Proof
Chelle C. Craze
Proof
Copyright © 2018 by Chelle C. Craze
Edited by Paige Maroney Smith
Cover Designer: Chelle C. Craze
Formatted by: Dez Purington with Pretty in Ink Creations
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.
Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Proof is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, actual events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/ use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owner.
Otherwise, hold on and enjoy the ride, you crazed lunatics!
Contents
Synopsis
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Bonus Chapter
Acknowledgments
About the Author
To anyone who’s ever felt lost:
You have a direction. You just have to follow it.
Synopsis
Jaci
Life was full of choices. It was how you handled that responsibility that really mattered. Making the best decisions was never something I was notoriously known for, though. I was tenacious and the biggest obstacle I had to overcome. Usually. There was this thing that I had no control over. Two things, actually.
Really, I was just a stubborn girl who grew to be a headstrong woman. When your heart knew such tragedy as mine, being happy wasn’t something you foresaw in your future. Fate flipped a switch in my head when I saw my first dead body, but didn’t mentally prepare me to find the second. The second destroyed me.
Cal
I’d seen more than my share of wickedness in the world and made all the wrong choices, but it didn’t matter. Until her. I was just a timid boy who grew to be a man without direction. She was my compass and the only sanctuary I knew. The thing about being saved was you couldn’t truly find refuge, if it wasn’t yours to begin with. My heart wanted her, but another was her saving grace. She was always mine.
When your foundation was built on lies and murder, it was impossible for your future to be painted as a beautiful one.
It was like pouring whiskey onto gunpowder and then dropping a lit match to test its strength. If the alcohol burned, leaving only a solitary black line to burn beneath the flame, it was clear you had proof of merit. Eventually, you’d only be left with whiskey and wildfire.
Prologue
There was a saying, and this wasn’t verbatim, of course, but some had said, “You begin to die the instant you take your first breath.” In that moment, as your nervous system sensed the change in temperature and triggered your tiny lungs to expand, pulling air into them, the process began…or so some believed.
What most didn't know about were the seconds in between being born and taking the first breath. Typically, less than ten seconds, but it was in those seconds the world stood still for everyone around you. It was as if babies took that brief time to rest and accept the change. I'd never given it any thought whatsoever, until the moment I lost him. As a result of it, I experienced many firsts, actually, but it’s too soon to talk about that part.
In physics, change could simply be put as a triangle placed next to a “t” which stood for time, but the change of time was never as easy to ingest as merely writing it on paper in an equation suggested. Truthfully, it was complicated beyond most people’s imaginations. Some said they welcomed change, but I think those were the people who hadn’t truly suffered and become bitter yet. Given time, they too stood the chance of agreeing it wasn’t something that could be welcomed with wine, because wine was a light drink. It didn’t burn enough when swallowed to make your mind remember the event it was birthing. It would convince you that it was a light subject to have around, like it was a casual friend...but it wasn’t. Change was the heaviest of subjects. It was something you invited out for a strong whiskey, so you had time to get to know it, to analyze every detail, and only then, to decide if you actually wanted it to stick around. Sometimes, though, you didn’t have a choice. It stuck around and clung to every fiber of your being, even if you didn't want it to. As if your opinion wasn’t weighed when the decision was made. Change was pushy. It could almost be considered a bully the way it always abruptly shoved itself into situations that’d been otherwise fine without it barging in to make its presence known. Change could be kind of an asshole.
It had to be said—the outcome of change wasn’t always a disaster, but the bridge leading to it often seemed to be missing crucial parts of its structure. It was as if every time my life traveled across the bridge of change, I found myself weaving and fighting to stay on my feet as an outcome of the missing boards and nails.
Except, there were times I didn’t win the fight and I fell flat on my face, scarring my surface and bruising my soul. Those were the times he was there to soften the blow of the harsh world. He was the spark to lighten my otherwise dim life.
To describe who he was to me was hard because I didn’t know where he began or I ended. Our lives had basically overlapped since childhood in one way or another, but to try to pinpoint the important parts was even harder.
In the seconds that held someone’s last breaths, everything and nothing seemed important all at once. It was in those last minutes of life that you finally discovered who you truly were and knew your significance. It was in those seconds of rest we found one another.
