4. Took So Much From Her
TOOK SO MUCH FROM HER
“My girl is home,” Carrie Lancaster said, rushing over and giving Skye a massive hug the minute she walked into her old family home.
Not like it’d felt much like a home to her.
Crap. Who was she kidding?
It was more a home to her in the two and a half years she lived there than the fifteen she’d lived with her biological parents.
And when they’d asked if they could adopt her? If she wanted to change her last name to theirs?
She’d shyly said yes. More so because she didn’t want to feel as if she was alone in the world.
She needed something to hold on to.
To let her believe that if she needed someone, they’d be there for her.
Becoming a Lancaster gave her that comfort that she never took advantage of.
Not until now.
Because now it was time to come home and find out what went wrong all those years ago.
How that fire started and killed her parents.
She just didn’t believe it was an accident, but no one was going to listen to a kid back then. If she was even thinking straight, and half the time, she didn’t think she was.
She knew what she knew about her parents and their lives though.
Their habits. Leaving an unlit cigarette in the ashtray and going to bed wasn’t one of them.
They sucked those things down until it was out in their fingers.
But when she was fifteen, she couldn’t remember any of those things. Not in her grief.
It wasn’t until years later when she’d looked into arson more.
That she decided it was time to write her crime fiction book.
But she went down a rabbit hole of information that sent her in another direction.
That gave her a bigger, stronger drive than her story goals.
It was time to do it all. To write her book. To write it about her life and what happened to her.
It’d still be fiction.
But to do that, she needed to know the full truth, not just what her brain was telling her what could be true.
Because maybe her gut was wrong. Maybe it was just as the reports said, but now as an adult with more knowledge and clearer thoughts, she wanted to be able to close that chapter once and for all.
“I am home. Though not to move back in. I’m sure you and Dad enjoy the peace and quiet here.”
“Nonsense,” her father said, coming in. She’d had a harder time calling Jim Lancaster Dad than she had calling Carrie Mom. “Come give me a hug too. It might be the only one I get this year.”
Skye laughed and went into his embrace, felt the big beefy arms from years of construction work hold her tight and let her know that even at close to sixty, he was still going to have her back.
She didn’t need to be his blood for him to give that support. It’d taken her years after moving out to realize that.
“That’s not true,” she said, laughing.
But it probably was.
“I hope you’re hungry. Dad has been smoking ribs for hours, then we’re going to throw burgers and sausage on the grill when everyone else gets here. I’m glad you came first.”
Which she’d done on purpose. She wanted to talk to them with no one around.
“There was a reason for it,” she said.
Her mother’s smile dropped. “Is everything okay? You’re not sick, are you?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’d tell you if I was. I just wanted to talk to you both about something.”
“Come into the living room then. Let’s get comfortable.”
It was times like this when she learned that not all households consisted of nonstop yelling as their form of communication.
What a shock that had been to her moving in.
She’d kept to her room, worried that she’d be in the way. That there’d be anger that Corbin had to move in with Tate, because, as a girl, she needed her own space.
There were other foster kids in the house sharing a room. But Tate and Corbin, they were able to keep their own space.
Until her.
But no one seemed to mind.
And when Brenna moved in the following year, she shared her room too, and by then, it didn’t bother her to not have her own calm space anymore like she’d always dreamed of living in her old house.
“What’s going on, Skye?” her mother asked.
“I don’t want you to read into this any more than it is. First, I’m going to start writing my book. I think I’ve let it spin in my head for years. Doesn’t mean it’s going to come out good or anything.”
“It will be wonderful,” her father said. “You write so well.”
A soft smile filled her face. They were the first two to read all her short stories in high school and in college. They always asked, she never offered.
Something her own parents had never been interested in.
“Thanks. I want to write about the fire.”
There was silence as her parents looked at each other. “What about it?” her mother asked.
“Is this like some kind of therapy to help you through?” her father asked.
“Maybe. I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking along those lines. It’s going to be fiction, but it will be based on what I went through. Can you guys tell me what you remember from that time? Most is a bit foggy for me.”
Though she’d found and read every article she could on it. And it wasn’t much.
As if no one cared about the family where the parents were most likely passed out in bed and had caused the fire that resulted in their death and her jumping out of a window and breaking her leg.
She was damn lucky she hadn’t broken her neck.
“There isn’t a lot to really say,” her mother said. “You know what happened and that the fire overtook the house fast. You lived there and said there was stuff everywhere.”
Because Jenny Murphy was a slob. Yes, there was crap everywhere. There always was.
But there weren’t newspapers under the ashtray. No papers at all.
She’d remember that because it wasn’t as if her parents read anything.
Yet they said that was the cause of the fire. A lit cigarette hanging off the edge and igniting a wrapper or paper under it.
Yep, there were food wrappers and cardboard around too. Empty cracker boxes, shipping boxes that her parents never broke down and left in the corner of the living room.
Close by where the fire started.
It made sense, to the outside. Even to her teenage brain.
But adult her just wanted to put it to bed.
