Sense of Rumor (Mount Faith Series: Book 6) by Brenda Barrett Read Free Book Online Page B

her neck. She had a shiny clean black Honda to drive, and she lived in a mansion. Surely, something bad was going to happen to her.
    Nothing good ever happened to her without something terrible happening after. She remembered when she lived in West Virginia with her dad, mom, and big brother. She had been happy; life was cozy; she was loved. Suddenly, when she was eight, a stern-faced policeman had come to the door and told her mother that her father was dead—killed in a bar room brawl.
    For years, she thought that bar room brawl story had been a lie. In her recollection, her father had not shown any signs of being an alcoholic. How could he be in a bar, involved in a brawl?
    Her mother had broken down after her father died. She changed from the happy, well-adjusted housewife and mother to a vacant-eyed alcoholic. The transition happened in less than a year.
    Her Jamaican grandmother had died and left a house and some money in a will. Her mother had packed them up and moved to what Arnella saw as a strange country with strange people, tearing her from her friends and all she held dear.
    Vanley, who was six years older, had held her in the nights when she cried herself to sleep because her mother had not quit drinking when she returned to Jamaica. Instead, she had gotten worse. That was when Arnella had taken on her tough exterior. She had turned into a little horror. Her brother had started boarding school shortly after coming to Jamaica, so he had no idea of how bad Arnella had it at home with a bitter woman who thought that her world had collapsed around her.
    Arnella had taken solace in painting. She had always received art supplies from her uncle Ryan, who had taken a very keen interest in them after his brother died. Arnella had also taken to running away, sometimes running to strangers, especially when her mother got so drunk that she would beat her for nothing at all.
    Things had gotten so bad at home that one day she had stowed away in the local Catholic priest's car. Father Michael had been on his way to Kingston, and when he found her, he had taken her to an orphanage in downtown Kingston that was run by nuns. She had been missing for two weeks before the nuns realized that the Arnella Bancroft being featured on television and Nella Parks, the name she had given them, were one and the same person. She hadn't wanted to leave the orphanage. Three square meals a day without the drunken attacks from her mother had been heaven.
    Incidentally, that had been the turning point in her mother's addiction. Her Uncle Ryan had stepped in and gotten her into rehab. By then, Arnella was as hard as a turtle’s shell. She had become cynical and bitter, believing that nothing good ever happened to her without a crushing bad following.
    She bit her lip when flashbacks of her most recent incident with the guys resurfaced in her mind. She needed to confront them about it. Why had they done that to her? She got up from the overstuffed chair and started pacing again. She had thought that those memories of them violating her would eventually go away, just like her other bad experiences, but they always seemed to resurface. She kept remembering the afternoon with a hazy cloud surrounding it. She couldn't recall specifics, and the not knowing spooked her even more.
    Her first recall was David panting on top of her. Then there was Jeff assaulting her orally, and Cory… She couldn't remember what he did. She only recalled his grinning face operating a camera or had he been standing in the light?
    She should report it, but a part of her was reluctant. She hated when people disbelieved her—she hated that with a passion. Who would believe her anyway? Even Alric thought that she had gone off with them, and Tracy thought she was hallucinating, and from her fuzzy recall of the events, she hadn't been exactly comatosed in her reactions.
    She ran her fingers through her hair and pulled it slightly.
    "Hey, Nella."
    "Hey, Micah." She gulped in a