Authors: Erin Lee
Tags: #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Crime, #Romance, #New Adult & College, #Crime Fiction
Table of Contents
In The Beginning
Laina
We didn’t mean to destroy our family. To send our father to jail. Break our mother’s heart. It just sorta happened. We had to do something. We really didn’t have a choice. It was bound to happen, really. You can’t honestly believe you can have nine kids and think they’ll all be perfect Stepford children, can you? It’s really a matter of odds, ya know? Three of us are “bad.” Three black sheep. I’m the blackest. That leaves six, the brown-nosers, the “good” sheep, whatever you want to call them. The ones who’ve “always followed curfew, Laina” and “never pick inappropriate boyfriends, Laina.” “Who go to church every week with the family, Laina.” I swear, the second I get out of this house, I’m changing my name. I’m tired of hearing it. In fact, I’m changing everything. I guess I should at least be grateful my name isn’t straight from the Bible, like many of my siblings. That’s not the kind of shit I have any interest in living up to.
For now, my name’s Laina—short for nothing and meaning nothing. No clue where they got it from and don’t really care. I’m sixteen, almost seventeen. I’m the sixth in a family of eleven, if you count my dad. But I don’t think anyone—besides Mom—is counting on him much these days. And the only thing she counts is the beads on her rosary and number of days before the next visit with him at the state prison. I guess we’re alike in that way. I’m counting the days ’til I can get out of here. The problem is, that number’s always changing.
My sister, Faith, is fourteen. At least her name means something, but I’m not so sure she’s got a lot of faith in anything these days herself. I can’t say as I blame her. I mean, she has two years—730 days—more to count than I do. It’s no wonder she’s always running away. Sometimes, I feel bad I dragged her into this, but it was for her own good. She’s more miserable than I am. Always has been. Just look at her arms, cut to pieces. Don’t get too worried. If she meant to really hurt herself, those cuts would be a lot deeper. Trust me. Cigarette and lighter burns? Please. That’s nothing. You should see what I’ve seen girls in the girls’ home do to themselves. We’re talking being driven away in ambulances because the blood is pouring too fast.
The other “bad” one is Sadie. She’s twenty and long gone. She moved out at my age with a guy named Slash and hasn’t been back—even for Christmas—since. The only thing I can’t understand about her is why she didn’t run farther. I try to tell myself and Faith that she’s sticking around for us, but we both know that’s a lie. Sadie doesn’t work that way. Sadie is about Sadie, and I get that. Really, I do. But I’m not sticking around, not even for Faith.
I’m not listing the rest of them. Unless you had a notebook handy, you wouldn’t be able to remember them anyway. And really? They’re unmentionable. Think of them as robots. They all walk, talk, look, and act pretty much the same; former model children now raising cult families of their own. I don’t even want to think about how many more Lainas, Faiths, and Sadies will come out of them. I should probably tell you about Jeremiah and Mary though because they still live with us.
Jeremiah is ten and has ADHD like you wouldn’t believe. Trying to have privacy or even get dressed in the morning is an ongoing battle. If we weren’t always grounded and allowed to consistently have phones, I can’t imagine how I’d be able to hear anyone anyway. Thank God for Snapchat. The kid needs meds. But “we” don’t believe in meds. “God will handle it, Laina, you worry about you.” If God was worried about me, I wouldn’t be living in this house, and at minimum he’d turn that kid’s volume off. I do have hope that he’ll increase our “good” versus “bad” kid odds though. But being one of only two sons, I doubt they will see it that way. Rules here are different for boys than they are for girls. My parents would say, “God created the sexes differently, Laina. Each sex has a different strength and purpose.”
Mary is five and what Faith and I like to refer to as our part-time job. When you breed like rabbits, you only have so many hands. And with our father locked up, Mom’s hands are full with Jeremiah. Me and Faith take turns watching her. We have nothing else to do, being homeschooled and often on house arrest. I don’t mind her so much. She doesn’t understand what’s going on. I sorta feel bad for her.
