I had to earn my keep from the moment my parents screeched out of his gravel driveway so fast the rocks they kicked up left me bloodied.
And scarred.
I look in the mirror, touch the faint white line at my temple.
Brooks hurt me more than them leaving, hurt me more than a surrogate parental figure making me get up before dawn to work the farm and keeping me working until well after the sun went down.
At six years old.
He hurt me more than the loneliness that was those years, six to eighteen, living on the isolated farm, rarely talking to anyone, including my paternal grandfather.
No friends.
No real family.
No soft-hearted teachers to take me under their wings.
School was a stack of books left on the kitchen table—the mix of fiction and nonfiction tomes were all I had of history and English and social studies. Math came from watching my grandfather manage the farm’s finances.
Afterthe day’s work was done, of course.
After I cooked and cleaned, repaired fences and rode horses. After I dealt with snakes and patched up cattle with rudimentary animal husbandry skills. Once, I even shot at a mountain lion who was stalking our calves.
I missed, but it worked.
He or she didn’t come back for another hunt.
There were long rides to wrangle loose heifers, broken bones and bloodied noses from panicked calves who didn’t want to be separated from their mamas. There was bread made from scratch daily for my grandfather’s breakfast, sliced and toasted and paired with eggs gathered from the coop and fried, laid out precisely next to slices of bacon or ham from pigs I cared for and named…and then had to turn into a meal.
There were bales of hay to be dragged so the animals could have breakfast even before I did. And there were chickens to be slaughtered for meals, horses to be groomed—the work never ended.
Some might say it was good for me—that it gave me a purpose and taught me many skills.
They’re right.
And they’re wrong.
Because John Dulvaney wasn’t a good man. And neither were his friends.
There were many times a fist was used instead of firm words, many times I had to escape grasping hands and inappropriate touches and leering looks.
Many more times that shouting and insults overwhelmed quiet admonishments.
Kind words didn’t happen—and neither did birthdays or Christmas or Halloween or Easter.
Those were just another day in a long line of days.
It’s no wonder that I was so taken in by Brooks.
No one had ever shown me a lick of kindness and suddenly I was safe and protected and held close and spoiled.
Once he earned my trust—something he did with persistent, gentle confidence—I was lost.
He was so deep in my heart, my soul, it seemed as though I had never taken a full breath until he was standing at my back, telling me that everything would be all right.
It was so much more thanall right.
It was a tutor so I could round out my education, it was space I could call my own. It was getting lost in books without having to worry about being up before the sun. It was gentle hands and patience and never having to worry about there being food in the kitchen.
