Page 101 of Raise Hell

“My secretary,” he replies a little too quickly. “Goodbye, Evangeline.”

I’ve known since I was about ten years old that my father routinely cheats on my mother. That has to be part of why she spends most of her day blitzed out of her mind, because that’s better than confronting real life.

With both of our parents caught up in their own bullshit, Olivia and I had to take care of ourselves.

We weren’t always successful.

I don’t let myself think about the uncle who would sneak into our rooms at night, first hers and then mine. How he would touch and poke in places that nobody had ever touched us before. Or when I’d heard Olivia screaming in the middle of the night and went running to her because I knew I was the only other person in the house.

Or what I had to do to finally make it stop.

Olivia had been too scared to tell the truth. She barely spoke a word as the paramedics loaded my uncle on the gurney and carried him away. I’d hit him hard enough in the head with a poker to put a dent in his skull.

When he convinced my father that I attacked him for no reason, my lack of remorse is what convinced my father to let me be sent away to juvie.

My only regret is that I wasn’t there the next time she needed me.

It won’t happen again.

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