To Slow a Treacherous Heart ✓

07| A Trying Time

Publish Date: 24th March 2019, Sunday

Chapter Seven: A Trying Time

August 2011

She would come into her inheritance in a week. Twenty-first birthday and all that.

Hopefully, she could use that to pay the remaining hospital bills and settle the rent for this month. The remaining she'd expand over the next few years and if there was any left, she'd put it into Jason's college fund.

He would go to college.

She glared at the stain on her favourite blue coloured dress. Even after four years of intense physical cleansing, she still was a bit of a spoilt rich kid. If she would actually take the time to survey her new apartment she'd dissolve into a fit of wracking sobs.

But she wouldn't do that. She'd cried enough and more after what had happened.

The four years that had passed had taught her that at least. Being a watering pot was the worst possible character flaw a person like her could have.

It had also taught her to stop waiting for that blithering idiot of an ex-boyfriend to show up so that she could convince the police that it really was him that killed her parents and not a lone gunman from a mob of gangsters that was haunting a nearby neighbourhood.

She wasn't hallucinating. It was Ryan who bloody killed her parents. How would she know? She bloody well saw it that's how.

Even Uncle Victor seemed to side with the police, God knows how he got involved with all of her problems.

She put her frock on the pantry and began scrubbing at the stain with a brush and some Clorox.

That was rude. Uncle Victor had helped them so much since the accident. He'd found them a place in Canada, discretely sent her money for the first few months and then got her a job at the ticket booth whenever the circus came to town. It had magically stayed in town a lot during that year.

And with Jason's operation-she had been grateful for the work.

Not at first of course. She'd been a hideous little monster at first.

But that was because she'd been living in comfort for sixteen years of her life. After completely breaking down one day, she met Pricilla Williams. Surprisingly, she'd gone to high school with her mother. After some prodding, preaching and a lot of loving, she found a real job-at a public library. And fell in love with all the children that visited.

But the bills weren't paying themselves. And she needed to find another job. She'd taken up the day shift at a place downtown-but lost the job because of cutbacks.

Hopefully, another diner needed a waitress.

She smiled. Ah, the stain was gone. She could put it in the washer now.

She deposited her dress with the rest of the clothes that she would take down to the washing place tomorrow.

She was drop dead tired.

She paused at the doorway of the room she and Jason shared. He slept peacefully. Well, as peacefully as a paralyzed boy could. He used to wake up in the middle of the night when he was younger, screaming his lungs out. But so, had she. Now they had pills and therapists. All paid for by Mrs. Williams. She only went because it was being paid for and she didn't want to be ungrateful. She had an inkling that even her therapist didn't believe her to some extent. Dr. Janet Emerson believed her to be so traumatized by the fact that her boyfriend stood her up and her parents shooting that May'd gotten the two muddled up.

She sighed.

She was so tired of holding a grudge against Ryan. He wasn't in her life anymore. He was gone. Maybe he was dead.

Hopefully, he was dead.

She had never liked holding grudges. They were extremely heavy loads to lift. When she was younger and had gotten angry at someone, she would always forget what they did about an hour into her silent treatment and forgive them because she so badly wanted to be happy.

It was annoying really.

But that was her.

She was the doormat.

Maybe she would let sleeping dogs lie.

But if he ever showed up on her radar again.

Yes, then there'd be trouble.

***

Next Update: 25th March 2019, Tuesday.