Plenty of cars were already parked in my mom's front yard and along the side street leading to the Taylors' farm. They were our quiet neighbors who had always kept to themselves. I scanned all of the vehicles and recognized his car right away. He'd been texting me all day to let me know that he'd arrived in town and needed to see me.
How dare he ask to see me, after all of my begging him to leave me alone? Not even Dad's death could force him to give me a break.
Evie captured my shaking hand and firmly gripped it. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
“Will you tell me who the person is so I can—”
“I'll be fine.”
She nodded but didn't look satisfied at all. I more hoped she hadn't told Jay or Pipe about my molester being a family member. Jay was already on edge, swerving in and out of traffic as well as barking an annoyed remark anytime one of us said anything to him. Once we got to the house, he'd grumbled the entire way to the front porch.
“This is a bad idea.” Jay squeezed my other hand.
In my empty living room where I'd shivered in fear as a child many times from my mom's rage or even the lonely nights when I sank in confusion at what I'd done with him, I dreamed of some savior swooping down from the heavens and just taking my body away. Now I stood in the same living room, holding hands with Evie and Jay. They flanked me like guards and walled me into protection without even understanding why they protected me themselves. Pipe got in front as if the first line of defense and with all of their gestures and worried expressions I knew, in that moment, that I was loved.
I don't know if this is what normal feels like, but this is what I always want to experience. Whatever this sensation is, I love it.
I had no doubt that my fantastic three would be there for me as much as I needed. I didn’t deserve it and had done nothing for their love, but I relished in it just the same. No one could break me with them around, and if he tried, I knew my group would help me put the tattered pieces of me back together again.
How do I keep them?
“Where's everybody at?” Evie asked me.
“When there are a whole lot of people and it's a breezy day, Mom has everybody sit in her garden. They should all be in the back.”
Jay stopped me before I could guide them all to the back door. “Don't you think we should wait until you come down from your high before seeing your mom?”
“She won't notice.” I put on the shades Evie had bought me at the gas station. “All I have to do is nod and say yes, and it will be normal as usual. Besides, she's dealing with Dad's death. Although they divorced a few months ago, she was still in love with him.”
Jay formed his lips into an angry line but said nothing else.
“This is freaky.” Pipe pointed to the wall.
A large shelf rested in front of him. My mom's and my dead cats throughout the years decorated the shelf. There were twenty little stuffed corpses in all. Evie and Jay exchanged glances that made me uneasy. I tried to step back and study the view as if I was a stranger, checking out the shelf of dead cats for the first time.
I guess this is a bit odd.
Chuckles escaped my mouth. My high brought the humor out the situation. Mom had put elaborate outfits on our dead cats—lacey dresses, velvet short sets, pinstripe suits, and even beaded gowns, all with matching hats, canes, and cloth shoes. The dates of their births and deaths read on tiny gold-plated plaques with a paw print on the side of their names.
Pipe yanked out his phone and snapped several pictures. “You're telling me that they were all alive and your mom had them stuffed?”
“Yes.”
“And this is just…a hobby or what?” He took a few more pictures.
“My aunt is a taxidermist. I didn't even know that stuffing our dead pets was weird until I had my first slumber party, and all of the girls screamed when they came into the living room.”
“I’m posting this on my Instagram. I mean, one does not walk next to a shelf with well-dressed dead cats and not take a picture to share with the world.”
On the other side of the cats was a fireplace that we never used. A huge mantel hung over it and held all of my mom’s and my pageant trophies. There'd been so many, Dad had built several more shelves above the mantel to hold more of them. Mom and I pretty much looked alike. I could see it even better in these pictures. If her photos hadn’t been in black and white, then surely people would’ve been confused at which one of us it was holding our trophy.
“How many beauty pageants were you in?” Jay asked.
I cringed. “So many I hate talking about it.”
“I don't know what trips me out more, the dead cats or the way you’re smiling in those beauty pageant pictures. It's like you're forcing yourself to grin through pain.” Pipe put his phone up.
I guess my beauty pageant pictures won’t make Instagram.
“Well, I was definitely forcing myself to smile during the torture.” I towed Jay and Evie down a dark hall. The ceiling light must've needed to be changed. Usually Mom kept one on regardless of whether it was day time or not. Today, it was just shadows and blackness.
Pipe followed us down the darkened passageway. “I'm starting to think Jay has a point. Maybe we should wait until we come down from our highs. I mean, the stuffed cats were freaky, and now we're going through this gloomy hallway. It's like some sort of horror flick. It's like Norman Bates meets that reality show, Toddlers and Tiaras. I’m just feeling evil spirits radiating from the wall. I’m sensitive to things like that.”
Evie tapped him on his shoulder. He jumped and shrieked. She did her best to hold in her laughter. “Pipe.”
“Y-yes.”
“Breathe in and out,” she whispered. “Think through the paranoia. You're just tripping right now, nothing else.”
“Everything is okay?” he asked.
“Yes, you’re with friends.” She held his hand as well as mine. “You’re just having a bad head trip right now. Come back to us.”
