Clouds That Were (Weathered Hearts) (11 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Tenley

C
hase brings me
home from school that night, but drops me off about a block away so that my mom won’t see me in his truck. As soon as I walk in the door I know something is wrong because she isn’t waiting by the front door to take my backpack like she normally does.

When I walk into the living room, I see her and some guy sitting on the couch with the biggest smile on her face I have ever seen. Not only is it a smile, but it is a smile filled with genuine happiness which I am fairly certain I have never seen on her face before.

“Hi sweetie! I am so glad you are home! This is Rick. He and I have been dating for a while now, and we thought it was finally time for you to meet him.”

What the hell? Wasn’t she trying to date Jack?

They were sitting on the couch holding hands, and even if I had stretched my imagination to its fullest capacity, there is no possible way I could’ve predicted what was going to come out of her mouth next. Taking into account that she was just interested in Chase’s dad, I have no idea where this conversation is going.

“Rick and I are going to have a baby! Isn’t that great news honey? You are going to be a big sister!”

It takes everything I have not to vomit right there on the floor. I am filled with so many emotions that hit me so hard and fast that I have no idea how to react. I want to scream, throw things, cry, hit her, something, anything. But I can’t even breathe. I have no idea how long I stand there without saying anything or moving. My mother speaks again, interrupting my thoughts.

“Rick and I were talking, and we want to move to a bigger house. You know, this duplex isn’t really fit to raise a child in. We can’t afford to have all of us there. I talked to grandma this morning, and I told her about the situation. We need ten thousand dollars for a down payment on the house. I figured since you want to live with them so badly and I need the money, that if they could give me the money, I would let you go and live there. However, as I have told you before, they don’t love you as much as you think they do, and she said they couldn’t give me that kind of money.”

More stunned silence from me. Did she just say she tried to sell me to my grandparents? And they said “no”? This is unbelievable, even to me.

“We have decided to move you and your things down to the basement to make room for the baby, so this weekend I will need you to pack up all of your stuff and move it downstairs.”

I can’t take this anymore.

“You, you tried to sell me. To my grandparents,” I say calmly.

“Yes, and they said no. So now we have to figure out something else.”

“You do realize that this house that is not fit to raise a child in, is in fact where you have been raising me. Your first child.”

“Things are going to be different for the baby. He or she deserves the best!” She beams over at Rick.

“I am your child, too.”

“Yes, but we want this baby.”

Rick says nothing, meaning that this baby is as doomed as I am. Obviously a man who can sit there and say nothing as a mother berates her child is not going to be any kind of father. I have a choice to make here, and I am struggling big time to figure out which way to go. I want to scream at her; I want to cry; I want to walk away. I just don’t understand how she doesn’t see how messed up this is.

At some point I just turn around and very calmly walk outside, sit on the front step and start crying harder than I have ever cried before.

How this woman, who hates everything about being a mother, can even think about bringing another child into the world is just beyond me. It’s not fair. She has me; why does she need another kid? All I want is for her to love me, and now she is going to love this baby instead of me.

I want to run away; I want to run to Chase. I want him to put me in the car and just drive. But now I can’t. I can’t leave with this helpless baby on the way. There is no way that I can let her do what she has done to me to another child. I will not allow her to.

As I am sitting there, I can’t decide if I want Chase to see me sitting there or not. I want him to come and rescue me, and yet I really don’t want him to see me being an uncontrollable mess either. I feel stupid sitting here crying about a baby that isn’t even here yet. My plan is that if I make it to eighteen, I will get as far away from her and her mess as I can. I have no obligation to help this baby—no one helped me—so why should this baby be any different? Who knows, maybe she really will actually love this baby. Maybe Rick will move in, and then when I finally move out, the three of them will be a big happy family.

Now I really am preventing her from being happy. My presence here is literally preventing her from having the family she has always wanted. I need to get away from this house and now. I get up and start walking toward the park, and glance over at Chase’s house. I am not sure what I want to see, if I want him to be there watching me or if I don’t want him to see, but he isn’t there. So I just start walking.

The park is my refuge; it is the place where I can go and just be a sixteen-year-old girl without a super-messed-up life. I can just sit there and be normal. Today though, knowing that my mother has chosen to bring another child into her life kills me. Walking to the bench closest to the water, I pull my knees up to my chest and just sit. I sit there for quite a while before the sadness and the tears overtake me. All I want in this world is to be normal. I want to have a mom that I can talk to or at least be in the same room with. Again, the images flash through my mind of girls having their moms help them get ready for proms and weddings. Images of moms and daughters smiling at cameras on graduation day. And when I picture myself, all I see is sadness.

