Two Weeks (The Baxter Family #5)(4)

But then the second thing happened.

Elise stood and walked to the window. The sky was mostly dark now. Nighttime settling in.

“Elise, time for dinner!” Her aunt’s voice carried through the small house. “Big day tomorrow!”

Yes. Elise blew at a wisp of her dark hair. Big day for sure. She was going to get straight A’s here in Bloomington. No friends or guys. Not if she wanted to be serious about NYU. And she’d never been more serious about anything.

Elise turned toward the door. “Be right there.” Then she looked out the window again and lifted her eyes to the sky. Things got worse with her mother after that. When the second thing happened her junior year.

She met Randy Collins.

He was the same age, a linebacker on the football team with a reputation as bad off the field as on it. Tall with tanned skin, a Hollywood face, and brown eyes that challenged everything she’d been raised to believe.

Elise knew who he was, of course, but one Friday night, the two of them wound up at the same party. Randy had a beer in his hand when he walked up to her. “Hey, pretty girl.” He moved so close she could smell his breath. His lips curved into a smile, his words slurred. “Where you been all my life?”

The pickup line didn’t feel like one coming from him. She lowered her chin. Then she did something that went against everything she’d known about herself until that moment. She played along.

“Me?”

“Yeah, you.” He pressed into her.

The new Elise was taking shape by the second. She didn’t break eye contact. “Why . . . waiting for tonight of course.” She batted her eyelashes and grinned at him. And as she did she felt something inside her shift. She was flirting, and talking close to a boy at a party. And a thought occurred to her.

She’d never felt this good before.

With Randy Collins so near she didn’t need a drink. His presence was intoxicating enough.

“Elise!” Her aunt was coming for her.

She pulled away from the window and glanced at the mirror on the dresser. Randy used to say she looked like Belle in Beauty and the Beast. A wisp of a girl all long brown hair and big blue eyes. And he was the Beast. That’s what he said.

A few blinks and Elise shook her head. “You don’t look like Belle,” she whispered to herself. “You look ordinary.”

“Elise.” Her aunt sounded beyond frustrated. “Dinner’s getting cold! Please!”

“Coming.” She moved away from the mirror and hurried out the door to the dining room. She wasn’t Belle and she didn’t believe in fairy tales. She was a bad girl, about to make good with her life.

Period.

Her aunt Carol couldn’t cook, but at least she tried. Tonight was meat loaf, with ketchup and something crispy. Onions maybe. Elise wasn’t sure. The green beans were cold, but that was her fault, for being late to dinner.

Uncle Ken spent most of the meal talking about a client. Someone loud and pushy. Ken wasn’t sure he could handle the guy another day.

“I’m telling you, Carol, if he bursts through my door one more time with that tone, I think I’ll . . . I’ll tell him to leave.” He shoved a forkful of beans into his mouth. One still poked out from his lips as he waved his free hand in circles. “I mean it. I don’t need that kind of attitude in my office.”

He caught the spare bean and chomped it. Then he poured himself a second glass of wine. Seemed the more Ken drank, the angrier he got. For the most part Aunt Carol nodded and sipped her own glass. These two drank a bottle a night. Ken kept talking, something about his boss. Carol seemed to do her best to look sympathetic. “Yes, dear,” she would say every minute or so. Another sip of wine. “I understand, dear.”

Elise focused on her meat loaf.

She didn’t like being around so much drinking. Not now that she was away from Randy, anyway. Her mother never drank. “It’s fine for some people,” she would say. “But not for me.” Elise understood. When she was in high school, her mama’s daddy—Elise’s only grandpa—died coming home from a bar. Crashed his pickup into a tree.

Anyway, the drinking made Elise uneasy. Or maybe just sad. Because the life her aunt and uncle lived felt meaningless. Empty. The walls were closing in down here, too.

When dinner was over, she helped Carol with the dishes. She’d agreed to this when she’d moved in. Take on her part of the chores. Elise didn’t mind. It was the least she could do. Clearly having her stay here wasn’t a part of her aunt and uncle’s life plan.

Conversation with Carol wasn’t easy. Not from the day Elise walked through the front door. Like her aunt wasn’t sure what to make of Elise. Now though she seemed thoughtful. “Your mother must’ve been pretty upset to send you here.” Carol was scrubbing the meat loaf pan.

Elise waited, towel ready. “I needed to leave.” They’d never really talked about it before. The details about why Elise was here. Her mother had simply called her big sister over Christmas break and a week later Elise had stepped off a plane in Indiana.

Carol seemed to think about that for a minute. “She was too strict. I know my sister.”

Her aunt’s words were a little mumbled, directed at the soapy sink water and the meat loaf pan. Elise stared at her. “Ma’am?”

“Your mother.” Carol turned to Elise. Something in her stuffy expression said she had all the answers. “She was too hard on you.” A shake of her head, but she didn’t look away. “All that God stuff, going to church, reading the Bible. You’re young.” She sighed and turned to the sink again. “Kids need freedom.”