Stone Princess

by Devney Perry

  That was the fourth time since I’d come over that she’d started speaking only to trail off. Her mind was visibly whirling, trying to make sense of her sister’s sudden and strange appearance two days ago.

  Scarlett had stepped out of that cab, crossed the yard and walked right into Presley’s house.

  She hadn’t hugged her sister or said hello. She’d trudged inside wearing clothes just as baggy as the ones Presley normally wore, except hers hadn’t looked cute or sexy or purposefully loose. They’d been wrinkled and dirty, like she’d swiped them from a man’s bedroom floor.

  Presley had gaped at her sister, lost for words.

  Scarlett had spoken instead.

  Before we talk, can I crash in your guest bedroom for a minute?

  Presley had nodded and pointed down the hallway, then Scarlett had disappeared and left a stunned Presley—and me—behind.

  Presley had called in sick to work yesterday and today. I’d come by at ten yesterday morning when I’d spotted her Jeep still in the driveway. She’d let me in without any hesitation—which told me exactly how well she was reacting to her sister’s visit.

  Today, I’d assumed Scarlett would be awake and that the two of them would have talked. Again, I’d seen the Jeep when normally it would have been at the garage. I’d stayed away until the afternoon, but curiosity had gotten the better of me. I’d expected to find the sisters together. Instead, Presley had opened the door and led me to the living room, where the stress on her face made my gut twist.

  “Why is she here?” Presley whispered, her hands wringing in her lap.

  “Wake her up and find out.”

  “No, not yet.” She shook her head. “She looked so haggard. I haven’t seen her in . . . a long time. She looked bad, right?”

  “She didn’t look good,” I muttered.

  The deep circles under Scarlett’s eyes had been a purplish blue. Her long, blond hair was stringy and in need of a couple shampoos. Despite the baggy clothes, she was skinny. Too skinny, even for a woman with Presley’s petite frame.

  “Have you talked to her lately?” I asked.

  “I haven’t seen or spoken to her in over ten years.”

  I blinked. “Ten years?”

  “Yeah.” Presley’s gaze fell. “Not since I left home at eighteen.”

  “Did you have a falling out?”

  Presley blew out a long breath. “It’s a long story.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.” I shifted on the couch, turning sideways to give her my attention. “You have no reason to trust me after what I did, but you were there for me. You listened when I was ready to talk. If you’re ready, I’ll be here to listen to you.”

  She brought her knees to her chest, wrapping them in her arms. Minutes passed as she curled in on herself, her eyes unfocused and sad.

  And I waited. I gave her time as she decided whether or not to give me her trust.

  “We grew up in a toxic home,” she whispered.

  I closed my eyes, savoring her honesty for one second, then I looked at her with my full attention.

  “Toxic how?” My mind jumped to the worst. Drugs? Violence? Molest—I couldn’t mentally finish that word.

  “My dad was a cruel man. He beat us.”

  Violence. My hands fisted on my thighs. “I’m sorry.”

  She pulled her knees in closer. “I don’t remember a time when he didn’t raise his hand to us. We didn’t get spankings. We got slapped on the cheek if we made a mistake. We would get sent to bed hungry if we cried. But he never yelled. I can’t remember a time when he raised his voice. He was just a cruel man who’d come at us with silent rage.”

  My arms ached to pull her onto my lap, but she was huddled tight, safe in her own world.

  “He beat my mom too,” she said, her voice quiet and robotic. “She didn’t work, so he could hit her wherever he wanted. When Scarlett and I started school, he made sure the bruises were in places easy to conceal. He especially loved to yank us around by our hair or grab us here.” She pointed to her bicep. “We always wore sleeves.”

  “Presley, I-I don’t know what to say.”

  “There’s nothing to say.” She lifted her eyes to mine. “He controlled every aspect of our lives. We followed his rules completely because the punishments for breaking them were so severe. Even then, even at perfection, he’d find something to get mad about.”

  “And your mom?”