One
Mom unzipped her enormous pink purse and dug into the bottom, rattling her keys as she pulled them from the wad of tissues she’d stuffed in there moments ago. Today, I was starting a new school. Not her. Yet, if to judge by the amount of tears that had fallen this morning, one would think otherwise. They would definitely think she hadn’t been the one to uproot us again and force me into another new school.
“Come along, Paige. Don’t be nervous,” she said, softly patting beneath her batting eyelids with a tissue and choking back the fresh tears as they appeared. I didn’t bother to remind her she was the ball of nerves. Not me. This town was just another pit stop in our lives. I knew this wouldn’t be the last. I was not as naïve as most children my age, but then
again, most my age hadn’t moved as much as we had, or shared as many names as I had.
It hadn’t always been the two of us. For three years my dad was in the picture, and to hear Mom tell it, it was the finest of pictures. As if Picasso himself had painted our family portrait, only to have life take our canvas and burn every last square inch of it. He was a good man and a great dad according to Mom. I didn’t remember him. Not really. I wasn’t sure what memories were real and what I’d made up myself to drown the negativity of who ended up in our lives instead. Phillip Black. He wasn’t a good man at all. Even I knew that to be true, and I was only three when he first walked into our lives. He didn’t beat me or anything, but he wasn’t really good to me either. To me, it always seemed like I was a bother to him. He definitely wasn’t the person to return Mom’s missing happiness. If anything, he brought her more sadness. Perhaps Mom was right. Somewhat. Other people could in fact hold the secret of your happiness, as if they could pass into any room and bring sunlight. Yet, there were also people on this earth who widened your sadness and opened the rain clouds to pour down upon you. Phillip certainly didn’t open the windows to let the sun into Mom’s life.
After Mom threw him out of our lives, and things seemed to reach our normal, not having a dad around to do whatever dads were supposed to do didn’t bother me. If all men treated little girls as Phillip treated me, then I was okay without a dad. I was more than okay Phillip wouldn’t be around anymore. Even though it was the reason for our newest relocation and I wasn’t happy to be starting yet another school, we weren’t around him anymore in the slightest.
Mom said she used to be a happy person, but that was when Dad was with us. When he disappeared, she said her happiness left right along with him. Was that possible? Does one person make another person happy? I wasn’t sure if another person could take your happiness with them when they left, but if they could, I didn’t ever want to be happy with someone else, not if it meant they could take it away.
We didn’t really have fun and she didn’t leave the house unless she had to. Taking me to the bus stop fell short on the list when she still had to do doctor’s appointments and work. I was sent with a grocery list and money a lot of times, and I’m really not sure why no one ever questioned a child shopping alone without an adult to supervise. I guess that was one of the downfalls of close-knit communities—everyone trusted everything was okay and pretended to mind their own business.
That was until he came to our house one night. Mom had told me we’d have a guest for dinner. He worked with her, so I didn’t give it much thought. After dinner, he kind of never left. Who brought a suitcase to dinner? He did, and after he came into our lives, we moved. Six times to be exact. Six new schools with new faces and names to remember. In seven years, when I was supposed to be learning to ride a bike and how to braid, I learned how to lie and fly under the radar. I blamed him for our current situation and secretly I blamed him for Dad not being in our lives, even though I knew it didn’t make sense. Him being around made me wonder if my dad was around and not him, if we would move less and be able to enjoy life a little more.
I did as she asked, hopping into the car and buckling my seat belt. Mom looked in the mirror and smiled as she took me in. “Thank you, dear.”
“Of course,” I answered and returned the smile, pulling at the blue ribbons fixed at the end of my braided pigtails. I didn’t understand why today was any different than any other day. Mom usually didn’t behave so anxiously.
She ran her hand over her belly and sighed. She’d done this every now and then since my baby brother or sister left her stomach. I didn’t know what happened. I only knew she was sad when I asked, so I never asked again…but I wanted to know nonetheless. Although I wasn’t thrilled when Mom told me she and Phillip were having a child, the idea of becoming a big sister grew on me, and I cried when she told me that was no longer true.
At ten years old, most didn’t put too much thought into anything really. Unless you were choosing your favorite flavor of ice cream or toy for the day, that was. Even then, not much time was spent weighing the outcome your decision would bring. More often than not, it just happened to be what mood you were in that moment, or perhaps your choice depended on what everyone around you had decided upon. At such a young age, you were relying on pure instinct, innocently deciding on what seemed to make sense at the time.
