Adaline
by
R.J. Fletcher
Adaline
Copyright © 2016 by R.J. Fletcher
Book editing/formatting by R.J. Fletcher
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Epilogue
Chapter One
She hadn’t heard him coming. Even as she passed him along the street and the hairs on her neck rose in warning, she ignored it.
Until, suddenly she was faced with his pronounced look of anger as he cornered her. He reached out roughly and grabbed her arm while simultaneously taking her purse from her tightened grasp. Her screams of fear and desperation met unconcerned ears as he tenaciously tried to rob her of her belongings. When her screams only grew louder, he shoved her deeper into the dark recesses of the street. She tried to push her heels as deep into the gravel as possible to halt the movement, but he was too strong. A man that had previously seemed weak and nondescript now appeared like a giant with his strength and desperation.
Her mind ran with all the possible things he could do to her. What had seemed like just a mere robbery was getting dangerously close to something altogether different. Something more painful. More scarring. Now that he had a hold on her purse, she reached out and tried to scratch at any piece of skin she could get a hold of. But he was covered completely from head to toe. She stomped and spat, her body flinging in one direction and the next to loosen his grip. At last, just when they had reached the pitch-dark shadows away from any possible prying eyes, his hands upon her seemed to weaken. Her breath caught in relief as she prepared to make her escape. But instead, her head jerked back suddenly at the feel of a fist connecting with her soft cheek.
The breath left her and there was a sudden pressure in her skull from the blow. Her screams stopped and became moans of despair as she fought for consciousness.
“No,” she mumbled. “Stop.”
Given her state, he was able to push her down to the cold pavement. Her eyes opened at the feel of the hard and rough grain of the asphalt connecting with her skin. She still could not see her attacker clearly. But she could tell that he was reaching down for the zipper in his pants. In one last-ditch effort to escape, she pulled her leg back and connected her heel to the man’s groin and stomach. Her heart leaping in triumph at his screams, she crawled to her knees with all the strength left within her body. Her attacker bent over, groaning in pain, she balled her hand into a tight fist and hammered it down onto the back of his skull. The groans stopped and the giant was no longer.
Hurriedly, she picked up her purse and ran. The pitter-patter of her heeled feet against the cold pavement and her harsh breaths were the only sounds she heard as she raced with all her might to freedom. Even though she heard no one behind her, she didn’t stop. She couldn’t stop.
It seemed like she had run miles through the back skirts of the city with no one in sight. It didn’t matter, she told herself. She wouldn’t feel safe until she was locked behind the doors of her apartment. But, even after she heard the loud clang of the deadbolt safely locking her inside the walls of her room, she was still shaking. Her mind was in complete turmoil, unable to focus on a single thought. And neither was her body able to bring her harsh breathing under control.
Like the opening of floodgates, her wails escaped her lips without warning. She pounded on the surface of the door in anger and deep fear. How could this happen to her? It felt like a deep fire in her stomach; there wasn’t enough breath within her body to release every cry and desperate howl. It was uncontrollable and, unable to fight it she let go and allowed her body to fall to the floor. And there she sat throughout the night; even after her screams quieted, tears still flowed from her reddened eyes.
Present
“So, we have gone over this night several times in our discussions Adaline. Are you still having nightmares?”
Adaline played with her fingers as she sat across from her therapist. Her mouth opened on several occasions but no words left her lips. The therapist, sensing her discomfort, nodded with a tiny smile.
“You can speak to me in whichever way you prefer, remember?”
At the sound of reassurance, she lifted her hands from her lap, holding in a sigh of comfort that she wasn’t being forced to speak. “Yes, I still have nightmares,” she signed. “But they aren’t as bad. My aunt was right; I wasn’t ready to leave home just yet.”
“Now, don’t think that this one incident proves you are incapable of living independently from your aunt and uncle. Assault is a much greater occurrence than people are willing to admit to. You have proven your maturity and strength by your willingness to come forward and seek therapy. It has been several years since the attack. Despite the nightmares, do you feel you could try to live on your own?”
Adaline nodded emphatically, “I am ready. But…” Her index fingers paused in mid-air as she thought of how to continue. “My aunt doesn’t believe in me. And she is too concentrated on Carla’s wedding.”
Her therapist frowned at this news. “Remember how we spoke about speaking up for yourself? Well, this is your opportunity to do exactly that.”
After their session, Adaline stepped out into the street. The noise of the moving cars and bustling city-life were daunting per usual but she sucked in a deep breath, taking in the city air and walked to her car. And, as if symbolizing her return to reality after stepping out of the therapist’s office, her phone rang. She knew immediately who it was and felt a decided need to ignore it. But, like had become custom, she touched the screen pad of her smartphone anyway and cleared her throat to speak.