  “She stood there and watched. I actually blame her the most because she didn’t protect us. A mother should protect her kids, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “But that was my life. From the outside, we were the perfect little family. We had family picnics on Saturdays. We went to church on Sundays. We had nice clothes and got good grades at school. Our teachers adored us and because we were such good kids, our parents must be doing such a good job to have two perfect girls. No one ever thought that the reason we were so good was because we were scared every single day. We lived in fear.”

  Presley’s gaze shifted and fixed on an invisible spot on the wall. She went quiet, frozen, as she stared.

  I put my hand on her foot. This woman was strong. Resilient. She’d chased the terror away. “But not anymore.”

  “No,” she said. “Not anymore.”

  “Where did you grow up?”

  “A suburb of Chicago.”

  “You left at eighteen.”

  “Yeah.” She nodded. “It wasn’t easy. Scarlett and I were living at home, and I don’t know if my father expected that we’d try to leave or not, but he was so strict after graduation. More so than before. He didn’t let us get jobs that summer. We just stayed home, waiting for fall because he’d agreed that we could go to a local community college.”

  Her father was a fucking pathetic excuse for a human being. I’d never met the man, even laid eyes on him, but I hated him. Hated. My molars ground together but I worked to keep my expression neutral. Presley didn’t need me flying off the handle while she was reliving that time.

  I’d save my rage for later.

  If there was a way to ruin her father without causing backlash to Presley, I’d do it. My first phone call when I left here today would be to Laurelin. She was a kind woman but if you fucked with me, she’d make your life a living hell. Presley was in my life—whether she was ready to accept that or not—and Laurelin would eviscerate her father. If she wasn’t able to, I’d step in and get my hands dirty.

  “Scarlett was dating Jeremiah.”

  “Wait, what?” I’d been so lost in thoughts of revenge that I’d barely caught Presley’s statement.

  “Scarlett was dating Jeremiah,” she repeated.

  “Jeremiah, as in your ex-fiancé?”

  “That’s the one,” she muttered. “He helped me get out and get away.”

  “How?”

  “He found us a car. It was supposed to be for us, Scarlett and me. The three of us, actually. Jeremiah and Scarlett were going to go to California. I had already decided on Montana.”

  “Why Montana?”

  She shrugged. “It sounded so . . . simple and old-fashioned, living in a quiet town with nice people. I didn’t need the glitz of Los Angeles or New York City. I just wanted a safe, little town to call my own.”

  “And what sounds simpler than Clifton Forge, Montana?”

  “Exactly.” She nodded. “We snuck out one night. I’d been sneaking clothes and stuff from our room for weeks. Scarlett had too. Jeremiah had kept it all at his house because he only lived about half a mile from us.”

  It sounded like a hostage escape, and maybe in a way it was. “Did your parents suspect anything?”

  “Not as far as I knew. I’d already found a job. I’d been searching on the library’s computer so no one could trace it. That was one of the few places Dad let us go without supervision that summer. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but when I saw a classified ad for a receptionist at a garage, it sounded perfect. I wanted to work at a
place that wasn’t prim or proper.”

  “You wanted the noise and the grease.”

  “That, and Draven hired me with only a phone interview. He took a chance on me, and I never asked him why.” Presley’s face flashed with grief, like it normally did when she thought of Draven. Not for the first time, I wished I had known the man she held so dear.

  “I was sure that once we were gone, my parents would forget about us,” Presley said. “But Scarlett was nervous. She thought Dad suspected we were leaving. It was a thrill for me. No matter what, I was going. But Scarlett wasn’t like that. She didn’t test the limits like I did.”

  “Tested how?”

  She smiled a little. “Stupid things. I’d sneak candy home from the vending machine at our middle school and eat it after bedtime. I painted my toenails red in the girls’ locker room. Once, my mom took us school clothes shopping and when she wasn’t looking, I shoplifted a thong.”

  My thieving beauty. “Did you get caught?”

  “Sometimes. When my dad saw my red toenails, he threw me on the living room floor and kicked me for being a ‘slut.’ He insisted on a lot of pink for his daughters. I’m pretty sure he broke one of my ribs, cracked it at least, but we didn’t go to doctors. Scarlett wrapped them up for me.”

