Prologue
I stumbled up the stairs blindly, my stomach in my throat and my heart pounding against my rib cage like a wild animal trying to break free. Swallowing the rising bile, I paused at the top, swaying like I couldn’t feel the ground under me. My ears were ringing, I couldn’t breathe. I heard my mother yelling for me, but her voice was distant, like it was traveling through water. “Holly, baby, wait! Please! Oh, David…what are we going to do now?”
That last bit was directed at my dad, who had remained frozen in front of the TV at the verdict. Not guilty. The words echoed around the room like a curse. How had they found him not guilty?
Almost on autopilot, I made my way down the hall to the trophy room. My mom loved this room. I had too, once upon a time. Now, standing in the doorway, all I felt was horror. Rage. Disgust. I shuddered at the feel of ghost hands on me, taking what wasn’t theirs. Greedy, vile, wrong.
Hishands.
Scott Lauren.
I was a child, and I hadn’t been the only one.
A sob broke through, my eyes taking in the endless photos and awards. Pictures of me throughout the years, owning the stage like I’d been born to it. Pretty dresses. Big smiles. Bright hazel eyes. I didn’t have to look in a mirror to know they weren’t so bright anymore.
The last stage I stood on wasn’t for a crown—it was for a courtroom. One hand on a Bible, the other clinging to what little strength I had left. I had felt so embarrassed, so ashamed, despite everyone telling me it wasn’t my fault.
It was never the victim’s fault.
I hated that word. Victim. But I sat there and told the truth anyway.
Not guilty? After what he did?
“This is our home, David!”
“It was our home. How can you sit here and say you want to stay after what that bastard did?”
I tuned them out, and my eyes landed on the Miss Jr High School USA trophy, my last and biggest. Tears blurred my vision, and I was moving towards it before I could even process what I was doing. I screamed as I threw it at the nearest trophy case with all the strength my sixteen-year-old body possessed. The glass shattered—sharp and violent, like the pieces of me I couldn’t put back together. As the whole thing came crashing down, my parents went quiet. But the silence just made everything worse. I screamed again as I grabbed another trophy, throwing it at another case. Glass shredded my bare feet, but I barely noticed. It was nothing compared to the pain inside.
My father made it up the stairs and to me within minutes, but it felt like years. By the time he burst into the room, glass carpeted the floor and blood slicked my palms, threaded through my hair, and welled between my toes where I’d stepped without feeling it. He came up behind me, wrapping his arms around me. I kicked and screamed until my voice was hoarse. “It’s ok, baby. It’s ok, I’m here. Daddy’s here. It’s ok.”
He didn’t let go, no matter how I thrashed, until finally, I went slack, completely spent.
As I turned and buried my face in his chest, sobs wracking my body, I caught sight of my mother in the doorway, hand overher mouth as she took in the destruction. Her eyes, just like my own, were wide, and tears left tracks through her carefully applied makeup. My father ran soothing hands up and down my back, not the least bit bothered by the blood. I felt him look over at her. “We’re leaving, Ruth. That’s final. This town has nothing left for us.”
His tone left no room for argument.
Chapter One
? Holly ?
The Board of Directors at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta practically swooned when my father accepted their offer as head of pediatric neurosurgery. My mother moaned about the heat and humidity, the lack of beaches, and pretty much everything else, but she preferred it to the position in Missouri, which, to her, was a social and economic death trap. Not that anyone asked me. I honestly couldn’t have cared less where we moved. Alaska or Timbuktu, just somewhere they wouldn’t know me. My father chose to drive the almost 2500 miles from California to Atlanta. I spent most of the ride curled up in the back seat, staring at the bandages on my hands and legs. The clean white cloth hiding the slices of skin the glass had torn away.
My father, the type who couldn’t stand silence, tried endlessly to make conversation, talking about the new job, how much he thought I would like our new house, and the fun things we could do. His efforts to pull me into a conversation were fruitless, so he switched to my mother.
For three days, I did my best to ignore their conversation, their voices like the buzzing of a bee. A really, really annoying bee. They were trying so hard to make this feel like a normal move, even though we all knew what it was.
We were running away.
As we passed the “Welcome to Atlanta” sign, I rolled down the window so I could take in the city skyline. I was immediatelyhit with air so thick and hot that it clung to my skin like it was alive. My mother started fretting over her hair, which “simply wouldn’t survive in this climate.”
I rolled my eyes and stuck my head a bit farther out the window as my dad hushed her. “We’re about 20 minutes away now. You ready?” I cast him a disinterested glance and he frowned sadly, “Come on now, bug. I know it’s hard, but a fresh start will be good for all of us, don’t you think?”
They still tried hard to treat me like I was their perfect little girl with an unfettered smile and curly pigtails. Like I hadn’t become someone else that day. The day society let a monster win.
As we pulled up to a wrought iron gate that swung forward quietly at the press of a button from my dad, I got my first real look at the new place. I stared at the white columns lining the huge porch, perfectly spaced and gleaming in the Georgia sun—a stark contrast to the brown stucco framing back home. Bougainvillea had wrapped itself around the fence there, but here everything was pristine. From the long driveway that ended in a grand circle, like it was waiting for a horse and carriage to pull up, to the perfectly trimmed rose bushes along the front of the house.
When I climbed out of the car, instead of being hit with the salty, comforting smell of a nearby ocean, I smelled nothing. No brine, no humidity, no familiar rot of sea grass. The air was sterile, like it had been cleaned before I arrived. Like it hadn’t decided whether I belonged in it.