So enough with the introductions. The reason you’re here is to figure out what causes the “perfect” family to implode in a matter of months. You’re probably thinking “it’s those three bad seeds” and feeling sorry for my parents. Before you make judgments, I want you to know the whole story. They aren’t as innocent as they seem. Maybe, if they had stopped at four or five kids, they could have kept that perfect image. “God only gives you what you can handle, Laina.” Bull. God gave them twice what they could handle, plus one. And look at the result.
It’s not that I don’t believe in God. I do. God’s in my blood like iron. When you spend eight hours a week in masses or with the church—in a monastery—you can’t help but be brainwashed. Even when they say mass in Latin, it starts to sink in. Gross. Latin is a dead language, people. Please. But seriously, I’m actually pretty glad I am—brainwashed, that is. At least when it comes to God. Poor Faith. She’s so confused. Waste of time worrying so much about specific religions, if you ask me. I’ll worry about figuring my beliefs out later after I’m finally free. For now, I need to believe there is some sort of higher power looking out for me; even if he is drunk and high. ’Cause where I am right now feels pretty darn lonely. I need someone to talk to. Nobody’s really listening, and I guess that’s my own fault.
***
It all started when Sadie met Slash. That was four years ago. Up until then, Mom and Dad had the perfect little tribe. Cult really is probably the better word—that’s what Faith calls it. Right in front of them. I love that girl. Anyway, there were five of us left at home then, when the Nelson Family Armageddon happened. Joseph had just gotten married and moved out. We’ll get to that later.
In the very beginning, things were okay. Mom and Dad got married young. She was barely seventeen, but pregnant with my oldest sister Hope. From the stories I’ve heard, Mom’s parents weren’t any more pleased with Dad than my own parents are with my boyfriend, Tyler. Hypocrites. As the story goes, things were a little different in 1984. When a good Catholic girl came up pregnant, you basically had two choices. The guy married the girl—often by threat of death by said girl’s father—in a gunshot wedding, or you gave the kid up for adoption. You never saw that kid again. You were told you did the right thing, giving your baby up to a two-parent family with resources and love; a mother who hadn’t sinned. Nelsons don’t abort. I’ve been told this my whole life, and I suspect my mother was too. Nelsons are Catholic: “God’s religion, Laina. God’s only religion, Laina.” It makes me want to gag, thinking of how many times my parents have said that to me. Of course, Mom wasn’t a Nelson then, on paper, but always in her heart.
If I had to guess, I’d bet Mom got pregnant with Hope on purpose. It was the only way she’d be allowed to be with Dad. And, obviously, it worked. I’ll give her that. I’m tempted to do the same thing myself with Tyler, if things don’t change soon. I mean, what could they say that they haven’t said? What could they do? I just can’t go there though. One of my biggest fears is turning out like Mom and Hope—baby makers. I want to do something better with my life, act—I can clearly put on a hell of a performance if you saw the Child Advocacy Center interviews—travel; I’m not sure.
I sure as hell don’t want to spend it in some tiny town counting baby bottles and serving a man—well, maybe Tyler. But there’s more to life than kids and guys. Right now, I’m trying to make things about me. To get my head on straight, ya know? I like to draw. The only good thing I ever got out of therapy, foster homes, and troubled kids’ residential stays. Those places like you to express yourself through art. That’s how I learned to draw. Maybe I’ll be a famous artist someday. Can’t do that from here though, and if they listened to me, they’d know that. I’m not all about Tyler and drugs and “being a bad influence on Faith, Laina.”
So it’s back in the ‘80s, and Mom and Dad don’t have a pot to piss in. Of course, they don’t believe in birth control because the Pope says good Catholics allow God to decide how many children a couple should have. I wonder where the Pope is now. Mom’s at home with Hope and pregnant with Jada. Dad’s starting some painting business or something. They’re struggling but living on love. I find it odd that Mom told me just last week when I asked to move in with Tyler, “you can’t live on love, Laina.” I didn’t argue with her. It’s not worth it. Sometimes, I wonder if the good side of her fears me turning out like her too. I wonder if she’s as happy as she claims to be or if she’s just too afraid of crossing Dad and going to hell to have any opinion at all on the topic of her own life. Sad, really.