“Hello, Auntie,” she greeted after carefully placing the phone’s speaker near the microphone of the implant’s sound processor.
“Where are you?” She could hear the panic in her aunt’s voice, as she no doubt rushed from one errand to the next. “The wedding is this Friday; we need all the help we can get.”
“I’m sorry. I had my session, today. I told you that.”
There was a slight pause on the line as Adaline revealed this information. Almost innately at this point, she rolled her eyes as she heard her aunt’s proverbial sigh. Victoria Lang was a confident, self-assured woman that had been reared within the Upper East-side of New York. Despite her financial privileges, she had been raised with the heavy ideals of being a strong and successful Black woman. And while Adaline admired that within her, Victoria was also bull-headed and often times close-minded.
“I don’t see why you still go see that therapist. It’s not like it’s working at all for you. I really think you are just looking to be coddled,” she stated without apology i
n the same pompous tone Adaline had grown accustomed to hearing since she was a child.
Deciding it best not to argue as they had done continuously, Adaline ignored her statement and instead asked, “What do you need?”
There was a sigh on the other line as Victoria yelled at someone in the background. “My daughter is turning into one of those bridezillas and while I really want her special day to go right, I need a break. Why don’t you come over and help her out? She always listens to you.”
Adaline almost felt like rolling her eyes again at that statement. While her aunt seemed to prefer living in denial about the relationship between her niece and her daughter, the two of them were not oblivious and had accepted since they were children to just let bygones be- they would never be friends but they would always be family. And with that unspoken rule between them, Adaline and Carla had kept a cold distance from each other despite growing up in the same household and attending the same schools.
Holding the phone to her ear, Adaline unlocked the door to her SUV and settled down into the driver’s seat. “Fine, I should be there in a few.”
After hanging up, she navigated through the familiar streets of Dover, Massachusetts where she had lived for most of her life before attending college to become a speech and language therapist. Since then, she had been enjoying her career working with children struggling with the same disability that had marred her own childhood. Admittedly, coming from such a privileged background had lessened the struggle for her in some sense, but becoming part of the Lang household had come with its own set of challenges.
Her thoughts turned to the first day she had been dropped onto her aunt’s front steps as a little girl. She had loving memories of her parents but she was almost slightly thankful she had lost them at such a young age; it made it a little less painful to be an orphan having fewer memories of them. But she still kept their pictures close to her heart in the locket always around her neck.
It had been a tragic day from the way Victoria described the events that led to their untimely death. And there was still deep-rooted anger any time conversations switched to Adaline’s origins. There was no one to blame in the vehicular accident. Things happened like that all the time – people losing control of their cars and crashing on streets sleek with snow.
But, for some reason, that made it worse. How senseless it was! That she had been left without parents and placed into a household full of strangers. Adaline’s mother had not been the prodigal daughter, falling in love and eloping with a blue-collar worker of a construction site. She had not held up to the expectations of a high-class debutante like her sister Victoria and that made Adaline love her even more, despite the few memories she had of them together. Her mother was a rule-breaker that followed her heart and, inspired by that, Adaline had pursued her dreams despite Victoria’s incessant lectures of what was ‘good’ for the family.
Look at where it had gotten her, though? Despite her will, Adaline’s thoughts turned to the events she had come to relive over and over again on the brown couch of her therapist’s office. She had taken her independent streak too far by venturing to live by herself in the city, and it had cost her a sense of security, safety. Afterward, she had turned to the one person that had existed for her as a maternal figure- Victoria. But now she regretted ever opening up to her. Victoria’s words were as much a nightmare as the attack. It had ripped at her very soul in the same way.
“Well, unfortunately you just have to move on. There’s nothing the police can do since you barely remember anything of what the man looked like. You’re a Lang and we don’t want something like this tarnishing our name because of your incessant need to rebel against me. You see what it gets you?”
At a red light, she closed her eyes to calm her growing anger. Living on her own had meant so much more than what Victoria could ever understand. It had been an escape from them. But she had done exactly what she had been told- moved on. The scars of that night got uglier before they had begun to heal, though.
Adaline needed the therapist not only because of the memories however. Returning home to the place she had been so determined to escape made her feel as if she was slowly becoming someone she no longer recognized. Where was the fire she had been so proud to inherit from her mother? Where was the girl that had come into a world deaf but had found acceptance within herself? Having been born severely hard of hearing, after her parents’ deaths, Victoria and her husband Dead had paid for her to get a cochlear implant. Hearing with a cochlear implant however was not like regular hearing; voices often had a robotic sound and she still often relied on speech reading to gain a better grasp on conversations. Consequently, Adaline often felt as if she lived at the apex between two different worlds. Her parents had taught her sign language growing up, and so, even today signing was still very much a part of who she was. And she often preferred it to speaking, especially since it was her last connection to them.
