Page 11 of Stone Rules

I sigh with relief. “Thank you, Ethan.”

His eyes soften at my use of his first name. “I’ll be in touch in a week or so with what I can dig up. Would you mind letting yourself out?” He nods to the ass prints on his desk. “I have a bit of cleaning up to do before my next appointment.”

I giggle. “Sure thing. Bye . . . Stone.”

He gives me an eye roll before hitting the button that unlocks the door.

I walk down the hallway towards reception when I hear him call out behind me. “Hey, Tate?”

I smile before turning around. “Yeah?”

“Why the unicorn?”

I open my mouth to feed him whatever bullshit I’ve told every other guy who asks about my tattoo. But what comes out surprises the hell out of me. What comes out is as close to sharing a truth about myself as I ever have with a man. “For protection.”

He studies me for a second before disappearing back into his office.

Chapter Five

My body slices through the water almost effortlessly as my arms and legs gently propel me from one end of the pool to the other. I’ve always loved swimming. It’s not as punishing on my body as running, and the water offers a layer of protection. A bubble no one else can penetrate. It’s quiet. Peaceful. Serene.

Today, however, my protective bubble is being infiltrated by my mother’s awful words from the journal entry I read yesterday. I kick my feet harder, quickening my pace in an attempt to leave my thoughts in my wake.

It’s a futile effort. No matter how hard I swim, I can’t keep the demons away and my mind wanders back to the horrible day I lost my mother. Not the day of her funeral; not even the day I found out she died—those were just circumstances of her pitiful life. The day I lost my mother was that dreadful day in August of 2000.

“Mommy, why do I have to do it again?” I whine, tired of pretending like I’m spilling a glass of milk for a paper towel commercial.

“Because the nice man wants you to do it, Charlie.” She pulls me aside and whispers sternly to me. “Did you see all those other pretty girls out in the waiting area? We didn’t have to wait out there like they do because Mommy is a star. You want to be a star, too, don’t you baby? Well, here is your chance. But you have to do as the man says.”

“Okay, Mommy.” I kiss her cheek and walk back over to the fake kitchen in the studio. I glance back at the woman I love. The woman I idolize. I would do anything to be like her. Everywhere she goes people want her autograph. They want to talk to her. Shake her hand. They want to be her. And this is my chance. Anything to make her and Daddy proud of me.

The man telling me what to do gets a look on his face like someone gave him a double-scoop of chocolate chip ice cream with extra sprinkles on top. “Ms. Anthony, how would you like to play the child’s mother? I could guarantee her the gig.”

I watch my mother’s mouth open. And close. And open again. And little do I know, what happens after this will change the course of my life. “Hermother?” She laughs haughtily, straightening her pencil skirt. “I’m barely thirty, I could hardly pass for her mother.”

The man laughs, along with another man standing next to him. But they cover their mouths so that it’s not very loud. But I hear it anyway. I think Mommy does too, because she gets that look on her face like when I leave the refrigerator door open.

The man clears his throat. “Uh, sorry, ma’am. I just thought it’d be great to actually have the mother and child share a resemblance. And if I do say so, this little one should be put in jail, ‘cause she downright stole your looks.”

Mommy balks at the man, saying words that normally she would cover my ears before saying. Grown up words that sound mean and even make her pretty face look ugly as she says them. Words she is yelling at the man, but then she turns her head and it seems like she’s yelling them at me. Her fierce hazel eyes burn into mine as she becomes someone I’ve never seen.

Then she stomps across the room and grabs me by the elbow. “Come on, Charlie. We don’t have to put up with this shit.”

In the bright yellow cab on the way home, I cry. I think I’ve done something wrong. Something bad that made Mommy yell at those men. At me. I hug her and tell her I’ll do better next time, but she says there won’t be a next time. And she won’t look at me. She just stares out the window.

Back at our house, she makes me sit in a chair while she goes to the bathroom. When she comes out, she has flour on her nose and I wonder why she would have flour in her bathroom. She also has a pair of scissors. “Turn around,” she demands. “I’m giving you a haircut.”

“No, Mommy!” I squeal. “Then I won’t be pretty like you.”

“Charlie, turn around,” she says again with distant eyes.

“No, Mommy. Please don’t cut my hair.” I put my hands over my head to protect my hair from the sheers coming closer to my long locks.

She reaches out and tugs my hair from my clenched fists, ripping it from my tiny clutches. “Daddy!” I scream. “Daddy!”

“Daddy isn’t here,” she says coldly. “And if I tell him what a bad girl you were at the audition and now again for me—if I tell him all of that, he won’t love you anymore either.”

I shake my head from side to side, dodging her hands as they try to grip my hair. I turn my head away from her and pull my knees up to my tummy, scrunching as tightly into a ball as I can get. I wish and pray it will all just go away. That it is just a bad dream. A bad dream where mommies don’t love their daughters and where daddies fail to protect them.

---