I see myself, faking a smile for a camera not pointed at me, just in case I should happen to be in the background of someone else’s photo. I don’t want anyone to know how sad my life is or how hopeless I feel. But this is my life. I can choose to make the best of it or choose to focus on the bad. To be honest, it is more than difficult to focus on the good in this situation.

An image of Chase, smiling, pops into my head, but I push it away as quickly as it comes.

I know that my grandparents love me. I know that they want me to live with them and that more than anything, they want me to be happy. Even though in my heart I know this, I also know that they won’t do anything drastic to help me, because they don’t want to hurt my mother.

In some sick way, this makes sense to me. They feel the way about her in the way that I want her to feel about me. Right? They are trying to protect her from the pain of losing her child, trying to protect her from any kind of pain, a sentiment which is in line with how a parent should feel about a child. But it makes me angry. They see that she is mistreating me, some might even say abusing me. And yet they do nothing.

Don’t rock the boat.

Don’t cause problems.

Don’t make a scene.

And in the meantime, here I sit, not having a life, not having a childhood. Being punished for the choices that she has made and not having the option to make my own bad choices.

Don’t get me wrong. The wrong choices she has made are not the same choices I would make, even if I had the chance. With my life the way it has been, I wouldn’t even think about having sex with someone, unless I was emotionally ready to have a child. And honestly, I don’t know if that day will ever come.

So then I wonder, what man would want to marry a woman who not only has as many emotional issues as I will undoubtedly carry with me throughout my life, but who doesn’t want to have children in fear of carrying on this messed-up parenting tradition.

And I think about Chase. How caring he is. How handsome. And how I can picture him with tiny Chases running around playing football in the yard with him, just as I saw him and his dad doing the other day.

That is a life I will never have. I can’t. In my mind, there is no way that I can bring a child into this world with the chance that I won’t be able to break the cycle. I realize in this moment, that no matter what I do, I will be alone for the rest of my life. This thought, the thought of never having anyone who understands me, of never having anyone who loves me for who I am and doesn’t hold my issues against me, leads me to finally decide that suicide is the only answer.

I used to think about it because I knew that it was the only way that I would succeed in making my mother happy, but now, I know that happiness is out of reach for me as well. The thought of living a life in which I am no happier than I am in this moment is too much to bear.

On this park bench, alone, I have decided what I need to do, and no one, no matter what, is going to stop me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Chase

L
eaving her presence
after that was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. The moment my heart became fully linked with hers, my happiness became dependent on hers. I know that the only way she will ever be happy is if she isn’t anywhere near her mother.

Her mother doesn’t see how smart, funny, beautiful, caring and perfect her daughter is. And Tenley has experienced more than enough of that. How she is able to smile even is sometimes beyond me, but it says a lot about the strong woman she will someday be. I feel sorry for her mom, that she is missing out on having this amazing girl in her life. It saddens me more that Tenley is missing out on her, too.

I know what it’s like to be a motherless child. I even know what it’s like to have a mother who is physically, but not emotionally present. I do not however, know what it’s like to have a mother who hates me so much that she actively tries to make my life miserable. I will never understand that, but I won’t stand by and let it happen either.

I should have just skipped class all afternoon for as much as I got from any of them. Between the plan formulating in my head and the fact that I continued to make sure that I am there after every class, my mind was like a Tenley parade, just different images of her running through my head all afternoon.

We have our last class of the day together, and we walk out hand-in-hand. I help her to get her stuff from her locker, and we walk out to my truck. She has been pretty quiet since lunch, but seems to be comforted in my presence. At least that’s something.

Even the drive home is quiet, though. I am sure she is dreading going home; I know I would be. There is no part of me that wants her to have to be in that house for another second, but I take a little comfort in knowing that things can’t get any worse for her. I know that in her mind, and in mine for that matter, her life is as bad as it’s going to get. And I am going to do everything in my power to make sure that her mother doesn’t have the chance to prove her wrong.

I drop her off about a block away from her house, so her mother doesn’t see that I have given her a ride home, and then I get home so that I can talk to my dad.

As usual, he is working on his laptop in the kitchen.

“Hey bud, how was your day?” he asks me, barely looking up.

“It was… insightful. Do you have a minute?”

He closes his laptop immediately. This is one of the characteristics I love most about my dad. He is there for me always, without hesitation.

