Page 9 of Dark As Coal

Chapter 2

Adeline

Glancing at the clock, I sighed.

Normally, I would be heading to the clubhouse, but since tonight was family dinner night at the clubhouse, the club girls weren’t allowed to be there.

However, if they lived there, then they had to stay in their rooms.

And if they ventured out of their rooms, they had to have permission from Asher to do so.

He wouldn’t be giving it unless it was an emergency.

And so far, no emergency had warranted any of the girls being allowed out of their rooms.

Thankfully, I didn’t have that problem.

Yes, I had a room at the clubhouse, but I also had a home.

I still hated everything about my mother, but what she did for me, I couldn’t hate her all that much. It happened six months after my eighteenth birthday.

I was in my room at the clubhouse doing schoolwork when someone knocked on my door.

Priest had let me know that there was this lawyer type of looking person standing outside the gate and he was asking for me.

As I walked through the clubhouse, a lot of thoughts ran through my mind as to what this could be about.

And none of those thoughts even came close to what fell out of the man’s mouth. He was indeed a lawyer.

My mother had gone through something similar to me when she was younger, and just like me, she had vowed not to end up like her own mother.

However, she got hooked on drugs, and without a support system, those drugs had taken over.

But they didn’t take over while she was pregnant with me, nor did they take over while she set up an account when I was only a couple of months old.

That account was where she had the child support payments placed in; it was also an account that had measures in place that I was the only one who could access it. And that wouldn’t be until I was eighteen.

Also, another measure was put into place that the balance could not be revealed to anyone until I turned eighteen.

My mother couldn’t access it. Ever. No matter what she did, she wouldn’t have access to it.

The account had gotten a check every month for a thousand dollars. And since the account was a trust fund of sorts, it accrued interest.

My jaw had dropped when I saw the bank statement on it.

It was only after talking to Piney in detail that I came up with something I really wanted and used that money by placing a healthy deposit on a little farmhouse that sat on five acres of wooded property.

Sighing, I looked up at the clock on the far-right wall. One more hour after the parent-teacher conferences were done would I get to go home, change clothes, curl up on my white fluffy couch, have a glass of wine, and watch one of my favorite shows.

“It was great to meet you, and if you could work with him on his r’s and his s’s I think it will help tremendously,” I told Joshua’s mother.

Joshua’s mother smiled at me and nodded, “Thank you for that, we will.”

Once I saw them out of my classroom, I sat back down and waited for my next parents to show up.

I wasn’t sure how much time had passed but when I heard, “You're Olivia’s teacher?” I looked up at that voice and at the man it belonged to and nodded.

I smiled, “Yes, and you are?”

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