Page 10 of Boundaries

I still hadn’t deciphered his fucking code by the time I got back home.

Fuck Mason McKenna. In fact, fuck all the McKenna boys of this world! They were all beautiful on the outside, but demons on the inside.

And as far as I was concerned, they could all kiss my denim-encased backside!

Two

When I arrived home, I was in a foul mood, the most annoying boy on the planet being the catalyst behind that state of mind. Mason’s behaviour had dropped-kicked me into reality. It was official, I hated Mason McKenna, and what the hell was my body thinking, reacting to his sleazy, hide-it-in-a-joke comments? He must have been doing it on purpose to mess with me. I wasn’t totally clueless about my sexual allure, but what I knew about physical attraction could have been written on a postage stamp.

Sure, I’d had my fair share of interest from boys at school, and a handful from the village, but I had never been that interested. I was a Taylor-Joy. I was supposed to be choosy. And anyway, I had Alex now. Yes, so far, we had only kissed, but we were taking it slow, and there was nothing wrong with that!

Adding to my annoyance, Jenna was sitting at the kitchen table wearing that same haunted expression I was sick of seeing. She was dressed in her go-to pale blue summer dress, her face free of make-up, looking so much younger than her years. I didn’t know if I wanted to shake her or hug her.

“Where’s Chrissy, Jenna?” I questioned as I threw myself into the chair opposite.

She remained completely still, the self-help book she’d taken to reading closed on the table; her hands rested close by. At least she was out and about. She spent most of her time in her room these days, pining after Nixon.

The house was quiet, my father would be out preparing the crops for the harvest next month and my mother had gone to Norwich to visit my gran. It wasn’t long until they went on holiday and then we’d have the house to ourselves for five weeks.

The busiest time of the year for my parents was the end of September onwards when the harvest began and so they always went away before then.

My family owned Orchard View Farm, and it was one of the largest arable farms in Yorkshire. We were now the leading supplier of food products to two major supermarkets. I had always thought the name of the farm ironic, considering it was named after the orchard located on Mr and Mrs McKenna’s land and not our own. We had no apple trees, just acres of flat-as-fuck fields. You could see for miles.

The second largest farm in the area, was Lamb Hill which belonged to the McKenna family. They dealt in livestock and animal husbandry, so were not in direct competition with us, unlike some of the smaller farms close by.

Apart from the dispute over the ownership of the meadow and pool, the only other beef Dad had (no pun intended) was when they allowed their cattle to wander onto our land and eat our produce. This added another bugbear to the already raging war about the boundary.

The kitchen was usually the busiest room in our house and it was the main place we socialised. We were a tight-knit family and the kitchen was my favourite place. The fact that there was also a massive refrigerator full of food in there was also a lure. I was small and slim, but I could put away the grub as much as my brother Mattie could.

Today it was clean and tidy, which suggested Sally, the lady who did our cleaning had already been in.

Jenna didn’t answer my question. Had she even heard me?

Withdrawing my iPhone from the pocket of my cut-offs, I purposefully dropped it onto the table. This caught my sister’s attention and her pale blue eyes locked on mine like two pools of sadness.

I noticed she fingered her wedding rings and that sent another twinge of frustration through me, my spine was rigid as I glared at her.

“Jenna,” I prompted, to rouse her from those thoughts that were no doubt Nixon-shaped.

She blinked. She was so pale and drawn, a shadow of her former self but it didn’t diffuse her beauty. Even with her blonde hair pulled up in a knotty mess on top of her head, she was stunning. She had such good bone structure. I loved photography and she was the perfect specimen to capture.

As I said, Jenna was the favourite out of all the Taylor-Joy children. Mum and Dad doted on her, even now as an adult. She was a miracle baby after all.

In her early twenties, my mother developed a tumour in one of her ovaries and was told she would never be able to have children. After a couple of years of marriage, Mum had miraculously fallen pregnant and was faced with a difficult decision; having the pregnancy terminated or allowing it to continue. The doctor explained that due to the position of the tumour, the chances of the baby surviving were below twenty percent. One of the options was to terminate the pregnancy.

The way my parents told the story was torturous, I couldn’t even begin to imagine how difficult it would have been to make that type of decision. The doctors did say that if she carried on with it, complications could indeed threaten both mother and baby. But they’d gone for it anyway and Jenna’s birth had astoundingly dislodged the tumour. Tests were carried out and the tumour was benign which meant nothing would have spread to any other organs. I think Dad also saw Jenna as her mother’s saviour in some way. He helped my mother polish that pedestal my sister sat on from time to time.

Growing up with the knowledge that I sat in my older sibling’s shadow hadn’t been that hard a pill to swallow. I knew my parents loved me, but I was just left to get on with it. It had always been that way. I’d even part-raised Chrissy, whilst Mattie had been left to fend for himself. That’s why he was more streetwise than the rest of us and could handle himself. When I first heard Mattie was gay, I was shocked as he was like our father, a burly guy who didn’t take shit from anyone. He’d come to blows with the McKenna boys in the past. He was the eldest at twenty-six.

Sometimes I felt sorry for Jenna, as she lived her life as the centre of attention but had never been allowed much freedom. She was viewed as the angel baby sent from heaven and had always been overprotected. My parents mollycoddled her but she seemed happy enough to remain in that gilded cage they had figuratively trapped her in. The rest of us were OK. If we ever needed them, our parents were there, most of the time.

Jenna was everything I was not; sweet-tempered, usually a definite glass-half-full girl with a contagious laugh and a blinkered view of the world. At least, she was before the shit with Nixon went down. I impatiently waited for that day when Jenna would realise the man was her kryptonite.

Today she was as delicate as crystal.

“Seth McKenna texted me to say Nixon is coming home,” she whispered softly. Her voice was like a song.

What the actual fuck! I swear to God, how I didn’t throw myself from my seat and hunt him down there and then was a miracle. Now I’d have to add Seth to my shit list. Maybe by the end of the day, I’d have all the McKenna family on there. This news added another dampener to the shit show that was my morning.

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