Abandoned Girl (Neighpalm Industries Collective, #1)

by Winston, Lexie

  ALTHOUGH IT’S ONLY just lunchtime, we all have a glass of wine in hand while Melinda's housekeeper makes us something to eat. The shoebox is sitting on the dining room table, and Melinda and Maxine keep shooting glances at it. I know they’re both impatient to know what's in it, but the longer I put it off, the longer I can stave off more disappointment. Max's fingers drum on the wooden table with impatience, Melinda taking frequent sips of her wine, and it’s not long before the latter reaches for the bottle to top up her glass. Before too long, Sherry, the housekeeper, places salads in front of us, and we start to eat, both of them staring at the box as if they’re afraid it will disappear if they take their eyes off it.

  I snort at their behavior, and Melinda startles, shaking her head as if to clear her thoughts. “Harlow, it’s okay, honey. You don't have to open it now.” Her voice is gentle as she tries to reassure me. I pick at the salad in front of me before putting my fork down and leaning back.

  “God, I should be used to all of this. I should be used to this woman disappointing me and resenting her. Every time you guys went on an overseas trip and she wouldn't sign for me to get a passport, every time one of her sleazy boyfriends hit on me, every time she would turn up for money. I hated her. There was absolutely nothing about her that I liked, and I don't have a single happy moment to remember her by. She spent her life disappointing me, yet here I am, too scared to open a shoebox because I’m afraid she's going to disappoint me again.”

  “Redemption,” Maxine whispers. I raise an eyebrow in question, and she continues. “In the past, there was always a chance she would clean herself up and beg for your forgiveness. But that’s gone now.”

  What she says hits me hard. Maxine’s right. Diane, Mom, is gone permanently, and I will never get that storybook moment of redemption and forgiveness. A tear trickles down my face, and I wipe it away again. Standing up, I move my plate to the side and pull the box toward me, praying I’m not about to find my dead mother’s vibrator.

  “Here, give it to me,” Maxine demands. “I’ll open it.” Breathing a sigh of relief, I pass the box to her and brace myself for the inevitable. She yanks off the lid and stares inside, a puzzled look on her face.

  “Huh, not sex toys,” she says, almost disappointed, which brings a small smile to my face. She hands the box over, and I look down. There are a couple of pictures of my mom and a really handsome guy. Both seem to be in their early twenties, and they’re smiling and happy. In one, the guy has his arms wrapped around my mom, kissing her forehead, a sunset in the background. The other, they’re sitting with a group of friends, her on his lap, in a restaurant or bar. I can see Chuck with Melinda on his lap in the background. The guy looks relaxed and happy too, but he’s unrecognizable to me, so no one I’ve ever met before. He’s got shaggy blond hair with a full beard and is dressed in beach casual in shorts and t-shirt with flip flops on his feet. He looks like a surf bum, fit and athletic.

  She looks so... healthy and so much like me. She has long, straight, blonde hair. It’s almost down to her ass, and it’s washed and vibrant. Her face is full, and there’s a sparkle in her eyes. I don't know this woman. I’ve never known this woman. Placing the photos down, I pull out the next piece of paper, realizing it’s a birth certificate. Mine, more specifically, and in the space for Father is a name. Bradley Cole.

  My heart starts to race. Holy shit, she actually knew who my father was and didn't tell me. And obviously, he didn't know. Or maybe he did, but he didn't want me. My anger at her increases until I’m shaking so hard the paper in my hand is vibrating.

  “What is it?” Melinda asks, the concern in her voice making it sound like one of her usual demands. I pass her the photo and certificate, kind of happy to get them out of my hands before I can tear them up so that I can go back to the ignorance I’ve lived in my entire life.

  “She knew,” I grind out between closed teeth. “She knew and didn't tell me who he was or anything. Does he know and not want me, or did she keep me from him too, like the spiteful bitch she was?”

  Looking up, I can see the sympathetic look on Max’s face, but Melinda has turned pale, and a gasp escapes her mouth. Like a cold splash of water, her reaction stops my anger in an instant.

