Warning Signs (Broken Promises #2)

by Alexandra Moore

  WARNING SIGNS

  Broken Promises Series, Book 2

  By Alexandra Moore

  WARNING SIGNS

  Copyright © 2016 by Alexandra Moore.

  All rights reserved.

  First Print Edition: May 2016

  Limitless Publishing, LLC

  Kailua, HI 96734

  www.limitlesspublishing.com

  Formatting: Limitless Publishing

  ISBN-13: 978-1-68058-610-7

  ISBN-10: 1-68058-610-6

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication

  To my Editor Felicia A. Sullivan.

  You’ve made this way easier on me.

  Thank you.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  EPILOGUE

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  CHAPTER ONE

  I was always the kind of girl to do things a little half-assed. I was never really good at finishing what I had started. So many things I created were left unfinished and it used to bother the hell out of everyone who ever believed in me. So when I offered my life as a sacrifice to save my brother and I managed to survive, it wasn’t much of a surprise. I couldn’t even let myself finish dying. Whatever happened when I was in that in-between place of life and death, I kept it all to myself. Except for a few choice things.

  Like the fact I had died with one name, and resurfaced with two. I was born Brenna Seirian Rose Morrison. When my father died in a hit and run accident, my mother became an obsessive drunk and somewhere in her grieving, broken heart she decided to change my name. I grew up as Frances Beatrice Morrison. Or as everyone calls me, Bea.

  When I came back to life from the brink of death, I was no phoenix rising from the ashes. I was a fragile, crying newborn, covered in blood and whatever the hell that nasty stuff that covers them is. I cut my own umbilical cord and came out screaming and begging for answers I couldn’t have. I didn’t even know who I was. Not in the sense of amnesia-stricken memory loss, but in the sense that I had been raised with a lie and I couldn’t tell fact from fiction. The moment I woke up and discovered the truth, I wasn’t sure who I was, or who I was trying to be.

  That’s why I decided to run. I pushed everyone away—my brother, my only friend; no one was left out of my attempt to get away from the life I had lost control over.

  I don’t think running away gave me anymore control than I had had before, but running gave me something that wasn’t there until I put foot to ground. I was a baby bird learning how to fly. So I ran, and I ran until I didn’t care where I landed because each fall was an attempt to soar. It didn’t matter how hard the fall was, because I never managed to break my neck. The day things changed was May 15th, 2017. I was standing under a starlit sky with a girl who was blissfully unaware of her beauty. She wasn’t only beautiful, she was carefree. She was everything I had tried and failed to be. She was also an incredible liar.

  “Tonight’s my last night on the run,” I reminded her.

  “You can’t seriously still be into the idea of going back to them,” she said with a hint of disbelief mixed with disdain in her voice.

  “I have to. They’re family and blood is blood.”

  “Yeah, but you’re my family.”

  I looked at her and felt sympathy for the first time in weeks. She had never had much of a family and I was a transient she was trying to make permanent.

  “I need to go to him. I’m almost twenty years old. I can’t run forever. I can’t imagine doing the things you do to keep this lifestyle.”

  We never mentioned it in so many words, but when that night she said, “I can do it for both of us. I can fuck enough men to get us anywhere in the world you wanna go. Please, stay with me. You’re my best friend,” she grabbed my wrist as if to secure what she was about to lose.

  The bus I was supposed to board was loading up, and upon that realization I looked to her with saddened eyes.

  “I’ve got to go. It was nice traveling with you.” I sat up and shook her off me like a layer of dust. I wish it could have been that easy. As I boarded the bus, she sprung an attack on me like a cheetah going in for the kill, digging her nubby claws into me and trying to bring me down.

  “Bea, please don’t leave me! You’re all I’ve got. Bea Morrison, if you leave I swear I’ll make you regret it!”

  It took two security guards as well as two brave men to get her off me. She was carried away into a security car with cuffs on her wrists. When I looked around the scene happening before me, I saw two teenage boys cackling as they re-watched the video they had filmed of us. I could hear the recording of Alma’s words from where they were standing all the way to the bus.

  I thought I wouldn’t be able to stop crying until a kind older lady on the bus sat next to me and began to console me. She sat with me the entire trip to New Hampshire, an eight-hour ride. When we reached the stop before mine Cathy, the woman who comforted me through our long drive, wanted to make sure I’d be okay.

  “I’ll be fine. No one is that crazy up here,” I said with a soft smile.

  She left, and I had one hour until I reached New Hampshire. Daylight was shining brightly as I reached the bus stop. I couldn’t tell if my brother was there yet. I was anxious to reunite with him once I got off.

  When the bus rolled away, I saw my brother standing across the street from the station. His hair was messy and filled with oil buildup that came from withholding showers and shampoo. He didn’t smell bad when I hugged him, and he felt different. Softer. Fragile.

  “Welcome home,” he whispered.

