Free Snowbound Halloween by Veronica Tower Page A

skipped out of line to get a double helping of nasty. There was no way Thea could confide in her over this sort of problem. First she’d yell at her and then she’d go right to Mom.
    But if she couldn’t tell her sister, who could she trust to listen and help her figure all of this out?
    Thea had three cousins whom she’d been getting closer to in the past few months. Liz was a lawyer who should have known how to keep secrets, but she was also a tease and a gossip. Thea couldn’t count on her to keep a personal confidence. Ruth was cut from the same ugly mode as Thea’s sister, Becka. But Kara? Normally Thea would think Kara could keep a secret, but could she trust her not to confide this news to her fiancé? Ron was a close friend of Nick’s. Kara and Ron had actually introduced the two of them. Thea didn’t know if she could trust her cousin under these sorts of circumstances?
    “Thea!” her mother rapped on the door again. “How long are you going to be in there?”
    Thea lost her patience with the older woman.  “What does it matter? We have two bathrooms! Go downstairs!”
    “I don’t have to use the bathroom,” her mother snapped back. “I want to know what could possibly occupy my daughter so long in the one room of the house she can lock!”
    Rage burst out of Thea. She shoved the box with the pregnancy test into her back pocket, flushed the toilet and yanked open the bathroom door. “What is your problem?” she shouted. “We’ve talked about this! While I’m paying your bills you’re supposed to back off! Treat me with respect! And give me some privacy when I want it!”
    “And what exactly do you need privacy for?” her mother shouted back.
    Thea threw up her hands and stormed past her.
    “Don’t you walk away from me!” her mother screamed.
    Thea ignored her, rushed down the stairs, and out of the house to her car.

    Tears hit Thea as she pulled her little second hand Ford Escort out of the driveway.
    Of all the insufferable nonsense that she had to deal with, her mother’s childish temper tantrums were the worse. She should have moved back out and gotten an apartment years ago and let Becka and Dwayne worry about Mom for a change. But Becka had been a slow motion train wreck for a lot of years. First her marriage had been falling apart and then she’d been going through her divorce and now that she was putting her life back together she still didn’t have time for anyone but herself. Their brother, Dwayne, was even worse. Not only was he back in prison but let’s be honest, he’d never given a rat’s ass about what happened to Mom anyway. The only thing he’d ever wanted from their parents was more money to support his habits.
    So Thea, who had given up her own place to move back home to take care of their sick Dad, had stayed on with her mother after her father died, playing the good daughter instead of taking back her own life. She’d let the old woman and Becka browbeat her into staying at home even after Nick and she had started dating. She’d stayed even though it meant continuing to hide her birth control pills from her mother, even after the old woman had rooted around in her drawers and uncovered them early last year. It hadn’t mattered to Mom that Thea was thirty-eight years old and certainly mature enough to have a sexual relationship. The endless rants on sin and disrespect had forced Thea to hide the pills in the glove compartment of her car, which probably explained why she wasn’t always perfect about taking them. 
    Now she was pregnant and a burden and Nick was probably going to be scared away because there was a huge difference between inviting the girlfriend who’s more than ten years older than you to come over to your apartment and play sex games than there is in taking on responsibility for a pregnant woman who’s freaking out because she’s going to have a baby and she’s not married yet.
    Keeping her tear-blurred eyes only on half on the road, Thea