Free Such a Pretty Girl by Laura Wiess Page A

down the plate and sinking into the chair beside me. “Eat first and then we’ll talk.”
    Four. Good. I devour the pickles first. Yum, salt.
    “Oh, come on, Mother,” my mother says. “Meredith can talk and eat at the same time.” She slumps against the countertop and folds her arms across her chest. “And it’s not like I haven’t heard all this before. So let’s just get it over with so I can take my daughter, go home to my husband, and get on with my life.”
    I wolf down the first sandwich and am into the second by the time my grandmother answers.
    “Well, I guess that’s a beginning.” Leah Louisa turns to me. “All right, Meredith, you’ve heard what your mother wants. What do you want?”
    I want my father gone but I can’t say that, so I chew slowly, buying time to readjust my goal. My original plan of making myself repulsive and driving him away isn’t working. Staying out of his orbit is going to be impossible with both him and my mother insisting on a harmonious reconciliation.
    The tomato sandwich tastes sour now. I don’t want to be run out of my own home, but I don’t want to live near my father, either. On the other hand, the only thing standing between exile and me is my father. He will never let me move away; my mother would send me here to live with Leah Louisa in a heartbeat.
    If I were to stay here, I’d be safe, but alone and monitored. Leah Louisa would never put up with my disappearing act, especially if I came in with swollen lips and bed hair, smelling of Jim Beam and Andy. Living here would mean no more purification Fridays, no Nigel and Gilly, no easy access to Andy, and no freedom.
    Freedom. Free to do what? Cower and run and hide? Free to be made small and disgusting, to listen to my father’s obscene desires, feel his gaze creeping over me, waiting for me to make that one wrong move so he can pounce…. Who is free? Not me. He’s the only one who’s free. He’s the only one doing exactly what he wants…
    Oh.
    Hope flares, hot and immediate, and I almost drop the sandwich. Of course. It’s so simple. When he reoffends, he’ll be sent back to prison. Probably for a long time, maybe even forever if his next victim is as messed up as I was and the enraged parents go straight to the police afterward….
    If.
    Afterward.
    Oh no. No, I can’t.
    I don’t want to be the sacrificial lamb. I can’t go through it again, not unless I’m guaranteed a nick-of-time save and unshakable sanity, neither of which seem available. It’s too much to ask of anyone, and yet…if I don’t stake myself out, sooner or later somebody else, somebody innocent and still pure, is going to get caught in my father’s web and it will be my fault for not stopping him.
    “Meredith?” Leah Louisa prods.
    I blink and am back on the battlefield, scrabbling desperately for another way. “Why do I have to be around him, Mom? You’re happy he’s back. I’m not. You want time alone with him and I’m trying to stay away, but you just keep forcing him down my throat.” I pause and my mother’s mouth tightens. She thinks I’ve said it to taunt her, but I haven’t. “Why can’t you just leave me out of it?”
    “Because family sticks together.” Her mascara’s left raccoon smudges under her eyes and her armpit stubble needs shaving. She won’t like what she sees when she gets home and will blame me for causing her sloppy grooming.
    “Then why don’t you stick with me?” I ask. “Why don’t you tell him that some things aren’t forgivable and there’s no making nice or starting over—”
    “You see?” my mother says bitterly, spreading her hands and glaring at my grandmother as if it’s somehow all her fault. “There’s no talking to her. She hears what she wants to and that’s it. The world revolves around Meredith and nobody else counts.”
    “Sharon, be reasonable,” my grandmother says.
    “I’m done being reasonable,” my mother says, pushing away from the counter.