To consider how your decisions would impact someone you loved was a virtue that came later in life, or at least for me it did. I described it as impact, because you did not simply sway or influence someone when you’re in love with them. No. Those words weren’t strong enough to carry the responsibility you unknowingly engraved into a person and they to you. You drove those you loved to soak in all the beauty life could offer. At least, you hoped they did, but sometimes, it wasn’t beauty they absorbed. Love was fierce and at times reckless when it’s real, but it didn’t always have the time stamp of forever. Occasionally, love and beauty carried an expiration date and left an opening for dread and mayhem to creep in, and those were the people I grew to know. The forgotten. The used and the abused, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
“Don’t forget our names have changed,” she leisurely said, brushing off her meltdown, checking her makeup in the mirror and flipping the visor up against the ceiling. She tried to act like this wasn't a big deal, but I knew how important it was that I remembered. The only times I had really seen Mom get mad was when I had forgotten our new names and the night she threw Phillip out of our home and lives. Both times she scared me a little, but I never told her.
I wasn’t sure how many names I’d had thus far in my life, but I knew it was more than the average kid had. Most normal families named their kid at birth and that name remained unchanged until they married someone.
“I know, Mom. I’m Paige Elizabeth Decan,” I recited the name she had drilled into my head over the past two weeks. I didn’t understand why we changed our names a lot, but we did. “It’s for our protection” was the only reason she’d ever given me. Something told me it was from Phillip, but Mom never mentioned that fact.
“And?” she prodded me to finish our story.
“Your name is Piper Elizabeth Decan, but you prefer Liz. We moved here for your job.” I picked at my nails and focused my eyes on the broken dome light in the middle of the gray ceiling, not wanting to lie to everyone, but figured Mom knew best.
“Perfect as always,” she beamed as our car slowed and she turned off the main highway.
She told me to close my eyes and count to one hundred, and so I did, even if I didn’t want to. I was curious why a school warranted this much hesitation and secrecy, but knew not to open my eyes.
“You can open them,” she all but sang as the car came to a halt and she put it into park.
I opened one eye and then the other, making sure it was safe to look around. The building didn’t look much like any school I’d ever attended. It looked bare. Where was the jungle gym? The slide? Maybe the playground was on the opposite side of the building, or at least that was what I hoped.
Once inside, the walls weren’t filled with bright colored papers and there were no kids in sight. Instead, bland beiges and grays speckled the bulletin boards throughout the hall. Where most schools had kids my age laughing and doodling on paper to fill the air with noise, none of that was found here. Other than the occasional crackle wheezing from the intercom speakers, the walls echoed with silence. I didn’t think I’d like this place at all. I liked music and funny noises. Not silence, which seemed to be overwhelming here. When it was silent, bad things tended to happen, so I cleared my throat just to make a sound.
Loud clicks consumed the hallway and ricocheted off the walls as a woman wearing a long white coat and black heels responsible for the clicking approached us. I took a step behind Mom and peeked around her arm to look at the woman walking toward where we stood. The woman’s black hair twisted into a tight ball on the highest peak of her head, and there was a
pencil jabbing through the middle to secure it into place.
“The Decans, I presume?” she asked, extending her hand to my mother and looking over her glasses at me.
“Yes, of course. You must be Tiffani.” Mom took the woman’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. Her eyes drifted to me, too, reminding me to straighten my back and remember my name.
Tiffani nodded in my direction and bent her knees to get to my eye level. “This beautiful little lady is?”
“My name is Paige Elizabeth Decan,” I mechanically recited after a slight nudge to my shoulder from my mother’s elbow.
“What a beautiful name,” Tiffani said, holding her hand out to me. “Let’s take you to meet some others, and then your mother and I will talk,” she said in a calm tone, wrapping my fingers in her own.
After my mom placed a quick kiss on my forehead, Tiffani led the way down the slender hallway without another word. More silence drummed into my head as I fought back tears. I forced my feet to move, following her, but I really didn’t want to go with her. I wanted to stay with Mom. I stilled momentarily, peering over my shoulder to Mom as she motioned for me to go with Tiffani. My tennis shoes stuck to the floor, and I tilted forward on my toes to remain standing. Tiffani straightened my arm above my head, and my shoes slapped against the linoleum as she helped me get my bearings. My arm hurt a little afterward, but I was certain she was only trying to help. At least I hoped that was her intention.
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