Loved at Last

Chapter 1

        My name is Emma Grace. I have been deemed a girl with nobody to love me. I’m sixteen and have lacked parents and a permanent home since I was eight. . My dad beat mom for years. I remember hiding under my bed whenever he came home late because my mom and I both knew the rage that always came with him when he came home drunk. I would close her eyes and sing to myself in an attempt to block out the screams coming from my mom.

        I will never forget the last time my father laid a hand on my mom. He came home wreaking of vodka at around three in the morning, which was his usual routine. He staggered his way into his room and after one glance started yelling for my mom to get in there. She had fallen asleep in my bed after soothing me to sleep and woke up trembling from the sound of her husband’s violent beckoning. She forced herself to get out of bed and made her way into their bedroom. After she had left I walked to the door to see what he was going to do instead of cowering under my bed. I wish I hadn’t. He stood in their doorway fuming with rage. She tried to stay as calm as possible because she was desperately hoping there was a slim chance that he would calm down as well. But deep in her heart she knew that there was no avoiding his furor. He immediately started screaming about how messy their room was and how it was her responsibility to clean it while he was at work. He always got angry over things like that. It was always something trivial, so she tried her hardest during the day to keep everything around the house perfect so he would have nothing to be set off over. She stood there cowering in fear and broke out in tears apologizing so he wouldn’t hit her. He saw the tears streaming down her face and grew even angrier with her whimperings. He grabbed her by her hair and started hitting her until he drew blood, which didn’t take very long. Her body was already covered in bruises from previous beatings. This time he seemed to prolong the beating. He typically would avoid hitting her face so people wouldn’t notice her wounds, but not this time. By the time he was done, she had a busted lip, a bloody nose, a black, swollen eye, broken ribs, bruises all over her body, and cuts all over her face. She lay there motionless at the bottom of the stairs, where he had thrown her down, blood sprinkled all around her. It took all the courage she had to look up once he stopped to see if he was still there. When she glanced up, she saw him walking towards my room. He must have seen me watching and he still had the look of unadulterated malice in his eyes. I ran as fast as I could to my usual hiding place praying that he wouldn’t find me. He staggered into my room with blood caked on his hands and he reached under the bed in an attempt to drag me out. He grabbed my foot and I tried kicking him but an eight year old doesn’t have enough strength to inflict very much pain on a grown man. He eventually got me out and starting punching me. This was the first time he had ever hurt me and it really sent my mom over the edge. I saw her crawl into my room with a large kitchen knife in her trembling hand. My cries of pain distracted my father just long enough so my mom could crawl right behind my intoxicated father and thrust the knife deep into his back. The blood sprayed everywhere and he fell to the floor with a thud. Even though my mom knew he was dead, she continued to stab him over and over again completely drenching herself in his blood and her tears. I continued to scream through all of this while the image of my dysfunctional family was being melted into my brain.

        I fled the scene and did what I do best; I hid. I went straight for the kitchen cabinet. It felt like I was cowering in that cabinet for hours, but in reality it was only a half hour or so. The neighbors must have heard the screams and called the police because they arrived there pretty soon. They saw the trail of blood and soon found my mom completely soaked with it, laying over my father’s lifeless body.

         I eventually came out when I saw that there were police officers there. They were stunned to see me and didn’t really know what to do at first. They eventually called social services to see if there were any foster families who were willing to take me in until they could get this whole situation sorted out. That was when I was driven to my first foster home of many.

        My mother was declared too unstable to take care of me but was still given a chance to get custody back if she participated in treatment. I was still given weekly visits with her but of course that wasn’t enough time. After my mom lost me she became an alcoholic. Now that she didn’t have a daughter to take care of, she figured she had nothing left to lose. She stopped coming to visits, she stopped going to therapy, and she seemingly gave up. She eventually lost rights to me and social services immediately began looking for relatives for me to live with. I ended up lived with my Uncle Joe for six months but was taken out once he was arrested for drug possession. None of my other relatives were willing to take me in and the ones that were weren’t deemed fit to take care of me. That meant that I was to be put back in the foster system. I hated it more than anything. I never felt at home at any of them. The feeling of loneliness was absolutely crippling. Knowing that none of your family members love you enough to take care of you is unbearable.

        Eventually my feelings of depression became feelings of rage. Why couldn’t my mom muster up the courage to leave my dad? Why couldn’t she have just called the cops on him and prevented all of this? Why was she with him in the first place? Why was he such a bastard? Why didn’t he love us enough to give up alcohol? None of these questions were ever answered and they seemed to haunt me no matter how much therapy I was given.

         When I was sixteen I was moved to my eighth foster home. I wasn’t exactly feeling optimistic about the move and I didn’t view it as the last one I would be at. Once I had been in the system for a few years I started acting out. Partying, hanging out with the wrong people, dating douche bags, drinking, and doing drugs. Most foster families weren’t very forgiving after receiving a call from the police informing them that I had been caught drinking underage. That’s the reason why I was moved around so much. I guess I was just too much for most families to handle. But the Alderson family was different. The day I moved in with them was the first day of the rest of my life.