The Truth Lucy Spoke: A Novella
Book two in a series of three
Penelope J Bristol
Illustrated by
Rifah Tashfia
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of very brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, 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, or actual events is purely coincidental.
•Copyright © 2020 Penelope J Bristol
•All rights reserved.
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For all the lost daughters, may you find many times over- the love they withheld, experience belonging if only to yourself, and the bravery to go out and seek your truths.
Contents
Prologue: THE TRUTH
BOOK TWO
1. Grandma’s House
Four Years Later
2. Alex
3. Playing Favorites
4. Careless Conversation
5. Lucy’s Confession
6. Mark
7. Before the Funeral
8. The Funeral
9. Charlotte
10. The Lie
BOOK THREE
11. Lucy’s New Life
Four Plus Years Later
12. Living with Grandma
Also by Penelope J Bristol
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About The Author
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Prologue: THE TRUTH
Her bruised eyelids fluttered heavily and rapidly, but in the end, they could not find the strength to open and identify what was producing the bars of light right in front of her face.
A broken body hung upside down quietly and without protest. The absence of noise except for a faint hissing sound created an eerie calming effect inside the automobile's crushed hull. If she could lift her hands to her face, then maybe she could pop her eyes open and use what she saw to make a plan.
She thought intently about raising her arms, but she did not feel anything happening. Her raised arms might have been waiting for the next command, but she wondered what the following command was.
She thought about him and his hands, how they were perfect, and how they felt inside her own. Where was he right now? Maybe it was dinner time, and he was watching television mindlessly, eating and waiting for someone to say it was time to hurry up and take a bath. What would he say if he knew she was hanging upside down in their car unable to cry out for help.
She thought of them all and of the little things that she would miss most if tonight were the last night. Do people know when they are about to die, she wondered? There was no pain to suggest she was even hurt, but the car was upside down, and she could not make her body respond to her mind.
Images began to project themselves all around her. She saw herself being small at the foot of a Christmas tree holding a doll with a painted-on face and short bouncing curls. She stood up and walked with this doll, taking it into the kitchen to get something to drink, placing it on the kitchen table. This image faded away. In its place appeared a high-school-aged version of herself talking excitedly to someone outside a brick building she faintly remembered, autumn leaves randomly spread about on the ground.
One by one, these memories toppled over each other; her graduation day, a nurse placing a baby in her arms, a birthday party at home and one at work swirling in and out of consciousness. Was this her experience of dying? Her mind halted the flow of images and began to question and search for meaning in each final fleeting moment.
And then the house was there in her mind, tangling up with a thousand memories that began to flood in involuntarily. She saw her bedroom, the kitchen, and watched herself opening the back-sliding glass door. She was there; they were all there, sacred ghosts of the past. Her whole world for much of her life danced with her as she forced her eyes into tiny slits.
As her courageous eyes strained, still wanting to see the truth, to make sense of the world as it slowly began to take shape and focus, one eye obeyed, and then the other grudgingly followed suit.
Interestingly, the bars of light she thought she saw was strands of her hair hanging down, cutting the glow of the car radio, which still flashed the long names of artists and their song titles.
As her mind raced about with the new information, a simple observation surfaced into awareness - how different things appear when you can finally see things as they actually are, when you can finally see the truth.
BOOK TWO
THE
TRUTH
LUCY
SPOKE
Grandma’s House
Four Years Later
Finn lay at an odd angle, star-fished on his bed, staring at the bumpy, popcorn ceiling and wishing this dreadful holiday would end. The mood in his house was so tense that refuge came only when he escaped behind the locked door of his messy bedroom. Today, his parents were refusing to speak to each other again, and his dad was currently packing a bag to sleep somewhere else tonight.
He honestly couldn’t understand the problem with his dad. When had he stopped caring about his mom and wanting to be a family with them? Finn balled up a fist and smacked it loudly into his open hand. He had tried to keep his mom busy and hopeful that things would get better, but he knew she knew about her. Finn hardly ever let himself think about her, and why his dad needed her.
Finn liked to think of his dad as he used to be, with a backward-facing Auburn ball cap, laughing and playing Mario Kart on his bedroom floor, eating sloppy cheese pizza and helping to slide the box under his bed when it was time to clean up.
His dad was a good man in many ways, and that made it difficult to categorize him. When Finn looked in the mirror, he saw Mark’s face, and when he grew up, he wanted to be somewhat like him, except for the part that made his mom cry and need to see a therapist every other Tuesday.
Mark had left something in the truck last night, which Charlotte had found early this morning, creating a big problem that Finn did not wholly understand. Finn’s mom had screamed that this was the last time, and that had been the last communication between them before an icy, angry silence. Finn felt like a hostage in his own home and cursed Lucy for being far away for the weekend at her grandmother’s house.