  “Son of a bitch.” I closed my eyes, searching for calm. My heart pounded as I thought about these girls and what they’d endured. Or how her sister had known to wrap ribs to heal. “I don’t—I’m sorry.”

  She gave me a sad smile. “Don’t be sorry.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “Don’t pity me.” She glanced down the hallway. “I got out.”

  Presley got out.

  But Scarlett . . .

  “Scarlett didn’t go with you, did she?”

  She shook her head. “I tested the boundaries. Scarlett stood ten feet away from the lines my father drew and wouldn’t dream of getting too close.”

  My forehead furrowed. If you put Presley and Scarlett side by side and told me to pick the rebel, I would have chosen Scarlett every time. The way she’d held her chin high when she’d stepped out of that cab, the way she’d refused a courteous greeting . . . “That doesn’t jive with the woman who marched in here two days ago.”

  “I know.” Presley’s cheek dropped to her knees. “I don’t know who that was because it wasn’t Scarlett.”

  “You said you haven’t seen her in ten years. What happened? How’d you get away and she didn’t?”

  Presley stared at the wall as she sat in that ball. “We snuck out of the house. I’d done it a couple of times. There was this guy I liked my senior year and he’d meet me at a playground in my neighborhood. We’d make out for a couple of hours, then I’d sneak back home.” She shuddered. “I’m glad I didn’t get caught for that one. God, I was so stupid.”

  “You were a kid trying to find some freedom.”

  “Yeah,” she muttered. “Scarlett and Jeremiah were dating but they only saw one another at school. They’d kiss and stuff and sneak around, but it was behind the teachers’ backs and far from Dad.”

  “But she was going to leave.”

  Presley nodded. “California was Scarlett’s idea. Looking back, I think Jeremiah would have followed her anywhere because he just wanted her out of that house. I never told a soul about what really happened at home, but Scarlett had confessed it to Jeremiah and made him promise to keep the secret.”

  Coward. Jeremiah should have gone to the police. “How’d he get you a car?”

  “I saved every penny I made from babysitting neighborhood kids for two years. Christmas money. Birthday money. Scarlett saved too, though not as much, and we hoarded it until there was two thousand dollars. It was enough to buy an old Civic with one hundred ninety thousand miles on it, but the engine ran, and it had four working tires.”

  My brave woman. She’d forged a new life from two thousand dollars. The swell of pride conflicted with the anger simmering in my chest.

  Presley went quiet for a long moment, like her brain was taking her back to that time.

  “You okay?”

  Her eyes flashed up and a sheen of tears was in her gaze. “I shouldn’t have left her. I should have made her come with me.”

  “Did you try?”

  “Of course, but—”

  “Then that’s all you could have done.”

  I’d spent time in the academy learning about domestic abuse victims. I’d seen plenty in real life. I remembered the first time I saw a wife rush after her husband in handcuffs, promising him she wouldn’t press charges. One of her eyes had been swollen from where he’d hit her. He’d broken her nose. And there she’d been, crying as we’d dragged the motherfucker away.

  Breaking the cycle wasn’t easy, and Presley and Scarlett had been in it their entire lives.

  “We snuck out one night after my parents were in bed. They weren’t asleep. I heard some noises like they were . . . like my dad was . . .”

  Raping her mother.

  My knuckles turned white as my fists squeezed.

  “We snuck outside and ran to Jeremiah’s house. Scarlett kept saying, ‘This is wrong. We’re going to get caught. We should go back.’ But I kept running. At one point, she stopped and I grabbed her hand and dragged her behind me. I figured that once we got to Jeremiah’s, he’d convince her to leave.”

  “You just wanted to get on the road.”

  “I was so sure. Staying wasn’t an option. The second I left that house, I knew I’d never go back.”

  “But Scarlett wasn’t ready,” I guessed.

