Lucina #2
I tell Ivy I’ll be right back, slamming the car door shut.
The front door to the cottage swings open and Catherine stands in the doorway with a hand on one hip and a sour look on her face.
Her dirty blonde hair is wrapped in a tight bun at the nape of her neck, and her usually fair skin is nearly crimson.
Ivy sighs, “Red is not her color.”
“Leave her alone, Ivy,” I plead, “I hate when she gets all twitchy and agitated.”
“I think that’s her natural state, Cin.”
If Ivy is fire, Catherine is ice, and whenever they’re within ten feet of each other, I just pray the ground I stand on stays intact.
Catherine spares me a single glance before her eyes narrow on Ivy. “You better park that piece of trash somewhere else, Ivanna,” she hisses.
I can hear Ivy’s teeth grinding, but instead of biting back, she cranks the volume on the radio loud enough to shake birds from the nearby trees. Catherine’s face blooms bright red, and I barely catch the front door before she can slam it shut. Ivy’s satisfied smile falls when I glare back at her.
That was mild for Ivy, considering I’ve seen her dig fingernails into the tops of her thighs to keep from ripping Catherine’s hair out at the root.
Truthfully, it’s the least of what she deserves, but it’s simply not worth the battle.
Ivy just can’t help herself sometimes. She knows what Catherine and her husband have put me through, and her anger is too loud to be silent.
Ivy doesn’t do quiet, she does vengeance.
There is a scowl on Catherine’s taut face as I cross the wooden threshold.
Every time I step into this house, it’s nauseating.
It’s always cold, even in the summer, and the creak of the wood floor sends shivers down my spine.
Each room gets smaller and smaller the longer I stand in it, as if the walls might just shrink-wrap me in between them and then I’d be lost in this horrible place forever.
“I just need to grab a few things and we’ll be gone,” I promise, making my way down the hall, counting my steps the whole way. A quick peek into the room across from mine tells me Jude isn’t home. Good.
Catherine’s shrill voice slices holes through my eardrums. “You’d better hurry! If your father comes home and sees that filthy piece of trash parked in the front yard—”
“Not my father.”
She storms down the hall after me, never listening to a damn thing I say, I don’t even know why I bother. “Lucina Carmine, I mean it,” she starts as she turns the corner into my room, her dark eyes wide in anger. “Your father will—”
“He’ll what?” I throw my hands in the air, anger churning in my gut like hot bubbles of fire shooting to the surface. “What will he do, Catherine? Kill me?” Her mouth snaps shut. I start shoving random things into my bag. “He’d never kill his favorite burden; I’m too much fun to terrorize.”
Silence.
“And he’s not my father.”
Catherine has a crippling addiction to selective truths, a keen ability to lock away memories that aren’t pretty…
facts that she refuses to acknowledge the truth in.
Her beliefs about this family, and the world for that matter, are so fragile that she’s afraid to hear anything that contradicts them.
I think if Catherine were given the truth on a silver platter, she’d turn it away if it didn’t look appetizing enough.
She’d rather live in a world of her creation—of her delusion.
I’ve learned to push the anger down, to swallow its bitter taste, because when it comes to her, it’s just not worth it. But my skin is burning, reeling with the need to make her feel even a fraction of how she makes my insides scream—
No.
I force it back—deep down, along with everything else that will likely destroy me if it ever were to surface. “I’ll be gone before he gets home,” I tell her. “And I can move faster if you leave me alone.”
Catherine is quiet for a moment longer, and my hands still, my bag full.
“Gladly,” she hisses and slams my door shut.
The worn frames on the wall rattle, and a familiar silence follows.
An empty, hollow kind of quiet that I’ve grown to find peace within.
I breathe deep, my eyes falling shut, my fingers gripping the straps on my bag so hard, my knuckles turn white.
I choke down the rest of my temper, forcing it into the red sea churning within me.
I remember when the first drop of that ocean fell.
I was too young to understand what it was.
Back then, it felt good to choke it down; to condense it and force it back, but now it’s getting hard to swallow.
Now it claws its way up my throat like a flame that’s grown legs and a mind of its own.
Searching for whoever is responsible for ignoring its desire to burn.
That would be me.
I exchange my baggy clothes for an emerald bikini, frayed jean shorts that fall to my mid-thigh, and old sandals that probably won’t make it through the summer.
Then I stand in front of the mirror, pleasantly surprised when the waves and curls brushing against my lower back haven’t fallen victim to the humidity yet.
I picture my real mother having my wild curls, and I picture my father with hazel eyes tucked behind long, heavy lashes.
I imagine they’d smile at my flaws; the parts of me that can’t be ripped away.
Parts of me that I got from them. Divots and skin creases that make me undeniably and indisputably theirs.
Wherever they are and whoever they may be.
Did they know they were leaving me with monsters?
Catherine and Merrill got small stipends from the government for taking in an orphan, and that money is the only reason they kept me, but Gods, sometimes I wish they’d left me there.
Be grateful, they’d say, even when my bedroom door was ripped off its hinges and even when the sleeves of my shirt weren’t long enough to cover the bruises on my wrists.
Be grateful we didn’t let you freeze in the late winter snow.
But…maybe they should have.