Consider Me Gone

Prologue

Toni

I was sixteen years old when I met Jax Teller; I had moved to Charming with my mother after her latest relationship had failed, and she realized that she couldn't support herself financially. We moved in with my grandparents who my mother didn't quite get along with. She hated being under their roof, and they hated her careless and fluid lifestyle.

Their constant arguments dominated my childhood memories, and I struggled to recall any interaction between them that didn't result in a heated dispute. My mother had me at the age of sixteen with her high school boyfriend, who was a senior at the time. He begged her not to have me because he had a full scholarship to play football at some fancy college on the other coast.

My mom refused to listen to him and went on to have me anyway after being persuaded by her friends that having his baby would solidify his position in her life. Her plan failed and my father went off to college to live out the rest of his good years, while sending her a few hundred dollars each month to take care of me.

During those years, my grandparents stepped in and assumed the role of caregivers in my father's absence. My father never really came around to the idea of having a daughter, and our interactions were awkward until I became a pre-teen. However, when I was around twelve, he offered me a room in his home after marrying a woman who had two daughters around my age. This prompted my father and his wife to engage in a custody battle. 

The court proceedings didn't take long since my mom didn't have the money to draw it out, and I was ordered to go to my father's Lakehouse every summer. Surprisingly, this arrangement worked out because his wife and my stepsisters weren't bad people. We got along fine for the most part, and I looked forward to our interactions.

My stepmom always wanted me to live with them during the school year, but I never had the heart to propose the idea to my mom. Unlike my father, she didn't have someone to be with when I was gone, and I knew she would get lonely and reckless in my absence. So, I always turned down the offer even though I would have most likely excelled with the opportunities provided at the private schools my sisters went to.

I never disclosed how frequently my mother faced challenges to my father or stepmother. She regularly faced difficulties with men and money, and would sometimes ask me to lie to my dad for additional funds. I suspect he may have secretly known that I wasn't attending a private school, but if he did, he never acknowledged it.

Things only got really bad when I turned fourteen. My mom had been dating this guy, Reggie, for a few months. Things seemed fine at first because, unlike her exes, Reggie seemed to be able to take care of us. He always had money, and I mean always. Reggie would never carry less than five hundred dollars in his pocket, and considering it was the 90s, that was a good chunk of cash.

My mom adored Reggie. He would pay for everything, and he would pamper her every 2 weeks. She even quit her job 2 months into dating him, because she felt so secure. One could argue that Reggie was the first man to love her how she always dreamed of being loved.

However, in August of 1996, a police officer stopped by the house while I was at school. Reggie had been gone on business for about three days. My mom was home talking to the neighbor who lived across the street and was alarmed when she saw a bunch of cops pulling up to the house.

In her words, she said she was convinced that they were lost because the man they were describing was not the man she knew. Reggie had been found dead at some abandoned warehouse in Oakland. It took the police three days to identify him, because of how badly he was mangled up. My mom was questioned for hours, and it was revealed that Reggie was in a gang and had been killed for ratting on another member and giving him fifteen years in prison.