  “I think she was, but she was so scared. Jeremiah couldn’t calm her down. She was convinced we’d get caught. We got to Jeremiah’s and he was there, waiting outside with the car. He’d loaded all of our stuff. Scarlett took one look at that open trunk and the bags inside and started pulling them out. She threw them on the ground, all of them, in this panicked frenzy. She was crying and shaking. She was just so . . .”

  “Scared.”

  “Terrified,” she whispered, wiping at the corner of her eye. “That’s what he taught us. Fear. He’d broken her—us—long before that night.”

  Except Presley wasn’t broken. She was whole and strong and a goddamn miracle. “How many times have you told this story?”

  She met my gaze. “Once.”

  “To Draven?”

  “Yeah.” She cast her eyes to the photo on the wall. “To Draven.”

  He might have been a flawed man, but Draven had loved her like a daughter. What kind of woman would Presley be today if Draven hadn’t stepped up for her? What kind of place would she have landed in if Clifton Forge hadn’t been an option? I’d seen what happened to a lot of runaway kids in California. Their lives became about drugs, alcohol and sex. Because of Draven, Presley had stopped the cycle.

  “What happened next? That night?”

  She sniffled, reaching for some composure. “Jeremiah and I tried to calm Scarlett down but she was hysterical. She begged me to go home, but I told her I was leaving with or without her. She started screaming. One of the neighbors turned on a light and it freaked me out. So I grabbed whatever bags I could, shoved them in the car and I left. I left her there.”

  “You didn’t have a choice.”

  “I could have stayed,” she said. “I could have stayed for her.”

  “Where do you think you’d be if you’d stayed?”

  “Dead,” she replied immediately. “Maybe not in the physical sense, but he would have killed my soul.”

  “Then you didn’t have a choice. And I, for one, am glad you got the hell out of there.”

  Presley shrugged. “Maybe.”

  The weight of her past settled into the room, the air growing thick and heavy. The two of us sat in silence as I replayed her story, over and over. Anger at her father burned under my skin and my mind changed. I wouldn’t involve Laurelin in his demise. I wanted that satisfaction for myself, for Presley. I’d always believed there was a speci
al place in hell for those who hurt children, especially their own, and her father belonged in that circle.

  My God, she was strong. What had it been like for her to drive to Montana alone? How scared had she been to leave? She’d been lucky to score that job at the garage. I was a man who believed in destiny—and getting that job with Draven had been nothing short of fate.

  And she’d lost him.

  He was the father she’d never had. The father she’d always needed. And that son of a bitch Marcus Wagner had pushed him to suicide.

  I’d made a goddamn movie about it.

  Fuck. Fuck me and fuck that movie.

  I never should have come here. I never should have bought that screenplay. It would have died and no one would have known that story. But it was too late now. I’d found Presley and leaving her was not an option.

  I’d tried to forget her for months, but every night when I’d gone to bed alone, I’d wished she were at my side. I’d thought about her each morning and dreamed of her face, her laugh at night.

  Presley didn’t have Draven to protect her anymore, to listen to her woes, but she had me. She’d always have me, a man who stood by her side when she slammed the door in an asshole’s face. A man who’d carry her to bed when she fell asleep watching a movie.

  Luke Rosen was not that man.

  Presley would stand on her own, she didn’t need me to prop her up, but I would all the same.

  “You’re the strongest woman I’ve ever met.”

  She scoffed. “Your old partner sounded much stronger than me.”

  “You clawed your way to a good life. That’s the definition of strength.”

  “But was it enough?” she asked. “I set myself free, but I left my twin sister behind.”

  “You can’t always save someone. Sometimes, they need to want to save themselves.”

  She looked down the hallway again. “I used to text her. All I had was the number she had from high school. For all I know, my parents took that phone away and that number belongs to someone in Skokie, Illinois, now. But I texted her, and I kept her in my heart. I always hoped she’d get out.”

  “She’s here, isn’t she? She got out.”

  “When? Has he been hurting her all these years? Ten years, Shaw. Ten. I know exactly how many bruises a person can get in ten years.”