  “Thanks,” I replied. I wasn’t sure if I was home or not. I once believed wherever my brother was would be my home, though it didn’t feel like I could say that at this point.

  “I heard you had a bit of a scuffle at the bus station. It was on the news.”

  It was only moments after we separated from what felt like an obligatory hug that he said the words I was dreading. My heart sank, my thoughts began to race, and suddenly I didn’t want to be out in the open anymore. It was too risky with the both of us out in public. It was only a matter of time before—

  “I don’t want to talk about it. Just take me home,” I snapped without a thought.

  I tried to keep my internal thoughts in check, but everything rational had left the building. With the night I’d had, the need to find a quiet place to settle down had become more severe. However, calling his home my home made me feel like I was overreaching. I didn’t live in it. I’d never stepped foot in the place. It was all his, and I would never be a part of it. Not fully. Although, now things were different. Ben needed me. Our
mother was in town and she was trying to remember everything her sickened brain had forgotten. I was hoping I could forget her, and that Ben would do the same. I didn’t realize how wrong I was. As soon as I walked into the house I saw our mother, Jacqueline, peering out the kitchen window in a white dressing gown, her hair falling to her bosom in chestnut-colored tendrils. When she looked at me, I stepped back, anticipating her instantaneous anger to show its nasty face. Instead, her eyes welled up. Tears rained down her cheeks and slithered down her neck, dabbing little stains into her cotton dress.

  “My Brenna, she’s all grown up! How did you grow up on me? What have I done to my child?” she sobbed, and my brother went to comfort her.

  All I could do was stand idly in the kitchen walkway, wondering what the hell I was expected to do next. Because I didn’t know, and I didn’t know if anyone could tell me. I wasn’t the only broken one now; there were the three of us, and we made up for the perfectly broken family. We were in pieces on the outside. We each had our own personal demons; mine just so happened to be someone my mother kept asking for.

  “Brenna, won’t you come talk to me? Brenna? Brenna!”

  ***

  Once our mother had been sent up to bed for her afternoon nap after having a small dose of her sedative, Ben found me pacing back and forth in the reading room. He was concerned, which he should have been. He never got around to telling me how bad our mother was. Not even close.

  “When were you going to tell me about her dementia?” I asked sharply.

  “When I thought you’d be ready.”

  I stopped mid-pace and turned on my heel to look at him. If the pacing wasn’t any indicator as to how angry I was, the look on my face was a dead giveaway.

  “So, I was ready when I walked in the door and saw her for the first time since she attacked me and was sent to the loony bin?”

  For the first time, silence fell between us and it was hard to escape the feeling that this was our new normal. I continued to pace through the room, but not without sending my brother a glaring expression that read: “That’s what I thought, asshole.”

  ***

  Dinner wasn’t any better. Silence took over us, and our mother was attempting to converse with us, tiny gasps that made her look like a fish begging for water. Smiles which quickly turned into a flat line. She didn’t know how to jump in. The palpable silence between us was nearly unbearable. The more I thought of my mother and her fish like expressions and how hard she was trying to fit into this family feud, I realized that it must have been hard for her. She didn’t remember a lot of anything. She thought my name was still Brenna. She’d probably woken up from her drunken haze to realize her husband was dead and that her children weren’t two and ten. I tried to imagine one of the nurses breaking the news to her that her husband was dead, her children were grown and how she had been drinking away their lives.

  We were all grown up and she didn’t have an idea of who we had become. No matter how hard she tried, she’d forget who we were by morning.

  Jacqueline went upstairs to get ready for bed, leaving Ben and me alone. It had been a year since I last saw my brother and I was playing guest in his home, pretending it was my home too. Because somewhere deep in our minds we believed if we pretended enough, it would make it real.

  And I felt that no matter how much either of us pretended, neither Ben nor I would feel the same. We would continue to feel like strangers in this helpless arrangement that forced us to care for someone who was as much of a stranger to us as we were to her, and to ourselves.

  “Bea, why don’t I take you to your room?”

  “Does he call you B for Brenna? That’s cute.” Jacqueline giggled, and both Ben and I froze.

  “No, he calls me Bea for Beatrice.”

  She looked at me, confusion spread across her face.

  “Beatrice? I don’t understand.”

  “You changed my name from Brenna Seirian Rose to Frances Beatrice Morrison.” Ben approached her and took the glass of water from her trembling hands.

  “I don’t understand. Why would I do that?”

  “Because my father died, and you didn’t want me to know about him. You wanted to forget, so we had to forget too. You changed my name, moved us away, and made Ben promise to never tell me. You began drinking more, and then this happened. I grew up, Ben grew up, and he ran away with his band, got famous, and left me with you when you were in pieces.” She was crying without any sign of relenting, and I laughed with disdain.