That had unfortunately come with its own challenges growing up with the Langs- an exclusively hearing household. They had almost beaten speaking into her. Victoria especially had wanted to get rid of her accented speech as much as possible. While not gone completely, she had won.
Adaline turned into the driveway of the Lang estate, prepping herself mentally for the bitchiness that was sure to come. When her eyes caught sight of the rosebush and bench settled beneath the large oak tree to the side of the large house, she remembered the first hearing person outside of her family who had ever actually listened to her. And just as soon as he entered her mind, she redirected her attention. There was nothing but pain down that road.
When Adaline finally entered her childhood home she greeted the staff warmly with a smile as she walked up the ballroom staircase to the second floor. Almost immediately, she could hear Carla’s voice as she whined about something. Following the voices, Adaline ended up in Carla’s large bedroom. Her cousin stood in her wedding dress yelling in frustration at the maid doing repairs.
“How many times are you going to get it wrong! My wedding is this Friday! Do I have to get someone else for the job ‘cuz you don’t know how to do yours?”
Adaline winced at her cousin’s tone and felt sympathy for the maid. Carla was definitely not an easy person to handle. Her beauty and status as a Lang had unfortunately made her into quite an unlikeable person- or at least that was Adaline’s opinion.
Clearing her throat, she stepped into the room. “There is no need to yell, Carla. I’m sure Caroline will fix whatever needs to be done on time,” she placed emphasis on the maid’s name, knowing Carla probably had no idea who she was referring to.
Carla rolled her eyes at the interruption. “What are you doing here?”
“Auntie told me to come and help out.”
“Oh, really? Because you have been mighty absent in the months leading up to what amounts to the greatest moment of my life. If you ask me, you’ve been very selfish. I don’t want someone at my wedding whose going to be rude just because she’s jealous.”
Adaline’s eyes narrowed in warning at her cousin. “I’d watch what you say to me, if I were you. I am not in the mood to deal with your whininess. Newsflash: the world isn’t stopping just because you are getting married. I came to help- you can either accept that or not.”
Their eyes stayed connected in a silent battle.
“Fine,” Carla finally gritted out. She pushed her shimmery blonde curls behind her delicate ears and slapped the maid’s hands away. “Just let me get out of this dress, I’m tired.”
“But…Miss Lang, I’m not done.”
Adaline watched as her cousin ignored the maid’s confusion as she stepped into her walk-in closet and slammed the door. In a soft voice, she spoke,
“It’s okay, Caroline. Sometimes it’s best to just let her mood wear out on its own; you’ll prefer to work on the dress then, believe me.”
Caroline merely gave her an uncertain smile before scurrying out of the room. When she had closed the door behind her,
Adaline made her way around the room, touching the frilly fabric of the curtains. From the window, she could see the white tent being constructed for the upcoming nuptials. There were stacks of white chairs that had yet to be placed despite it being an intimate affair.
What startled her most though was that Carla had not been completely off about the jealousy bit. While Adaline had prided herself on never envying her cousin, in this moment she did. The romantic aspect of her life had always been nonexistent. She was not clueless as to the reason why; she was, after all, a dark-skinned girl in a white community with unapologetically Nubian features, a deaf accent and cochlear implant. Things weren’t exactly stacked in her favor in those regards. But she had never dwelled on them. Or at least not always.
Carla’s wedding, however, made them a little more salient. One day, she would like to be the one walking down the aisle. The old saying, “always the bridesmaid, never the bride” had never rang truer. To distract herself, she looked over the seating arrangement posted up on an easel. She recognized several names but as she perused every table, her breath hitched.
She heard the door open behind her and turned as Carla returned to the room in black leggings and a tank top that accentuated her model-like figure. Her long, curly hair, a product of her biracial parentage, was tied into a knot on top of her head.
Adaline cut to the chase, blurting out, “You invited the Vikhrovs?”
Carla gave her a ‘duh’ look. “Why the hell wouldn’t I invite one of the most powerful families in New England? They live right down the street for goodness sake. That would be rude!”
“But…”
“What did I just tell you?” Carla interrupted. “This wedding isn’t about you. If I wanted to invite them to my wedding, I shouldn’t have to explain myself.” She sighed in frustration. “It’s not like I had much of a choice in the matter anyways. Daddy has been on good terms with Nikolai Vikhrov for like decades!” She smiled naughtily. “Plus, did you hear all the drama that came out about that fucking family?”
Adaline (The Wallflower Series Book 3) Page 1