” she said softly.
Gisela was the best.
She knew as much about my situation as she could, since I tried to keep almost all of it from her.
She knew about Anleigh . She loved Anleigh like she was her own.
But she had no clue the hell I had to go through every day when it came to dealing with my controlling father.
She only knew the public persona of my father. The face that he put on for the world to see when he was being observed. She didn’t know about the man behind that mask.
Didn’t know that I would walk into that house, the only one on the block not decorated with Christmas lights, and probably receive a punch straight to the face for leaving tonight when I shouldn’t have.
“ Love you, Gisela ,” I said as I got out.
“ Love you, too,” she called as I closed the door quietly.
I didn’t want to alert Mrs . Rawls that I was home yet.
I had to go face the music with my father first.
Then , once I’d cleaned myself up, I would go get my girl.
Steeling my spine, I walked into the house and was unsurprised to find my father in his recliner, watching television.
“ Dinner’s not ready,” he stated.
“ You weren’t supposed to be home tonight, so I didn’t make any,” I replied. “ You told me that you were ordering in and wouldn’t be home until very late.”
His eyes flicked to meet mine, and I knew I’d said the wrong thing.
Him getting out of his chair, oh so slowly, proved that fact.
“ Just because I said that doesn’t mean that you don’t cook for us anyway,” he replied carefully, now walking toward me.
I didn’t bother to run.
Couldn’t .
There was nowhere to go.
I had no money.
No way to keep a roof over my and my daughter’s head.
The blow came.
I knew it was coming, and still wasn’t prepared for it.
The back of his hand met my face, right under my eye, and made contact so hard that my head spun. I fell to the ground, pain bursting to life as I tried and failed to clear my blurry eye.
“ You have responsibilities, Merriam ,” he hissed.
I did.
I knew I did.
Fuck .
“ I’m sorry,” I lied.
I wasn’t sorry.
If I could poison his food and kill him, I’d still manage to screw myself.
The only thing that was keeping a roof over our heads was my dad’s tenacity in making a failing candy business work, and his refusal to give up.
That was, after all, why he’d ruined my life.
He thought that I could help him make it work.
I couldn’t.
There was no saving the business.
But he refused to see that and was taking me down with him.
“ Where is your daughter?” he asked calmly.
I hated him.
I hated him so much.
“ She’s at Mrs . Rawls ,” I answered. “ Keeping her company for the night.”
“ You mean, watching her so you can go waste our hard-earned money on stupid shit you don’t need,” he said.
I hadn’t wasted any money.
I didn’t have any money.
The only thing that I had was what the government gave me. I had money on my food stamps card. I had free healthcare for Anleigh .
And that was it.
He didn’t give me money to live.
I bought the groceries for the house.
I cooked.
I worked as many hours as necessary.
What I didn’t do is get a paycheck with money to burn.
The money I’d gotten to pay for tonight was from Mrs . Rawls .
The only time I ever got to go out to eat was when Gisela took me out.
“ I didn’t waste any money, I promise,” I said.
He scoffed. “ Go get your daughter and go to bed.”
Never Anleigh .
He’d never called her by her name before.
He wasn’t the nice grandpa that you saw all over the internet.
Hell , he’d never even held her.
Anleigh seemed to instinctively know to stay away from him, too.
Not once had she tried to go to him.
“ Okay ,” I said as I stood up.
If I went fast, the redness of my face wouldn’t be as noticeable as it would if I gave my face time to settle in with the bruising.
Rushing out of the house, I ignored the bite of cold that assaulted me—yet another reminder that I needed a damn coat, and so did Anleigh —and hauled ass to Mrs . Rawls’s door.
Mrs . Rawls was a rather new addition to our neighborhood.
Her husband had died a couple of years ago, and the house she’d been living in had been too hard for her to keep up. So her grandkids had found her a new place that was closer to the eldest granddaughter. A granddaughter that lived three houses down and had a daughter Anleigh’s age.
I loved all of them, but had to keep my distance to ensure that they didn’t cotton on to my reality.
Honestly , I wouldn’t have even taken Mrs . Rawls up on her offer to watch Anleigh had she not caught me arguing that I ‘didn’t have a babysitter’ with Gisela in the driveway earlier.
Mrs . Rawls opened the door before I could reach it to knock and smiled at me.
She was a rather plump woman with a ready smile, rosy cheeks, and the most calming presence that just made you want to sink into her arms.
This was the kind of grandparent that Anleigh deserved.
Not one like my father, who was a disgrace to male kind.
“ You’re back early,” she said with a smile. “ Missed your baby, did ya?”
I always missed my baby.
The hours and hours that I had to work at the candy shop made me hate myself.
I wanted to spend some time with Anleigh , but my father required me at the store for a solid eight hours a day, every day. On the days that daycare wasn’t available, I got to bring her to work with me. But even then, Dad required her to stay in the back, unseen.
“ I did,” I said. “ She’s my little sidekick, and I don’t know how to function without her.”
Mrs . Rawls stepped back and opened her door wide. “ Get on in here. Do you want some cake?”
I knew I shouldn’t.
Dad would only want to hit me all over again if I took too long to come back.
But I did it anyway.
Glancing at my daughter that was asleep on the couch, not a worry in the world, I headed to the small kitchen and took a seat.
“ Chocolate cake cures the soul,” she said.
I eyed the chocolate cake and said, “ I’ll take the whole thing.”
Mrs . Rawls laughed.
If only she knew I wasn’t joking.
My soul was battered and bruised. It might take the whole thing to fix it.