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Chapter Five

Rosalie

Two Years Later

As I parkedmy navy blue boat of a car at the curb, I looked up at the place I was supposed to call home. The tan siding and cornflower blue shutters looked welcoming enough, but all I felt was dread. I had to practically drag myself out of my car just to walk into the house. Was this how my friends felt when they came home? I doubted it.

Things didn’t turn out the way I had planned. The summer after graduating high school, my stepfather lost his job and was home all the time. I wasn’t even sure if he was really looking for work, but I had overheard my mother say something about how no one wanted to hire him because of what happened when he got fired. It had been two years and I still didn’t know why he was out of work.

To help support the family, I deferred my admission to Arizona State for two years and started working full time at the bank. My time at work was the only thing keeping me sane while I waited to start school. I kept reminding myself that I was in the home stretch—just a few more months, one summer, and then I’d be making the long drive across the country and to my new life.

I hardly saw Noelle anymore. My mother and stepfather had made my going anywhere but to work so difficult that I gave up trying. Luckily Noelle met a new guy and spent a lot of her free time with him so she didn’t notice I was stuck at home. The times we did talk, I never mentioned how bad things had gotten for me. I couldn’t. It was something I wanted to forget.

As I entered the house, Jim rushed over, towering over me. His face was stern and his eyes flashed with anger. I couldn’t help it, I immediately felt guilty. I had to have done something to make him so angry, I just didn't know what it was.

“Where’s the key?” he demanded.

“What key?” I asked, genuinely confused.

“The one for the lock you put on your door. You know I need access to your bedroom at all times.”

“No, you don’t,” I said, surprised at the words coming out of my mouth. “I’m paying for food, utilities, and most of our rent, I’m giving you and Mom money, I’m even paying your credit cards. I’m twenty and working full time to support the family instead of going away to college like I wanted to. Plus I’m an adult. I deserve a little privacy.”

My eyes filled with tears and I ran up the stairs to my room, quickly unlocked the door, then collapsed onto my bed. I couldn't take living there much longer. When he started coming into my bedroom at night, I knew I needed to do something to protect myself so I bought a lock.

On the floor next to my desk was the backpack I used to carry every day to school. I refused to put it away because it was the only thing that reminded me of the simpler times when I didn’t have to think about needing a lock on my bedroom door. Back when my only worry was whether Shane would catch me spying on him. Those days weren’t that long ago, but I really did miss them. And him.

Shane. Just thinking about him made me feel better. In the two years since I had last seen him, I built Shane up in my head even more. To me, he became a white knight ready to protect me no matter what. He barely knew me, but he took the blame for the pot. At least that was the story I told myself. That was the story I wanted to believe. I would probably never know the truth of why he took the blame that day.

* * *

The next dayas I was leaving for work, I heard my mother call for me from the kitchen.

“Rosalie, do you have a minute?”

Even though I was already running a little late, I couldn’t say no. As I entered the kitchen, I found my mother sitting at the kitchen table stirring honey into her coffee. Her face was empty of emotion, a look I was used to seeing when she wasn’t around other people to put her happy face on for.

“I’m on the way to work, is everything okay?” I asked.

“Jim told me about the lock on your door.” She paused to take a sip of her coffee. “It’s fine if you want to have one, but you have to give him the key.”

I stared at her for a moment while she stirred her coffee again, waiting to see if she would say anything more. She didn’t. I kept hoping the day would come where she would acknowledge how wrong life under this roof was for me. I knew I was wrong to hope that she could think of anyone other than herself, but I believed that, as my mother, she should show that she cared about me more than what was in her mug.

“Why does he need a key to my bedroom?” I asked.

I swallowed hard past the lump in my throat as I waited for the question to sink into my mother’s mind, for her to see how wrong it was that her husband wanted the key to her adult daughter’s bedroom. It didn’t faze her though.

“Jim just needs access to your bedroom,” she said with a shrug. “What if there was an emergency like a fire in the house?”

I stared at my mother for a minute, unable to understand how she could ignore the obvious.

“No, Mom,” I whispered, shaking my head. “This isn’t right.”

“Jim is expecting the key by the end of the day.”

Her attitude remained blasé during our conversation. She could have been talking about bagels from the grocery store or any other mundane thing and used the same tone.

I felt defeated. I blinked back tears as I left the house and sank into the spongey driver’s seat of my car. Things had been so hard the past couple of years at home. I was raw. Not a day went by where I wasn’t on the verge of tears. The only thing keeping me going was the ticking down of the clock for college to start. That was my escape from this hell.

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