Free Life After Taylah by Bella Jewel Page A

down. I stare out at the ocean, listening to the waves crash against the shore. It’s a clear night out, and the stars are shining brightly. “You okay?”
    I turn to see Nate, two beers in hand, standing beside me. He sits down and hands me one. I look around him to see if Lena is here, but he’s alone.
    “Where are Lena and Macy?”
    “Gone home. Macy is tired.”
    I nod and take a sip of the beer.
    “So, are you okay?” he asks again.
    “I’m okay. I just needed a minute.”
    “He always like that?” he asks, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it.
    “Those will kill you.”
    He grins at me, showing me perfect white teeth. I smile back.
    “There are worse things.”
    “Don’t I know it.?”
    “So,” he says again, “is he always like that?”
    “Mostly,” I sigh.
    “Why do you do it then?”
    I shrug. “I can’t explain it without sounding completely whacked.”
    He leans back. “Try me.”
    “Well, he’s close to my father, and my father is the only family I have left. The business is important to him and Jacob’s dad is his closest partner. Because Liam can’t take it over, Jacob will inherit both. I’ve known Jacob my whole life; it seems the right thing to do. We dated when I was younger and then it ended.
    “After . . . my mother went missing . . . my dad changed. He shut down. I guess Liam and I were all he had. He set me up with dancing; he pays for every cent of it. I don’t know—I feel like I’m letting him down if I walk.”
    “You can’t be with someone forever just because your father wants it.”
    “He’s all I have, Nate. What else am I to do?”
    “Live,” he offers. “ Love .”
    “And leave him to do what?”
    “Figure it out on his own.”
    I shake my head and look at my fingers. “She went missing when I was just thirteen years old,” I whisper.
    “Your momma?”
    “Yeah. She smiled at us as we walked out the door for the bus and we never saw her again. They searched; they investigated. All they ever found was her car on an old abandoned road. No clues. No blood. Nothing. She just vanished. That was ten years ago.”
    “I’m sorry, Avery,” he says, softly. “I don’t know how that would feel.”
    “People think it’s something that only happens in movies or in books. I mean, how can a person just go missing? There are so many theories. One is that she stopped to help someone—which is something my mother would do—and she was taken. The other is that she has taken her own life and they never found the body—maybe she jumped into a lake or the ocean. It’s unlikely; she was happy. The third is that she is alive somewhere, and not wanting to be found. That hurts more than all of them.”
    “What do you think?” he asks.
    “I think something happened to her, I just don’t know what. She wouldn’t leave us. She was one of those mothers—the ones who live for their children.”
    “Do they still look?”
    I nod. “The investigation will always be open, I suppose. If they have leads, they investigate them. We’re kept in the loop as much as possible. The police have come to know our family very well.”
    “I can imagine.”
    We sit in silence for a long while.
    “Liam is hurt,” I say. “So hurt. He hates my father—he thinks Dad favors me. It’s not like that. I try to stand by my father because I know how hurt he is. I don’t like it though, not one bit. He hardly speaks to me. There is no emotion left in him. I’m scared if I walk away and don’t do as he wants, that he’ll just break for a final time.”
    “Now it makes sense,” he murmurs.
    I turn to him, but he keeps speaking.
    “You think if you don’t do what your father wants, you’re letting him down. You’re scared it’ll be the end of him, because he won’t be able to cope.”
    I turn back and stare at the ocean.
    “You can’t live like that, Avery. It’s not fair to you.”
    “I’m fine with it, Nate. I care about Jacob.”
    “Is that the truth?”
    I turn