She let go of my hand and took a sip of her tea. “We’ll need to start making a list of things to buy for your dorm room,” she said, not looking at me. Daddy was staring at her, not touching his food, his mouth hanging open. “What?” She glared at him. “Don’t you put your uncertainties about our daughter moving to New York City off on me, Anton Love. I’m fine with it. That place will suit her.”
She turned to face me, her expression flat. The creeping, crawling fear at leaving home for a city so large and impersonal almost suffocated me at that moment. “What? Eat. You’re getting too skinny again.” She put a green bean in her mouth, chewed and swallowed.
I stared down at my plate, confused, irritated, and unhappy, my usual stew of emotions when confronted with my mother’s special brand of dismissive, take-control concern.
“I’m pregnant,” I said, raising my eyes to her face and adding that truth to the table’s dog shit pile.
Mama put her fork down, wiped her mouth with her napkin, got up and left the room. Daddy just sat, staring at me, his dark eyes filling with dismay. “Oh, Angel,” he said, hoarsely, getting to his feet.
“Where are you going?” I got up; wobbly, sick, and wishing I’d been born a boy—yet another Love brother—for probably the zillionth time in my life.
“I’m going to find Bobby Foster’s parents,” he said, dumping his untouched plate of food into the garbage can.
“No, don’t,” I said gripping his arm. “They’ll make us get married. I am not doing that. I won’t. I’m not repeating your mistakes. You and Mama won’t make me, I know it.”
I heard my voice getting screechy. I took a long breath. “I know where I can go. I need two hundred dollars and … and a ride there … and home again, after.”
He jerked out of my grasp. “I guess you might have thought about how much you didn’t want to marry that boy a little sooner.”
He grabbed my shoulders. The expression on his face made me feel worse than anything my mother might ever say or do. I’d failed him. And I’d done it on purpose. I knew that much. “You are not having an abortion, Angelique. We don’t believe in that. It’s murder.”
I stepped away from him, tears flowing down my face. “You’re such a hypocritical asshole! Do you have any idea how many girls your sons have knocked up? How many abortions they’ve paid for? Do you?”
He sucked in a breath, then closed his eyes, and ran a shaking hand down his face. I moved in, knowing this was the moment, while also hating myself for knowing it.
“Daddy, please don’t make me marry Bobby. He’s a dumb jock. He’ll never amount to anything. You’ve said that yourself. I made a mistake, and it was my fault as much as his. He didn’t force himself on me, either, so don’t get all high and mighty about that.” I picked up his hand and held it between mine. The familiar, callused palms and work-worn knuckles comforted and soothed me as they always had. “I only need some money, and a ride to Lexington. But I should do it pretty soon.”
“I’m going to the garage,” he said, shouldering past me toward the door. “I’d leave your mama alone for a while, if I were you.” He jerked his chin to the doorway between the kitchen and the rest of the house. “I need to help your brother right now. I’ll figure something out, Angel. But you—” He stopped, clenching and unclenching his fists and his jaw. I watched, fascinated all over again by his quiet, compact strength and the power of my love for him.
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” I whispered.
He glared at me then stomped out without saying anything else.
Chapter Two
“I’ve gotta hand it to you, little sister,” my oldest brother Antony said on the phone the next day. “You sure know how to cause more than your fair share of trouble.”
I’d come in from school, anxious, mildly sick, and hungry, since I’d been avoiding food for over a week, afraid I’d get fat and lose my place at the school I’d worked so hard for. “Don’t tell anyone else,” I said, sliding down the kitchen wall.
“I haven’t. You know, that kid should—”
“I haven’t told him, and I’m not going to. His mama would make us get married. You know how that family is.”
He heaved a huge sigh, sounding so much like our father it was eerie. “Why in the hell did you make it a dinner table announcement? You know that’s not gonna help.”
I swiped my fingers under my streaming eyes. “I need to get it taken care of and soon. I don’t care what she thinks of me anymore. She’s never liked me. Nothing I do or say—”
“Stop whining. Jesus,” he said. “You two are worse than a pair of squabbling sisters.”
“I wish. If she was my sister maybe she wouldn’t be such a bi—”
“Don’t. Just don’t. That attitude doesn’t help.”
I got to my feet, my mind floundering over where to turn, what to do next, what the hell I would do if my father and my oldest, most trusted brother wouldn’t help me out of this mess. “You’re in no position to talk to me about my attitude, Antony Ian Love. You won’t even look at your poor little girl. Mama and Daddy are raising her like she was their own, and that’s not even close to right.”
“Don’t lecture me, Angelique. Not if you want my fuckin’ help with this mess.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Fine,” he said. “Make the appointment. I’ll get you there and pay for it, but so help me, if you don’t at least try to get along with her …”
“Why?” I leaned against the counter, taking in the familiar contours of the shabby but scrupulously clean kitchen. “I’m leaving soon. And once I get out of this hellhole I am never, ever coming back.”
“Whatever. Make the appointment.” He hung up, leaving me glaring into space, my chest pounding with frustration.
“Angel,” a small voice said from the doorway, startling me out of a temper tantrum. “Was that my daddy on the phone?”
I got up, put the receiver in the cradle and sat in the nearest chair, patting the chair next to me. My niece AliceLynn was tall for her age, a lanky, redheaded girl with her grandma’s fine features, all the way down to the spray of freckles across her high cheekbones and the bridge of her nose. She slid into the seat, putting her notebook on the table in front of her. I got up and fixed her a peanut butter and honey sandwich and glass of milk in silence.
Antony had married the girl’s pregnant mother, Crystal, his feisty high school girlfriend, then dropped out of the college he was failing anyway and moved into a small house on a few acres her parents gave them. When AliceLynn was almost three, Crystal was on her way home from a college reunion in Knoxville when she was killed in a terrible head-on collision on the interstate. Antony lost his shit completely, and had been incapable of taking care of his toddler daughter. The “few weeks” she was to spend living in Antony’s old room at my parents’ house had turned into years.
“Yeah, that was your daddy,” I said, untying one of her messy braids and redoing it while she ate.
“Oh, okay. Is he all right?”
I kissed the top of her head. “He’s fine, sugar. He’ll be ready for you to move into your house real soon.”
“No, he won’t,” she said without a trace of emotion. “I want to stay here with Grammie and Granddaddy anyway.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure you’ll be moving—”
“Of course she wants to stay here,” my mother interrupted, coming into the kitchen with a pile of folded dish towels and ironed napkins. The smell of starch-infused cotton trailed her like smoke. “There’s no need to set up false expectations, Angelique. Put these away please.” She handed me the still-warm stack.