“I know,” she said. “I just don’t know how much I believe it.”
“Why?” her father asked.
She shrugged. “Because my parents didn’t waste cigarettes any more than they did the last drop of beer in a can.”
“You said they’d both been drinking a lot that night.”
She laughed. A harsh sound. “Not a lot. Their normal.”
A case of beer in a night for her parents wasn’t much to them. That was a weekday night. On the weekends, a case and a half easily between the two of them.
“They still could have done it without thinking. Try not to go down that path, Skye. Survivor’s guilt is a hard one to get through.”
“I know. You’re right. Anyway, I’m working, doing the freelance thing and then going to start my book. I just thought maybe you could shed some light on it. If you think of anything else, will you let me know?”
“Of course,” her mother said.
“I’m here,” Corbin yelled. “Where is the brat? I heard Tate got a hug and I want one.”
She stood when Corbin walked into the back of the family room. His arms were open wide and she didn’t hesitate to go into them.
“How did you find out I gave Tate a hug?”
Corbin lifted her in the air and spun her around much like Tate had done yesterday.
“Ash told me. He was over last night. He said he saw you.”
It took everything she had not to tense hearing Ash’s name.
Just like she’d lain in bed last night thinking of him in uniform, the dirt and sweat on his face even in the cool end-of-October breeze.
“I see you two are still attached at the hip,” she said.
Corbin put her down. “Always. Even when we were in college.”
“He didn’t go to college after his two years, did he?” she asked.
Skye knew the answer to that, but she didn’t want anyone to think she’d kept tabs on her brother’s best friend.
She was hours away herself and only returning for holidays and summers until she graduated and got her first job.
“No,” her father said. “He came to work for me. School wasn’t really his thing, but Brooke made him go.”
“That sounds more like it,” she said.
Ash had always been more into sports, girls and parties.
He tried to pull her into that world of his many times, but she’d resisted.
She wasn’t much of a drinker. One a month if she was lucky.
Maybe it was living with two functioning alcoholics that made it hard for her to pick up a drink for anything more than a special occasion.
“Well, now he’s a fireman,” she said. “Does he still work with you?”
“Yep,” Corbin said. “He works two twenty-four-hour shifts and then when he’s off, he’s helping me out or working events at the barn, sometimes helping Clay at the mill.”
“Huh? What?”
“Skye,” her mother said, shaking her head. “I know I told you. Clay Ridgeway returned home a few years ago. He turned the orchard into a hard cider mill. It’s a pretty big operation, I guess. One of the old barns is now a wedding and events venue.”
“Oh yeah. I guess I forgot.”
She didn’t really focus too much on her old hometown news.
For years she wanted to forget everything about the place that took so much from her.
But then she realized it also gave her so much more in return.
“Yeah. So Ash is working all the time,” Corbin said. “If not with me, then with Clay. He checks in with his brother first and plans around that.”
“Sounds like he’s not the partier I remembered him to be.”
“Hey, did the party start without me?” Tate asked, coming in next.
“You got your hug yesterday,” she said when Tate marched over to her. But he picked her up and squeezed the air out of her again, causing her to laugh, along with everyone else in the room.
“I might not get another if I don’t take it,” Tate said. “Everyone coming today?”
“Keegan, Brenna and Holden should be here soon.”
The door opened and closed in the back again. It was like everyone was trailing in at once.
First Keegan, giving her a much lighter hug. He didn’t lift her, even if he could have easier than anyone else.
Keegan was the biggest and the quietest of the group, but the most protective on top of it.
Then Brenna ran in, her arms open, squealing like she had a week ago when she’d seen her sister.
Might as well let everyone have their moment and return the hug.
“What did I miss?” Holden asked, striding into the room.
“The last to arrive as always,” she said. Though Holden was in the Lancaster home before her. Since he was four. It took a lot longer for them to adopt him because things were tangled with his parents not signing off.
Holden’s was an adult adoption, but the truth was, other than Tate and Corbin, he’d spent the most amount of time in the Lancasters’ home.
Maybe she was a little jealous of that.
“Skye is handing out hugs,” Brenna said.
“Then where is mine?” Holden asked.
She freely went into her younger brother’s arms, then stepped out. “I’m officially all hugged out,” she stated firmly. “But I am hungry. I’m sure Mom has all sorts of snacks.”
“I do,” her mother said. “And I’ll get them. You all sit and talk.”
“I’ll help,” she said.
Her mother shook her head. “I want to tell you no, but you won’t listen.”
“Nope. I’m used to helping. You know that.”
She’d made sure that she took her turn in the Lancaster house. Cleaning, cooking, doing everything and anything they asked.
Hell, before they even asked.
It was still less than she’d done with her biological parents.
That was how she thought of them now.
It was hard for her to let go. Not emotionally.
She always felt she was a servant to them rather than a child.
A verbal punching bag who was born to them because maybe they were too careless for birth control.
The letting go part came in the form of her just being able to open up and let anyone in.
It took years for that, and thankfully, she hadn’t regretted one second of it.