Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 100478 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100478 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
“Now, I got all this from my grandfather’s attorney, so some of it is pretty sketchy. He could tell me what little he knew but not the whys.”
“What happened?”
“Same old story, told a thousand times. She planned to give me up for adoption, but when I was born, decided to keep me. She stayed here with my grandparents for a while, then found a job and moved closer to Toronto. That failed, and she came back. Then another opportunity and we were gone. Then back. It continued until I was five.” I ran my hand over the mantel. “I have vague recollections of being here. Sitting by the fireplace, hearing my grandfather talk. The arguments between him and my mother. My grandmother in the kitchen. Just fleeting, fast moments. Nothing concrete. I wasn’t even sure who the people were until recently.”
“Oh?” Ava hummed the question.
“Too many people have come and gone from my life. Most of them are just shadows of memories—especially when I was little. One memory I have, though…” I rolled my shoulders as the anxiety built. “One day, there was a huge fight. I remember the shouting. It scared me, and I hid under the bed. My mother came in and dragged me out, tossing me into the car. There was more yelling, and my grandmother was crying, my grandfather trying to open the car door, but my mother drove away. It was the last time I was here until now.”
“Wow. Where did you go?”
I grimaced. “I have no idea, Ava. The list is endless. My mother—she was unable to settle anywhere for very long. Ever. I can’t tell you the string of cities and places we lived. Never more than a few months. Six, I think, was the longest. The number of men that came and went. The long list of promises of ‘This time, it will be different,’ I went through. My mother was distrustful of everything and everyone.” I pushed off the mantel, pacing around the room. “We lived in apartments, trailers, run-down houses, fancy places, hotels, motels, even tents. Whatever broken-down piece of shit she was driving at the time. An old RV for a while. Endless changes of addresses. Most of the time, living hand to mouth. We’d land somewhere new, and she’d get a job and make the same promise that we’d found the right place. But invariably, we’d pack up and be gone in the middle of the night, leaving behind debts, lies, and little pieces of a broken life.”
I stopped in front of Ava, tugging a hand through my hair.
“What about school? Friends?”
I barked out a laugh. “I have no idea how many schools I went to and got pulled from. I never finished a grade—ever. Because of my age, they’d just push me ahead. I never made any friends. There was no point. I knew we’d be gone before too long.”
“How did you survive?” she asked.
“By relying on myself. I learned to cook basic foods. Toast or eggs if we had them. I would sneak a buck out of her purse and get a box of macaroni and cook it. Hide it so I had something to eat for a couple of days since most of the time, she forgot about that sort of thing. I washed my clothes in the bathtub—if we had one. I went to the local library and taught myself. I learned to cope. The few times we had a place that was decent, it was usually because she met someone—” I held up my fingers in quotations “—‘special.’”
I shook my head. “They never lasted. She drove them away with her paranoia, distrust, and demands. Then the cycle would start again.”
Ava reached for my hand that was clasping and unclasping on my thigh. She pulled me onto the chair beside her. “Keep talking,” she pleaded.
“When I was sixteen, I had enough. She had enough. She told me it was time to be on my own. I remember laughing and telling her I’d been on my own for years. We argued and I left.”
“Where did you go?”
“I did what I knew best, Ava. All I knew was to be a rolling stone. I went from place to place, picking up skills and trades. I worked in car washes, construction sites, restaurants, whatever I could do to find work. Landscaping, picking crops, anything. I worked all around Canada, in the States, I even went to Australia, working my way there on a boat. I stayed there for a year, doing odd jobs. I came back to Canada and got my GED.” I offered her a sad smile. “Probably the oldest graduate in the country.”
She squeezed my hand. “Still, you got it.” She paused. “Why didn’t you come here to see your grandparents?”
“Two reasons. One, they were really just a dim memory. I had no idea where this place was or who the people I remembered were. They could have been one of the hundred places we stayed at.” I huffed out a long exhale. “Two, my mother told me her parents kicked us out and that they didn’t want either of us. I was about twelve and asked about them. Then later, she told me they had both died. She told me we had no family.”