“So what’s up?” he asks. “Everything okay?”

“For me, it is. But not for Tenley. She told me a lot more about her mom today, and I have to do something.”

“Well, we have talked about this already; the most you can do is just be there for her when she needs you.”

“How can I do that, though, if her mom doesn’t let her leave the house or talk on the phone? God only knows what she would do if she ever found the phone I gave her. She would probably kill her,” I say only half joking.

“Exaggeration at its finest right there. I get that her mom is messed up, but I think killing her daughter is quite a stretch.”

I tell him what she told me about the abortion and her grandparents, and he just sits there and listens to the whole story, his face growing more concerned with everything I say. By the time I finish talking, I think he is ready to pack up everything we own, walk over there, and take her away himself.

“I don’t know what to tell you, kid. What is it exactly that you want to do?”

“Once I turn eighteen and have access to my trust fund, I am taking her away,” I say with conviction.

“You realize that if you did that, you would be charged with kidnapping. You would be a legal adult and she is still a child in the eyes of the law. Surely her mother would report her missing, and you would probably get arrested. With you in jail, she would be sent back to her mom, and I am fairly certain her life would be considerably worse having tried to leave and you in jail.”

“I am willing to take that chance. I think I have a pretty good plan.”

“Do you want to share this plan with me?”

“No. If I tell you, then if she does report her missing and she and I are both not attending school, they will come and ask you questions. If you don’t know where we are, you won’t have to lie.”

He puts his head in his hands and sits like that for a good five minutes before he looks up at me with tears in his eyes and says the last thing I would ever have imagined.

“You know I love you. Your mom loved you too. I think so much so that she actually thought killing herself was the best thing she could do for you. Suicide is an awful decision, as you know. And I have said that I recognize that same sadness in Tenley. I am going to give you some information now, and what you do with it is your choice. Before your mom and I got married, Grandma and Grandpa bought a cottage for your mom in North Carolina. We still own that house, although the only people who have been there for twenty years are the cleaning people. The deed for the house is in your mom’s maiden name, so it would be virtually untraceable if someone were to try to find a missing person. It is located on the beach, but there are only a few houses within a few miles of it. If someone desired, it would be a great place to hide. Having said that, I am not encouraging you to do this, and I am not giving you my blessing. I do know that I did everything in my power to help your mom and that it wasn’t enough. I also know that you feel that you are in that same position. There is a very good chance that you will not be able to save her, and I need you to understand that. Even if you take her away, she will still have to deal with the emotional repercussions. You will be the only one she has to lean on, and from experience, that can be very overwhelming. I am afraid that she will pull you down with her.”

“What if I can pull her up with me? Isn’t it worth at least trying?”

“Yes. It is. I need to know that you will let me help in any way I can. We can get prepaid phones so we can call each other if needed.”

“Prepaid phones? Wow, you seem to have quite a bit of this already thought out.”

“Let’s just say I know you pretty well. I liquidated some of the money that I had tucked away. If we take all the money or even a considerable amount out of your trust fund, they will no doubt start looking at you a lot closer. You have only known each other a few days, and I am hoping that at this point, it would be viewed as a mere coincidence that you have both gone missing at the same time.”

“Thank you, Dad. It means a lot to me that you are supporting this. I just know that I have to save her. I can’t go through another person I love killing herself. I just can’t”

“I am not supporting your decision. Don’t confuse my suggestions for support. I think this is a bad idea, but I understand why you feel so strongly about it.”

“I will miss you.”

“I will miss you, too. Just be careful, and know that sometimes there is no human force that can save someone once they get to a certain point. And if she does kill herself, you need to know that it’s not your fault. And don’t you dare pull some kind of modern day Romeo-and-Juliet act either. Got it?”

“I will save her. I have to.”

“This conversation never happened. Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to go put the deed, some cash, and two prepaid cellphones in a duffle bag in my office for no reason,” he says as he gets up and starts walking toward the basement.

“Chase?” he turns back.

“Yeah, Dad?”

“I am proud of you.”

“Thanks.”

And with that, he turns and walks down the stairs.

I have never been so scared in my life, but again I can feel my mom’s presence, and I know with all my heart that this is what I have to do and that Tenley and I will both be okay.

I wonder again what is going on at her house right now, and I look over in the hope of seeing her pretty face sitting in the window. But her curtains are closed, and it looks like the light is off. I grab my phone and shoot her a quick text asking if she is okay, but I get no response.