Finn grabbed his cracked cell phone, punched in the security code, and texted Lucy a capitalized four worded message. The text -HAPPY WORST THANKSGIVING EVER- flashed across the screen of Lucy’s iPhone, catching her attention and drawing it away from the busy hands of chatty aunts and uncles. Lucy smiled, stood up, and walked slowly out of her grandmother’s tiny, bustling kitchen.
As she crossed the living room to go out on the front porch for some privacy, she noticed her mom sitting stiffly in an armchair beside the painted fireplace. The living room, also buzzing with talkative relatives, was lively, but her mom seemed to be noticeably-alone. With a rigid smile plastered across her face, Dianna glanced up at Lucy as she walked by, but did not really look at her, which was not unusual.
Lucy gently pushed back the glass storm door and stepped out onto the small front porch. As she sat down gently on worn porch planks, she inhaled the smell of wood smoke, heavy in
the cold air and took in the painted November sky; a pallet of watery blues, burnt orange, and wispy purple streaks. She quickly texted Finn back and asked about his day. Multiple texts zinged in explaining the struggle between Charlotte and Mark, and Lucy felt her stomach began to fizz and churn.
As far as she knew, Anne had stopped flirting with Finn’s dad a long time ago, and she was unsure how this level of trouble in his parent’s marriage could be related to her sister. Finn always used the word “her” when he talked about why Charlotte cried all the time. Lucy could not think of her sister as “her”; Anne could not be the one that was ruining Finn’s life. She shook this thought out of her mind and moved on to something different altogether.
Lucy texted Finn about the car ride she endured with her parents getting to her grandmother’s house and how her aunts and uncle’s topics of conversation were already putting her to sleep. She knew Anne would be here soon, and at least that would give her someone sane with which to talk. Anne would be bringing Alex, but he was actually a decent boyfriend, the best one her sister had dated so far. He better be good at the father thing too, because he and Anne were going to be having a baby together.
This had not gone over necessarily well with their parents, but Anne becoming a mother had seemed to calm her sister and help her narrow down a general life path. She was working and going to school part-time, minus the drinking and pills, which were all substantial improvements, and Lucy thought she seemed happier now, grounded in a way to this new idea of motherhood. This would be the first family event since the pregnancy news broke, and Anne would inevitably endure a lot of questions about the baby today. Lucy knew her mom was extremely nervous that it would not go well and that Anne, being Anne, had probably not given it a second thought.
Finn sent an emoji of a turkey puking up a massive slab of pumpkin pie at the same time as Anne’s silver sedan pulled into their grandma’s driveway. Her sister sat in the car for a while before the passenger door opened, and two black leather boots planted themselves firmly on the gravel driveway, and then, she stood. Her rounded belly, covered in a red plaid maternity jumper and her face, glowing, turned to the house, eyes finally resting on Lucy. Anne smiled, waved, and then reached into the back seat and pulled out a gift bag. Lucy texted Finn that she had to go and stepped off the porch, running to meet her big sister.
“What took you guys so long?” Lucy whined as she fist-bumped Alex and reached out to grab the gift bag from her sister.
“That’s not for you, smart one,” Anne retorted and flipped Lucy’s ponytail up over her face, teasingly.
“Well, I deserve a gift for being alone with Mom and Dad in a car for four and a half hours and then sitting in the kitchen listening to painful, boring stories about people I don’t even know or remember for another two,” Lucy said.
Anne shook her head knowingly and was thankful that she was the proud owner of her very own apartment, car, and life. Anne had arrived at this event as an adult, and she relished the sense of freedom. She had not planned to be pregnant at twenty-one, but so far, it was more exciting than it was scary, and Alex might even be a good husband if she decided that’s what she wanted. Lucy followed the happy couple back onto the porch, through the front door and right into a firing range of greetings and questions. She put the gift bag down on a table and noticed that slowly, the color was beginning to drain from her mom’s face, still sporting the painted-on smile.
Grandma made mashed potatoes for every holiday meal, they weren’t particularly great, but you could count on them, showing up and being served. Lucy chewed a chunk of un-mashed potato, carefully watching the interactions between her family. Dad and Mom seemed to get along better at Grandma’s house than anywhere else as if they were on the same team for a brief period. Anne was indifferent to the barrage of questions and disappointed looks thrown around the Thanksgiving table. Lucy was proud of her sister for not letting the wave of confusion surrounding her unwed pregnancy penetrate her C’est la vie attitude.
“Get a life,” Lucy whispered to anyone trying to crack a shot at her sister and reached for a second helping of the lumpy mash potatoes. She had a prime seat, basically in the middle of the table, so both food and conversation were within easy reach.