“So there were never dead cats in gaudy clothes?” Pipe hooked his arm around her free one and frowned.
“Umm…well the dead cats were real,” she admitted.
“And the scary beauty pageant pictures?”
“Hey, they weren’t that bad,” I said.
“Just breathe and forget about the cats, Pipe.” Jay tensed on my right as we left the darkened passageway and a glass door greeted us. It led out to the back yard, and I could see a few of my family out there in chairs.
Our house sat on five acres of land, so the yard was huge. Platters of food covered a long table in the center. Several relatives lounged in chairs scattered throughout the space, chatting and nibbling their food on small plastic plates. I spotted my mom farther off in the right corner, surrounded by all five of my aunts.
“Okay, here we go.” Evie released my hand. The urge soared through me to grab it back, but I remembered that she hated for us to touch her in public.
It's enough that she even came down here with me. I won’t push her anymore.
Jay opened the door. The hinges squeaked, and everyone's attention turned to us.
“Cynthia!” Mom shot up from her seat and dashed toward me.
It took everything in me to not roll my eyes and groan. Mom loved drama, especially when an audience surrounded her. A pink dress with a rose print at the top clung to her slim frame. She rushed to me with open arms. It was so unlike her usual bored welcomes to me. However, due to the audience, it was now time for Mom to play the stricken and widowed mother.
“I worried so much. You didn't call me when you got in.”
“I'm sorry, Mom.”
She hurried to me with swinging arms, and then barely two feet in front of me, she gasped and swayed back. “Oh God. I just can’t deal with all of this. I just can’t. God, take me now. Just take me.”
My Uncle Anthony jumped up from his chair and grabbed her just as she fell back. “Oh, Dorothy. Are you okay?”
“Why
did your father have to go?” Tears fell from her eyes. Her words were squeaks amidst sobs.
I tightened my grasp on Jay, even more thankful that he, Evie, and Pipe were there. I'd always been the odd one in my family. My relatives gave me space and didn't come around to talk to my mom and me much. At awkward events like this, I remained in a darkened corner, hoping no one would come up to offer some forced conversation that neither one of us cared to pursue. Mom enjoyed the spotlight anyway, so no one ever noticed the little girl sitting in the dark corner and holding her dolls.
“What am I going to do? Where does this leave me?” Mom wrung her closed fists in the air. More tears streamed down her face. Inside, dread flowed through my system, causing nervous little bubbles to bounce in my stomach and set me on edge.
Anybody just tuning into this scene would’ve thought that my mother actually loved my father, and that they had this beautiful relationship based on commitment and joy. It was the furthest thing from the truth. My dad worked hard and went on lots of business trips. Mom went out with men while he was gone. A few times, I spied it through my bedroom window—her getting in and out of strange men’s cars, her wicked kisses under the moonlight by guys I never saw before, and once I remembered them arguing about her being pregnant and how it would ruin their marriage if she didn’t get an abortion. I never had a brother or sister, so I assumed she did and that the child was not by my father. Dad handed her divorce papers the day after I graduated high school. He’d been revising his life ever since and only talked to her when he had to.
“He was the love of my life!” Mom screamed. “Why, God, did you take him so soon?”
“Dorothy, you're going to be okay. It's going to be all right.” More of my uncles got up to hold their sister. She was the baby out of ten siblings.
“Oh, Cynny, baby,” Mom wailed and stared at me.
“Yes, Mom?”
“Please get me some water.”
Evie frowned, but thankfully remained quiet. I was sure in her home when she came to see her mom, she probably got a hug and a warm welcome. The only time Mom hugged me was when cameras were around. Important cameras.
“I can get the water,” Evie offered.
“No way. I'll be right back, and when Mom calms down, I'll introduce you.” I let go of Jay, turned around, rushed back to the house, and entered the kitchen. Within five minutes of my being home, she'd already managed to make Dad's death all about her. I’d assumed she would take a break from the spotlight and let it shine on Dad for a few minutes. I was so utterly wrong, it was depressing me.
I can't stay here too long. Thank God I’m not sober or I’d be crying right now.
If Dad was here, he would've immediately understood. When they were married, he made excuses all the time to escape Mom's gatherings. He was always running some odd errand or busy doing something that kept him away from her.
I'll sit out there for fifteen minutes and then say that I'm too tired to stay. She'll want me to spend the night in the house, but I'm going to put my foot down and demand that I get to stay with Jay in the hotel.
I reached for a glass in the cabinet. Mom asked for water, but I'd been making her drinks long enough to understand she meant a half glass of vodka, ice, and then water to bring it up to the rim. I’d been understanding that interesting fact about her since my tweens. We all had to maintain appearances. My role was to remain the pretty daughter who did what she was told and nothing else.
“Cynthia.” That deep voice sounded behind me. I knew who it was without turning around. That same voice crept into my thoughts every day whether I yearned for it or not.
How did he get in here without me hearing him? He wasn’t outside. Maybe he came from downstairs. Was he in my old bedroom? Oh God.
“Cynthia?”