Dad sucked at running a business. Always has, always will—if he ever gets out of prison—it’s just how it is. Mom would never say it, of course, and found ways to compensate for what he couldn’t do on his own to provide for such a big family. She made huge gardens and claimed we were going organic and “making healthy choices about our bodies, Laina.” Truth be told, we were finding ways to make up for Dad’s shortcomings as a breadwinner and Mom’s lack of guts to go out and get a job to help him. Growing up in a house with nine kids and not enough food on the table is bad enough, but when you have to hear that God will provide and that keeping faith will make it all okay, things get old. They wonder why I have an eating disorder.
Other than the financial stuff, I admit that there were some great years with my family. Until I was about twelve, we got along pretty well. We had our routines and chores, but things weren’t that bad. I’ve seen and read a lot about the Amish. That’s the best comparison I can give you to the life we were living. We kept to ourselves, except when it came to the church community. Our peers were people from the church or neighbors. We lived in a modest house on a big hill surrounded by acres and acres of conservation land in upstate New York. And, we gardened. Mom tried to say the gardening was part of our science and business classes. I did like selling tomatoes on the side of the road. It was the only job I was ever allowed to have, but it helped me meet people—Tyler. Which is about when our lives started to change.
I’m surprised Tyler didn’t ride a horse and carriage past the tiny farmer’s market stand that day. After all, he didn’t grow up much different than I did. But Tyler isn’t the type to follow rules, and the more Mom and Dad pushed at our relationship, the more he pushed back. Only a few weeks before meeting him—and nothing happened with him until I was age of consent, I swear—things were good.
Like I said, my brother had just moved out to get married. It must have been around 2011. Of course, he’d picked the perfect soon-to-be-Stepford-wife. You know the type. Like they came right out of the ‘50s and never heard of a woman’s right to vote. Her crazy eyes and the way she stared at Joseph like he was the second coming of Christ made me throw up in my mouth, just a little. It’s not like Joseph’s a bad guy. But he reminds me of my father. Anyone like Thomas Nelson is no friend of mine. Faith can be all “I’m sorry, Daddy, please come home.” Not me. I’ll never forgive him for what he did to us.
Anyway, when Joseph left, my parents let Sadie move into the basement. This is what they believe to be mistake number one in a long chain of events that led to the end of the Nelson world as we knew it. Never again would there be that idyllic—no matter how fictional—“night John Boy, night Jim Bob” atmosphere my parents had tried so desperately to create. There were a few problems with Sadie changing rooms. First, it meant a clear escape out the basement bulkhead for her to meet up with her new and much older boyfriend, Slash. Second, it left me and Faith to our own devices in the “girls’” room, adjacent to our parents. Mary was still on Mom’s tit and sleeping with my parents. With a huge room for me and Faith, and our big sister Sadie gone for the night doing God-knows-what with Slash, it gave us plenty of time to talk about our own dreams of escape. Even at twelve and ten, Faith and I knew we wanted to be doing what Sadie was doing. She was, after all, the most rebellious and adventurous. And Slash was pretty cute—for a thirty-year-old.
I guess I figured if Sadie could be “saved” by Slash—who was more than a decade older than her—and his refurbished ‘69 Mustang that he threw into neutral when he parked at the end of our street, what was really so bad about Tyler showing some interest in me? Is a fourteen-year age difference any worse than what Sadie and Slash were doing?
Like it or not, when you grow up completely isolated and sheltered, you also grow up fast. Laying super strict rules on kids like Faith and I is kinda like cartoon porn—both comical and useless. We weren’t allowed to watch “unapproved” TV, our parents monitored our Internet usage from the local public library, and then only for homework purposes, and a private cell phone was the kind of thing you only got as a wedding present or when you were moving out of the house, until shit changed just this year. So with nothing to do, you’d be surprised at just how not sheltered we were. What’s that saying about idle time and the devil? Mom would know. She’s read the Bible three million times.
Mom and Dad thought they could protect us from the world. They figured that if they limited our exposure to the media and the big, bad world, it would take us longer to get into trouble. If we spent our Friday nights memorizing the Ten Commandments, it would make us want to follow them, or at the very least, know them and be so terrified of going to hell that we wouldn’t dare break them. Wrong. They wonder why Faith’s turned into a witch or whatever she is these days.