  “That bitch!” she snarls, a thunderous look crossing her face. Max and I look at her in surprise, our mouths simultaneously falling open. Nothing about this moment is typical for Melinda. She stands up quickly, eyes darting between us.

  “I’ll tell you everything I know, Harlow, I promise, but first I need to ask Chuck something.” With that, she takes the two photos and my birth certificate and hurries from the room.

  “What the fuck was that about?” I ask Max, and she shrugs her shoulders.

  “Mom obviously knows something, and right now, I’m pretty sure if your mom was still alive, mine would be wrapping her hands around her skinny little throat and squeezing.” She looks to where Melinda disappeared, and I shudder.

  I don’t think I’ve ever seen Melinda that angry. Even when she caught us drunk after that party in our junior year of high school, she was more resigned than angry. She’s always been the kind of mom that was disappointed instead of angry, and this fiery part of her is something we’ve always been spared. “She's scary,” I whisper, and Max’s eyes are wide as she nods her head in agreement.

  “Dude, my mom would totally take your junkie whore mother.” That eases the tension, and I laugh.

  “I don't know about that; that junkie had some power behind her fist, and when she was jonesing for a fix, she was downright ugly mean.” Shame and embarrassment cross Max’s face at the reminder of what I dealt with, but again I shrug it off. “Look, if I’m going to try and push away any guilt that I might be feeling, you’ve got to try to. It’s all in the past, and you getting sad every time it’s bought up does neither of us any good. Anyway, I was much better off with you guys than I would have been with her, and I wouldn't change a thing.”

  My nerves and anxiety kick in as we wait for her to return, different ideas flowing through my mind. “Do you think the guy in the photos is my dad?”

  She shakes her head, but everything in her face says that she’s unsure. “He looks familiar, but I can’t quite place him. Maybe he’s a friend of Mom and Dad’s? You would think Diane would have told them if that was the case.”

  I look in the direction that Melinda went and then back at Maxine. “Screw this, I can’t wait,” I tell her, shoving away from the table and following in the direction Melinda went.

  “Damn it. I’m coming too!” Max says, her footsteps hurrying after me.

  I need to get the truth of this.

  Chapter Five

  Harlow

  Melinda is nowhere to be found in the huge house, so we head outside. The Bostons’ horse training business encompasses a vast expanse of land, but the indoor arena isn’t too far from the house. Sticking my head through the wide double doors, it’s obvious they’re not in there because the place is empty. I guess with all my drama today, no one trained any of the horses. Luke and Peter are probably still at lunch, and Chuck might be in the office, working out the afternoon's schedule if Melinda hasn’t found him yet.

  We head over to the old stable block where the office is kept, my desire to know what’s going on only growing with each unsuccessful step. We have bigger and newer stables for most of the horses now, but the old one is still occasionally used for a pregnant mare to foal down in or an injured horse to recuperate. They don’t get as worked up when there aren’t as many distractions. Unlike the timber and steel design of the new stables, this one is built from red brick and has cute white wooden trim on all the stalls and the beams. Five stalls on each side, making a total of ten stables available, but only four are really in use. An office is on one side, and a feed and tack room is also in there. Two of the stables have been opened up and renovated into a consultation room.

  A staircase running up the side leads to the small apartment above. This is where I live,
and downstairs is where I keep all the sick, injured, or just plain abandoned animals that I rescue. I’d moved out to live in the apartment above the stables not long after starting college. I’d been doing college-level classes while attending my junior and senior years of high school, so I eased into my freshman year pretty smoothly.

  With no friends but Max and no desire to hang with hers, it just made sense to get a head start. Especially when the major I had planned to do was so long.

  I didn’t move out because I was unwanted. No, the Bostons considered me one of the family, and I was more than welcome to stay in the main house. The move was all me. I had so many issues. Low self-esteem and the inability to trust, to name a couple. I just wanted to get on with my life and do something for myself without having to worry about who I was disappointing or letting down. The lack of distraction out here was also a blessing. No Maxine to pop in and ask me to watch TV or want to talk about boys. Boys that I had no interest in. Animals are my life, and I feel blessed to be able to help so many innocent creatures.

