Free Mortal Sin by Laurie Breton Page A

want to be recognized. How could that dried-up old witch do this to her? What the hell was she supposed to do now?
    One thing she knew for sure. She wouldn’t go back to the house in Revere, back to Aunt Sarah sticking closer to her than a flea on a bluetick hound. She’d rather starve to death here on the streets. Besides, it wasn’t as though Sarah wanted her there. Nobody wanted her. Her aunt had only taken her in because they were blood relatives and she didn’t have a choice. Sarah’d never had any kids of her own, and she didn’t have a clue how to treat one. She ran the household like a boot camp, and Kit had experienced all of the military life she intended to take.
    She was used to being alone, anyway. She’d always been alone. Right from the time she was a little girl, she’d known she was nothing but excess baggage to Daddy. She could see it in his eyes, could see it in the eyes of every new girlfriend who came sniffing around. None of them wanted some nosy little girl getting in the way of their big romance. They always pretended to be nice to her, but she could see straight through their lies. In the end, she always got shoved aside. They would put her to bed on a strange couch in a strange living room in a strange house, with nothing familiar except Freddy. Even the bedding smelled foreign. Daddy would go into the bedroom with the new girlfriend and close the door, and she’d be alone.
    She’d lie there in the dark, clutching Freddy, terrified by the sound and feel of an unfamiliar house. Sometimes she’d have bad dreams, and wake up crying for Daddy. But Daddy never came. The bedroom door stayed shut. At other times, the noises she heard coming from behind that closed door frightened her, until she got old enough to understand what was going on. Then she just wrapped the pillow around her head, pulled Freddy tighter, and tuned it all out.
    Sooner or later, every one of Daddy’s relationships went south. Just about the time she started getting used to being there, the big silences would begin. Then came the sharp words. Eventually, even that would deteriorate into shouting and throwing and breaking things. About that time, Daddy would pack their suitcases, his and Kit’s, and they’d be back on the road again, looking for a new place to crash.
    She knew it was stupid, but for some crazy reason, every time they moved into a new place with a new “auntie,” there was a part of her that hoped this would be the one who liked her, the one who’d become her new mother. Even with Aunt Sarah, at the beginning, she’d hoped. Until their first big go-round, when she’d realized her aunt was no different from the rest of them. Sarah just tolerated her because she didn’t have any other choice.
    The bouncing from place to place might have gone on forever if Daddy hadn’t married Melanie. His new wife detested Kit on sight, and the feeling was mutual. Which meant that in Daddy’s eyes, Kit had become an even bigger liability. He was madly in love with his new wife, but he couldn’t very well dump his daughter on a street corner. So he did the next-best thing: he dumped her on his sister’s doorstep and slunk back into the night.
    Fuck Melanie. Fuck all of them. She didn’t need anybody. She’d show them all. She’d become a famous actress and live in a gorgeous house filled with beautiful things, just like in the magazines, with a maid and a butler and a Jaguar in the driveway. And when Daddy and his snotty little bitch of a wife came to call, she’d tell the butler to send them away.
    Kit Connelly was going places. Just as soon as she figured out where she’d be sleeping tonight.
     
    “Woo-hoo! Father! Hold up, I want to talk to you.”
    Clancy paused at the door to the meeting room and waited for Ruth Steinman to catch up to him. The sort of woman others described as handsome, Ruth could have been anywhere between the ages of fifty and seventy. Her silver hair looked as though it had been