  “It’s ironic, isn’t it? You wanted to forget and you drank yourself mad and ended up forgetting everything. Every damned thing. And when we tell you, you sit there crying with a bleeding heart. I hope that you begin to remember everything and cry every single time. I hope you cry your fucking heart out until there’s nothing left.”

  “Beatrice!”

  “Because then maybe you can catch up to the amount of tears I’ve wasted on you!”

  I stormed out of the house with no clear idea of where I was going. It was cold out, and I didn’t have a jacket. I didn’t feel bad for what I had said. After walking to a pub where they didn’t ask for ID I sat at the bar, and when the bartender asked what I wanted, I tried to decide whether I should sip on the sins of my mother, or if I should leave. I was almost twenty, yet I was nowhere near being legal to drink. I looked up, and a heavily tattooed girl with a ring in her nostril looked to me with piercing blue eyes.

  “What are you doing here, kid?” she asked. Did I really look that young?

  “I’m just blowing off some steam.”

  She poured me a glass of water and slid it across the bar to me. “What’s causing you to need to blow off some steam?”

  When the TV in the bar that was projecting music went to a newsbreak, I let out a hopeless sigh.

  “Bea Morrison was caught in a scuffle with a young woman who was charged with prostitution, drug possession, and attempted assault and battery. The young woman, who has yet to be identified, claims she was traveling with Bea, who has been reportedly on the run since her 2016 summer blow out…”

  “Can you turn that off please?” I asked. Suddenly my senses were going into overdrive.

  “I wish I could,” the girl said, “but I really want to hear this. Ben Morrison has come here a couple of times. I never asked about his sister, so I want to hear this.”

  “For the love of God please turn it off!” My voice must have carried throughout the bar, because everything went quiet. “I should leave.” I hopped off the bar chair and stormed out of the little bar. So much for blowing off steam. If anything, now I was more upset than I was before. I could feel my chest caving in and everything around me was a blur.

  When I saw Old Trusty, Everett Thompson’s car, out front and honking at me, I quickly thought of Everett. He was dead, although in that moment of desperation I had forgotten. When the window rolled down, I saw Ben at the wheel.

  “How’d you find me?” I asked.

  “I’ve been here a couple times. It attracts people who are sad and have addictive personalities.”

  I actually laughed. “Right. Is Mom off her rocker?”

  “She’s in bed with her sedatives. She will be fine tomorrow. Just get in before someone catches you out here.” I crawled into the passenger side of the car, and buckled up as Ben drove through the darkened town.

  “Are you going to go back to school?”

  “I’m considering it.”

  “Okay. Do you want to work?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’ll need to decide soon.”

  I wondered what exactly he had in mind for me when he asked me to return home. Questions about school and jobs made me reconsider the truth of his intentions.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “Well, you start therapy on Monday, so maybe you’ll find out soon enough.”

  With a shudder I went back into the house, and allowed Ben to escort me to my bedroom. It was his special pro
ject when we bought the house, and I’m sure he dreamt of the day it was revealed to me. He opened the door, flipped up the dimmer, and followed up by throwing his hands above his head.

  “Voila. Goodnight.” He left without another word. I was alone in the most dream-worthy room with subdued blue-gray walls, dusty lilac valances, and a duvet that took the most attention with its blue printed trellis pattern over a stark white background, and the accent rug in front of the bed with contemporary styled floral prints that kept up with the light colors that made this room something I wanted to be in forever. I couldn’t imagine how my brother had gotten it in such a way that I’d like it so much, but he’d succeeded.

  Finding the new clothes I had previously requested were already put away, I picked out clean underwear, some cute PJs, and went to my private bathroom where I drew a bath. I slid my naked body into the piping hot water, and once the steam had settled throughout the bathroom and I was able to feel safe, I dunked myself underneath the water. Completely submerged, I only came up for air. I hugged my knees to my chest while I sat in the tub, contemplating everything that had happened in the last year. I washed my hair and used the lavender-scented body wash to scrub my body clean. I couldn’t recall the last time I had a proper bath. I scrubbed my body until it turned pink. I wanted to be shiny and new, sort of like how my mother was. She was a clean slate with how her memory had so conveniently left her. It was because of the alcohol and a few other mental health reasons Ben had yet to inform me of, but she lost all of her memory. She forgot how she had treated me, how she treated Ben. I’d never forget, and I doubt Ben was going to forget either. The only difference was I wasn’t so easy to forgive others who’d hurt me. Even if she was my mother, it was going to be hard to forgive her.

  As I dressed in new pajamas that still had the tags on them and crawled into the most comfortable bed I had ever slept in since Mackynsie’s bed, I felt like I was an interloper making my way into this house, mooching off the goodness of my brother and the failing memory of my mother. I fell asleep refusing to cry. However, once the realization of the situation I was in, sharing one house with my family for the first time in eight years without Mother being drunk, it was hard to stop the tears.