“Please don't do this here.” I got the tall container with flour written on the front, brought it to the counter, and pulled the well-hidden bottle of vodka out of the center. The liquid waved back and forth in the bottle as my fingers trembled.
“Can we talk?” he asked.
Is he going to let me out of here without touching me?
“I can't. I have to get back to my boyfriend.” I spilled some of the vodka on the counter, stopped pouring, and wiped the tiny drops up. Footsteps sounded behind me. I turned around.
“Let's go upstairs and talk.” Only three feet in front, he towered over me. “Did you know that your old bedroom still looks the same?”
His suit fit his huge frame with ease. His wife, my Aunt Sienna and mom's sister, designed and tailored all of his clothes. It was their business and what kept them so successful. They'd just opened up their twentieth store in the US and had been considering starting a few in Canada.
When she met him, they both modeled high fashion lines in New York. Partying too much and their drug addictions destroyed both of their careers. They ended up moving down to our house in Florida and living with us for a few years when I was a kid. During that time, Uncle Kevin watched me a lot to help out and give back to my parents for letting them stay. He'd been my best friend, taking me on long strolls to the park, buying me ice cream whenever he could, and singing me sweet songs at night to go to sleep. When Aunt Sienna cleaned up and obtained a big modeling contract to revive her career, Uncle Kevin continued to stay with us while my aunt traveled all over the world and mailed her checks home.
That was when the night play began.
“You look beautiful.”
I jerked away as if he'd been about to touch me, but he hadn't moved at all. “Thank you, Uncle Kevin, but I—”
“I’ve asked you to call me Kevin.”
“You’re my uncle.”
“You should come to New York and model for me. You've always been the most captivating woman I've ever seen in my life. Even as a little girl, I knew you would trap every man's heart in a five-mile radius when you got bigger.”
I stared at the ground. The bottle shook in my hand, the glass of half poured vodka, forgotten on the counter. “Uncle Kevin, I really should just give my mom her water.”
“Of course. Let me help you.” He moved in closer to me and placed his hand on my waist, smoothing his fingers against the thin material of my pants. “So soft.”
My body woke up with sparks of need to my core. His warm, peppermint breath brushed my skin.
“I missed you, Cynthia.”
I kept the bottle in the middle of us just so he wouldn't close the distance any further. “My boyfriend is outside.”
“Is he your boyfriend or the other girl’s man? I saw the footage. He did kiss both of you and right now he’s just drooling over her outside.” He placed his hand on my chin and then slid the soft pad of his thumb to my lips. “I wouldn’t make you share me. Isn’t that what he is doing? That’s what everyone is saying, that you both share him. You don’t have to share me.”
“Don't do this.” My eyes watered. A shudder ran through my flesh as he pressed his lips against my forehead.
“Don’t do what, little Cyn?”
“Hurt me.” Those two words were a whisper.
“How can I hurt you now? We're both adults and not related. How is it wrong?”
“You're still my family.”
“Through marriage.”
“You … had sex with me when I s-shouldn't have been having sex.”
“You were always so mature for your age, and I was always so damn captivated by you.” He tucked a stray blond strand behind my ear. “You've always had this old soul.”
A tear streamed down the side of my face. “I was too young.”
“You're not too young now, and I still desire you. What does that mean? If I was some pedophilia pervert, you wouldn't interest me anymore, now that you’re older. Wouldn't I be lurking around the yard after your little cousins?”
I snapped my attention to him. “Stay away from them.”
He grimaced. “I'm not interested in little girls.”
“I was a little girl when yo
u took me.”
“You weren't young here.” He slipped his fingers to the center of my forehead. “You weren't young here either.” He brought his hand down to my heart. “You knew what we were doing and you loved it.”
I shook my head. “I didn't.”
“Then why didn't you ever tell anyone? I never threatened you. You could’ve just told someone else and I would’ve stopped.”
“I was scared.”
“I never threatened or forced you.”
I parted my lips but couldn't think of anything to say.
“I never hurt you. I did everything I could to make you happy.” He tilted his head to the side. “So tell me, if I'm the big bad guy, why didn't you ever tell on me?”
“Because…”
“Because you know deep within your mind that we truly did nothing wrong. If we lived hundreds of years ago, it would've been a normal situation.”
Someone cleared their throat loudly on the other side of the kitchen. We both looked to see who might have overheard us. Evie flanked the space between us and the doorway. In her hand rested a butcher knife. When she got it, I had no idea. Mom kept a cutlery set on both ends of the counter so she could've seized any one of them. That sharp weapon swung in her fingers as she practically snarled at Uncle Kevin. Her lips lifted on one side. Fury gleamed over her brown eyes. She looked deranged and strong for her little frame. There was no way she could appear any wilder than she did in that moment.
My uncle chose to clear the tension first. “So, this is your friend? Cynthia, why don't you introduce us?”
I gripped the bottle hard. “Evie, this is my Uncle Kevin.”
He extended his hand to shake hers. She didn't extend hers, which told me that she'd overheard enough of our conversation to realize that he was the one who hurt me long ago.
The COMPLETE Coventon Campus Series: Books I, II, & III Page 17