  I guess wanting to be a vet stemmed from my own abandonment issues. As a child, I was always rescuing stray animals and begging Melinda and Chuck to let me keep them. They’d indulged me in this, and my menagerie was born. Being able to give them love and be loved in return was soothing to my soul; the animals never let me down. If they lashed out, it was because they were hurt or scared, not because they were jealous or hopped up on meth.

  The braying of a donkey greets me as Maxine and I enter the barn, and a little gray head with long velvety ears pops itself over one of the stable doors. My need to find Melinda and Chuck dims slightly as I head over to give Jenny a cuddle. Opening the half-door, I slide in and pull it closed behind me.

  Jenny is a recent rescue. I found her malnourished and neglected on a little farm not far from a client's place. She was a pathetic lump of matted hair and feces when I took her from the paddock in the middle of the night. I’d had to calm her with xylazine, a mild sedative, and Luke and Peter helped me move her with the hay cart to our horse trailer, where we laid her down to drive her home.

  Yes, I'm guilty of donkey theft. But it was either that or getting the ASPCA involved, and that would have taken days if not weeks to get through the bureaucracy.

  When I got her home, I had to clip her down to the skin to remove the caked-on dirt, hair, and shit. Once she was clean, finally, she was a bag of bones, and I wasn't sure she was going to make it. Even using a mild sedative was fairly risky, though her heartbeat remained relatively steady through the whole process.

  While Peter trimmed her too-long hooves, I washed her poor skin with soothing lotions, and then, because she didn't have enough meat on her bones, placed a thick cotton blanket on her to keep her a little warmer. Although it's summer, the nights do get chilly, and I didn’t want her to get any sicker.

  Once the IV fluids I had given had finished, I gave her a reversal sedative, and we just had to wait for it to wear off. I placed a small mash of sugar beets in her feed trough and some fresh water. Not long after waking, she showed some interest in her food, and I knew she was going to be okay. I spent the night leaning against a couple of hay bales, making sure she was fine. At some point, I must have fallen asleep because the next morning, when Chuck brought me a cup of coffee, Jenny was laying down next to me with her head in my lap. I'm pretty sure she thinks I'm the best thing that's ever happened to her.

  Every morning she greets me with a chorus of excited hee-haws and is slowly and steadily gaining weight. She shares her stall and paddock with Devil Spawn, a miniature pony so cute you just want to cuddle her to death. Don’t let her fool you though. She has a nasty streak a mile long, and her name was chosen because it fit her too perfectly...and we might’ve needed to warn people. Many people have tried to get close and scored a kick to the shins. Luckily, she has terrible aim and is reasonably small, and although it hurts, it’s not enough to do significant damage.

  DS was living with a fool of a woman who thought she could be kept inside like a dog, but she outgrew what that woman expected, and the owner didn't have a fenced yard to keep her in. By the time I got my hands on her, she was already spoiled rotten and had learned if she threatened the lady, she got what she wanted. DS doesn't get away with that here, but we like to let her pretend she does.

  I don't have too many rescued creatures at the moment. Living in the dorms and only coming home on the weekends made it tricky, and I didn't want to leave Melinda, Chuck, and Maxine to look after them. So, apart from Jenny and DS, there are five cats in the hay and feed sheds, and they keep the rodent population down. There's also a barn owl that had been clipped by a car in one of the cages in the clinic, and aside from that, I have no steady patients at the moment. I’ll also have the occasional horse injury that I take care of for Melinda and Chuck. I just need to decide on what I want to continue doing. I enjoy the horses, but I have a secret dream, one I think is slightly out of reach, unfortunately.

  Jenny nuzzles me in the side, bringing my attention back to her, and I pull a piece of carrot out of my pocket. I always have some form of treat on me, and they know it. A moment later, a pair of teeth trying to get a chunk of my ass has me swinging quickly and swatting a hand at DS. Maxine laughs from the safety of the other side of the stable door. DS and Max have come to an agreement. They agree they don't like each other, and it's better for both of them if they don't get too close.