Dianna sat on the end of the table closest to her older sister, who often took up much of the conversation in any room. She, being the younger sister, laughed at all the right times, robotically heaped food onto her fork and ate at a reasonable pace, fooling everyone into thinking she was enjoying herself. Dianna was wearing a new outfit and had spent a ridiculous amount of time curling her bobbed, brown hair for today’s festive gathering. Dad had complimented her along with several other family members throughout the day, but one compliment was not forthcoming.
Grandma sat at the opposite end of the table, engaging people in a story that was actually about Dianna. This particular story featured a brand-new coat lost on a field trip bus. Lucy had heard this same tale many times, and it always ended with her grandma smiling, sighing exasperatedly at the forgetfulness, and foolishness of her youngest daughter. It was not a hateful story. Dianna had been in grade school when she lost this infamous coat, which wasn’t unusual for a child of that age. It was, however, odd, the sheer volume of times the story was told and that in general, Grandma did not share any good stories about Dianna.
Lucy looked at her mom, stiff as a board, watching her older sister Eli (short for Elizabeth) talk about a party that she and her husband had hosted recently. Lucy knew her mom could hear the story that Grandma was telling, but Dianna was a master at hiding her emotions. She would never give Grandma the satisfaction of letting her know she was listening. John caught Lucy’s eyes and smiled. He slowly reached over and lightly put his hand on Dianna’s crossed leg. Very quickly, she reached down and laced her white knuckles into his.
Lucy watched this and understood there was love being exchanged between her parents, the sharing of a heavy load that was crushing her mother. It was hard to understand the love in her family sometimes, or possibly more accurately, it was challenging to understand the way people offered their love.
She wondered if it was like this in all families with dark running parallel with the light. Anne broke Lucy’s internal train of thought when she breezily announced, she was full and that this was quite a feat since NOW, she was eating for two. The room went suddenly silent, and then Alex, in his kind way, diverted attention to himself by placing a steady hand on her rounded belly while simultaneously complimenting Grandma on the lumpy mash potatoes.
After Thanksgiving dinner, Dianna moved through the kitchen, soundlessly, clearing plates and saran wrapping bowls of leftovers. Her older sister stood at the sink, washing dishes and chatting easily with the other women in the room. In between dinner plates, she casually asked her little sister how things were coming along with her latest work project.
“Work is good; this is our busy season, so I am happy that it’s halfway over. It’s the dread of waiting to start these yearly projects that drains me,”Dianna mused.
“You girls don’t know the half of it,” Grandma interrupted. “When you were little, your dad was always on the road. I lived in a constant state of exhaustion, trying to get it all done. I would have loved to escape to a job!”
Dianna thought back on her childhood to a mom who was typically, not getting much done, other than lying in bed with a headache. The weekends with her dad were the highlight of her growing up years, and she missed him so much now that he was gone. If her dad had been here today, she would have skipped cleaning up the kitchen altogether, and sat in the living room, listening to him talk.
Eli had been the one that raised Dianna, not Grandma. But the truth of her childhood had been whited out, glamorously rewritten by her mother, who in these walls would never be questioned. Dianna did not respond to her mom’s comment and glanced up at the clock gauging the hours left before she could escape to her respective bedroom.
“We did give y
ou a run for your money, Mom,” Eli teased, flinging the drying rag over her shoulder and winking at Dianna, who rolled her eyes.
“Well, one of you was a lot more difficult than the other, that’s for sure,” Grandma insinuated, looking right at Dianna. “And that tradition didn’t die with you, did it, sweetheart? Anne has gotten herself into a real pickle with this boy.”
Dianna froze, and a vast swath of red appeared on her cheeks. She had been waiting for this jab all day, and just like her yearly work project, it had finally arrived. She tried to think back to what her therapist had offered when she felt attacked by her mother.
She kept her breathing steady and decided to stay in the moment. Anne was her daughter; yes, she had made a poor choice with this unplanned pregnancy, but she would not let her mother strip away Anne’s good traits without a protest. She would not agree to the idea that Anne, like herself, was a disappointment, less than, lacking worth, fundamentally a failure.
How many seconds had gone by since her mother spoke, Dianna wondered? Her mouth felt dry, and she was horrified at the idea that whatever she did or said next would end in her standing in her mother’s kitchen crying and shaking uncontrollably. Her mother was bullying her again, except this time, she was shaming Anne too. She looked up at Eli, who was busy washing the dishes, smiling, oblivious to how different their mother treated them, to how very different she had always treated them.
The Truth Lucy Spoke (The Truth Turned Upside Down Book 2) Page 1