Learning to Love

Chapter 65

Once we were all seated in Papa's office, I was sitting on Mama's lap, Mommy next to us on the big couch, Daddy sitting in the single chair and Papa was sitting at his desk on the cool spinney chair, Papa gave me a sad looking smile. "So, Cali, I think we should start at the beginning, what do you think?" I looked up at him and nodded. "In order to start this story, we need to go back fifteen years ago, I had just turned 16 and Abby was 14, our home life was pretty rough, the night we fled, Abby had been beaten pretty badly, I tried to protect her, but it only made them angry, and I was beat as well, they left us both lying on the kitchen floor, barely breathing. I was a little bit better off than Abby was and was able to get down the hall to our bedroom, I quickly gathered the first aid supplies that we had been able to snag whenever we were able to find some. I bandaged myself up and went back to Abby, i was able to take care of all her owies, once that was taken care of, I knew we had to get out of there, if we stayed, I knew they would kill if not one of us than both of us. I remembered briefly meeting a sister from Mom's side of the family when I was about six or seven and that she had lived in Florida with her husband, and they owned a small hotel chain, I was hopeful that we would be able to find them."

"That night, we managed to make it to the closest bus station, we pretended we were out on a date and had gotten lost, the bus driver took pity on us and took us to the closest city bus terminal, thankfully we both had put on some baggy sweatshirts that had managed to hide most of our bruises. I had been saving money from odd jobs the neighbors would have me do, like running up the corner store for groceries, or pulling the weeds in their flower garden, looking back on it, I think the neighbors knew our parents were always drunk or high and felt bad for us, but I'm getting off track here, back to the story, we managed to have enough money to get us on the next greyhound to Florida, I figured the sooner we could get out of town the better, less chance that the parents could find us, I knew they wouldn't call the police to file a missing person's report. Once we had made it to Florida that's where the fun came in, I didn't know what town our aunt was living in, or what hotel's she owned, I was hoping that if I looked for Mom's surname, I might find something, but she had been married and her name was different. We slept in alley-ways and shop doorways at night and during the day we would head up to the local libraries making sure we didn't go to the same one so that we didn't raise any suspicion's, finally after a week, we finally found something, Dorothy king and husband Ronald King owned the biggest selection of hotels lining the beach's up and down the Florida coast. The first time I called, I was hung up on, I think the staff thought it was a joke, after the third time of calling, for some strange reason Aunt Dorothy picked up the phone, I was able to quickly tell her my name and Abby's and she asked where we were, she was sending someone to pick us up. Thankfully we had landed in the town she was in."

Mommy was sniffling and Mama was rubbing my back, I snuggled into Mama, this was a sad story! Daddy had gotten up a little bit ago and just came back in with my sippy cup, he handed it to me and i took a sip, it was apple juice, my favorite! "Thank you, Daddy!" "No problem princess, do you need to potty while we take a little break so Papa can go get himself a drink?" I thought about it for a minute then nodded, how did Daddy know I needed to potty? He's magic! Daddy picked me up from Mama's lap and took me potty, once I was done and settled back on Mama's lap, sippy cup in hand again- No I didn't take it with me into the bathroom readers, that's just gross! Papa started talking again.

"We were standing right outside the pay phone in front of the library when a stretch limo pulled up, this guy stepped out and approached us, are you Josh and Abby? I nodded and stepped in front of Abby; we both might be injured but I would protect Abby with whatever I had left. Relax Josh, I'm here to pick you up and take you back to Ms. King. After he had given a ring to Aunt Dorothy and we had verified he was here to take us home to her, we climbed into the limo, we both didn't know what to do with ourselves, we didn't want to ruin the limo, we had been on the streets for a whole week and it's not like we had taken regular showers when we were home either. Thankfully it was only a twenty-minute ride, Aunt Dorothy met us in the foyer, you couldn't deny that we were related, she had the same red hair that we all have, she made us go get cleaned up and after we showered and had borrowed some clean clothes she fed us one of her famous feasts, she always had food on her table, she didn't want anyone starving, We had to fill her in on the house of horrors and how we had escaped and found her, I asked about her husband and he had passed away a month prior to us finding her, he had cancer and didn't make it very long after he was diagnosed. She was pleased as punch that we had found her, our mother, her sister had stopped all communication with her right after we had seen her back when I was seven, she had been trying to find us, but everywhere she looked was a dead end. Thankfully both Abby and I are pretty smart and Aunt Dorothy managed to get us our high school diplomas and had been able to send us both to college, we learned all about the hotel industry and how to run a business from her, we lost her three years ago, but she left everything to Abby and I, we told her we would never allow our mother or father to have it and they should never know where we are." Papa smiled at me, I smiled back at him, "I I I super glad you f found Aunt Dorothy" "We are too princess, we are too. So now it's on to your story, you want to know how we found you?" I nodded "Well we had just come back from a big giant hotel convention and we got a phone call that they had found our father in the front seat of his car, parked right in front of a children's playground, he had died of a drug overdose, when they had searched his address, they found a young child, the child had passed out and had been rushed to the hospital, they had taken a DNA sample and wanted to compare it to us, since it was our father they had found, when I asked about mother they told me she had died five years prior of alcohol poisoning. Both Abby and I rushed to go up to where you were, as soon as we landed they took us up to the police station, they asked us a ton of questions and took a blood sample from each of us, by the time we had been told we could go up to the hospital and see you, you had disappeared, the nurse had said that she had just been in the room thirty minutes prior and that you had been asleep when she left, we started searching for you right away, it took a week and a half before someone reported they had thought they had seen a little red haired child peeking out from a window in an empty building, in that time we had gotten the DNA result back and we were full siblings, we had gone back to the place you had been found and emptied the place, we found a few things that we won't mention but one of them was your birth certificate, we still don't know how mother was able to keep herself drug and alcohol free while she was pregnant with you, although she may not have, that may be one of the reasons you are so small and have your brittle bone disease, but we did find your birthday and how old you are supposed to be, your seven, that's probably why you don't remember mother and only father, although they were both awful anyways, but apparently when mother died father got worse, he started hooking up with anyone who looked like they had some money and was gambling a lot, no wonder he died of an overdose. But right now, we are so glad we found you Cali and we are so sorry we didn't know about you before to save you, we love you so much Princess and you deserve the whole world." I looked around at everyone and they were all crying, "I'm learning what it's like to loved and I love you all, T t thank you so much for learning to love me!"

SO this is the last main chapter for this story, I don't want to hit complete though since I may occasionally want to write some more chapters, or fill you in on Cali's life, I'm not ready to say good-bye right now to these characters and I feel there's still some loose ends, I will try to surprise you all with some more updates but they will be few and far between, there is no updating timeline right now, I am going through some things in my life and really can't dedicate the time to this story, but I want to write more chapters about the king family for you all! :) 

Thank you so much for all your support and for sticking out this story with me! you all kept me motivated to write and I appreciate that.