  “Damn menace!” I chase her away, but she trots back around, ears flat back. This time, Jenny loses her patience, chasing her out of the stables and into their paddock, and I slip back out of the stall. Leaning against the stable door, we watch them chase each other around, manes flicking and hooves flying as they bolt throughout the large yard. The two skid to a halt before they get to the end of the fence and then throw in a few happy bucks before running off again.

  "What do you think your mom’s talking to your dad about? She was so angry when she saw the name," I say to her quietly, my voice full of worry.

  She shrugs, brow raised and nose scrunched in confusion. "Like you said, she hardly ever gets mad, so something must be really upsetting her. She's got to have a clue; otherwise, why would she be so upset?"

  My stomach rolls with nausea and nerves. This is the closest I've ever been to finding out the identity of my father, and I’m not sure what to do. Is this a can of worms I need to open? Twenty-five, almost twenty-six years of not knowing. Is it going to make a difference now? Maybe he already knows and doesn't care. And if he doesn't, he probably has his own family to worry about. Gaining a daughter my age is going to put a cramp in his style. Maybe we should let the knowledge die with my mother, and I’ll convince myself that I don’t need anyone other than the Bostons.

  Pushing away from the stable door, I head into the clinic that Chuck and Melinda built for me as a graduation present.

  "I need to feed the owl," I tell her, and I can hear her trail after me.

  "I still say we need to call it Hedwig," she jokes back, and I smile slightly.

  "You know I don't like to name the ones we plan on releasing. It's easier to stay detached that way."

  "I'm just saying if we keep it, we could train it to carry messages to and from each other! That would be so cool." She becomes a little more excited as we approach the clinic door until she’s practically skipping alongside me. Rolling my eyes, I just snort with laughter. She’s ridiculous sometimes.

  The state of the art clinic’s equipped for me to treat both large and small animals, but I specialized in large. It was my way to give back to the Bostons after everything they’d done for me. Now I’m able to take care of their horses as well as treating some from the farms around us. Our closest vet was an hour away, which, in an emergency, made it stressful until they could get there, and we had some close calls that still make me nervous to think about. My little clinic gives a lot of people peace of mind.

  Entering the examination room, the sterile smell of disinfectant brings
a sense of calm to me. This is what I know; this is what I can control. I let the worries in my brain drift away and concentrate on the here and now as I pull out a small towel and lay it down on the exam table.

  "How's it doing?" Max asks quietly from the doorway of the clinic, knowing I need calm for what I'm about to do. Pulling on a pair of cut-proof gloves, I open the cage that I’ve been keeping the owl in. Reaching in, I drape a towel over him to stop him from biting and flapping his wings before grabbing him by the feet and carefully pulling him out. Securing the towel gently, I pull it back to expose his head. Normally, I would place him between my legs so I could use both hands, but she might as well make herself useful, so I sit down and look over to Maxine.

  "Come here and hold it, will you?" Her freaked out face has me laughing slightly, but she gets it together and comes in, taking the owl from my hands. She sits down on a stool next to the examination table, eyes wide and fixed on our patient.

  Pulling out some supplies, I fill a bowl with some water and add a powdered glucose solution, stirring it around. Then, I grab some chunks of chopped up mice out of the freezer and set them aside to warm to room temperature. All the while Max coos nonsense to the little creature; it seems to like the sound of her voice. This little guy was clipped by a car, and the driver dropped him off to me a couple of days ago. He didn't appear to have any visible injuries, just stunned, so I've kept him hydrated and been hand feeding him. He seems to be recovering nicely. Today I'm going to move him into an aviary next to the stables for a few days. If he seems to be flying well and eating and feeding on his own, we’ll release him back into the wild in the area that he was found.

  Now that my hands are free, I pick up a small needleless syringe and fill it with about three milliliters of the liquid solution. Stepping over to where Max and the bird are, I grab the top of his beak, pry it open with my finger, hold the upper mandible out of the way, and slowly release the liquid into his mouth. He's used to the process now, and once I let him close his beak, he swallows instantly. We do that a couple of times until he’s had about ten milliliters. This process takes about ten minutes because we don't want to do it too fast and stress him out.