Now She's Gone: A Novel by Kim Corum Read Free Book Online Page B

beating women off him, just like your daddy did.’
    ‘Don’t you dare talk about my daddy.’
    She threw her hands up. ‘I can’t talk any sense into you, can I?’
    I shook my head.
    ‘The way I see it, you got two choices. You can either break up with him and go to college or you can marry him and be as miserable as I am.’
    ‘I’m sorry I’ve made you so miserable.’
    She stared at me with this incredible hurt look. ‘You ain’t made me miserable, baby. I just want the best for you, can’t you see that? And you won’t have it with that boy, I can guarantee you, you won’t have it at all.’
    ‘I’ve got it now. I love him!’
    ‘Love is for fools. When you learn that, you’ll be happy.’
    ‘You’re lying! You never felt it, that’s all! You don’t love me and you never loved Daddy!’
    ‘Like hell I didn’t love him! And look what he did to me!’
    ‘Maybe you made him do it by being so mean!’
    She looked as though I had slapped her. ‘Well, then. It was all my fault. It didn’t have a damn thing to do with him coming home late at night or not coming home at all! It didn’t have a damn thing to do with him stealing your baby formula money to buy liquor! No! He never did that!’
    I started to cry. I wished to God she’d never told me that.
    ‘That man only cares about one thing and that’s drinking. He may have tried to do better a few years ago, Cassandra, but he was a day late and damn dollar short.’
    I just wished she’d leave. She always made things worse, never better. She never made anything better. Why couldn’t she come to me and say something like, ‘You made a mistake. Let’s forget about it?’
    It just wasn’t in her nature. Some people are born miserable. Some people cultivate misery. Some have it thrown on them and live it because they don’t see anything besides their own misery. That was her. She only saw misery, her own misery. She thought she didn’t have a choice in the matter.
    I just wished she could be happy. Some way, some day, I wished she could be happy. She never would be. She would never allow herself to. I understand that now. Then I didn’t have a clue.
    She continued, ‘There was no way I would let him back in to hurt us again. And he’d hurt you, honey. He’d have you wrapped right around his little finger like he did me and the next thing you know, he’ll just up and leave. Disappear. Gone. No goodbye. No nothing but a damn broken heart. You can think he’s a saint all you want, but I won’t sit here and let you talk to me like that.’
    She got up and went to the door. I stared at her. She stared back. I looked away first.
    ‘We’re moving. I’ve already taken care of everything. We have to leave this town. There’s nothing here for either of us and you know it as much as I do. That boy you love, you’ll get over him just like I got over your daddy.’
    She wasn’t over my daddy. She never got over him. When I told her he’d passed away, she cried more than I did. But she refused to go to the funeral.
    I told her, ‘I ain’t going nowhere.’
    ‘That’s your choice. You can stay here in this shitty little motel room and you might get lucky and some old creep won’t break in and hurt you. And you might not. You might get lucky and that boy might marry you. You’re special, not only to me, but to the rest of the world and if you stay in this God forsaken town, you’ll die. I’ve been dying for years and I’m ready to leave.’
    I stared at her.
    ‘There’s nothing for either of us here, baby. Once you realize that, you’ll be fine.’
    And with that, she left.
    She was right. There wasn’t anything there. Nothing. Cows and barns and a Frosty Freeze. Nothing else. A place you pass by to get to somewhere else.
    I broke down and cried. All I could do was cry. For days, it seemed like years. How could she have done this to me? But I knew deep down that my mother was right. I knew I had to leave.
    So when Wayne came to see me