Two years ago
“Winter,” her father called to her, and she turned her head to look at him, her stomach dropping.
“Yes, Papa?” His face was impassive as ever.
She didn’t know what it was that had been changing lately but she wasn’t sure she liked it. Mama had been crying a lot, and her brothers had been gone more.
Something was different.
But she knew better than to ask questions.
“We leave in five minutes. Be ready.”
Leave?
With him?
They never went anywhere just them.
Everyone said that her father was a good man. Cared for his family. And to everyone else they looked like a normal family.
But there was a side to him that nobody saw. A side that only came out around her and Mama. A side that terrified her.
Her brothers knew of it, but they never stopped him, and she learned early on in life that her father didn’t like to be questioned. That the consequences were very severe if you showed any resistance.
She still had the scar on her hand from when she had been just five years old. It was a memory that she would never shake.
So as much as everyone thought that he was a great caring man, she knew better than to ask any questions.
It was best to talk to Mama.
When she wasn’t crying.
She hurried to shut her laptop and close her schoolbooks. Grabbing her jacket off the chair she shrugged it on, smiling over the photo of her and her grandmother that always sat on her nightstand.
It had been almost two years since she had passed, and there wasn’t a day that went by that she didn’t miss her.
Missed everything about her.
Even her worrying.
But now she was eighteen and she had her whole life ahead of her, and she knew that her grandmother would be proud of her.
She just had two more weeks of school then she would be done, and she could go anywhere.
Hurrying down the stairs, she made it to the bottom right as her father walked in with his suit jacket on.
“Where are we going?” She asked, and he frowned down at her.
“Shhh baby,” her mother called and she turned to give her a hug, the slight smell of alcohol filling her nose, and she frowned.
Her mother always seemed to be drinking these days. When she and her father weren’t fighting that was.
