The Me I Used to Be

by Jennifer Ryan

“Language. I know you’ve been living like an animal, but you will not act like one in my home.”

  Evangeline missed her sweet, loving mother. They’d been close, even through the teen years when Evangeline rebelled and asserted herself like a spoiled brat. The year or so before her arrest, she went a little wild at college, and Mom’s scolding had turned to real disappointment. Her mother grew up in poverty, working in the fields before and after school in the Central Valley with her migrant parents. She’d wanted a better life for her children. She and Dad worked hard to give it to them. Evangeline took it for granted. She didn’t truly understand what it was like to come from nothing, where every opportunity was a gift. Her mother tried to make her understand. She really hadn’t understood, not until everything had been taken from her.

  She did try to assuage her mother’s disappointment and feed her own sense of needing something more, something meaningful in her life, by refocusing on school and family. But she never got the chance to make her mother proud again.

  Would her mother be proud if she knew the truth? Maybe. Evangeline would never know.

  In reality, her mom wasn’t acting any differently than many of the guards she’d dealt with in prison. She knew what was expected and she’d do as she was told, keep her head down, and soon she’d be out of this prison, too.

  Chris took her hand from his arm. She hadn’t even realized she was still holding on to him to get him to keep quiet. He gave her hand a soft squeeze, then released her. “Stay away from trouble.” He walked down the steps to his car, leaving her wondering about his phrasing and the hint that maybe he did know something.

  She stood on the porch, waiting to see if her mother would let her in once he left, or order her to leave. “I can sleep in the barn.”

  “You’ve created enough gossip. I won’t have people talking about how I made you sleep with the horses.”

  “It’s a few steps up from jail, believe me.”

  Her mother swung the screen door open. “You got exactly what you deserved. You stole from good, hardworking people just trying to make a living like everyone else. Why? We gave you everything you needed.”

  Evangeline didn’t have an answer that would satisfy or explain well enough to change her mom’s mind. “It’s done. I served my time. I paid my penance. I can’t change what happened. I can’t bring Dad back for you. I can’t get back the last four years I missed with him or the family.” I can’t make you love me again. “Nothing I say or do will make this better. All I can do is try to move on.”

  The last thing she wanted to do was let loose her grief and anger, but it was there in the pounding of her heart and clogged in her throat.

  Her mother thought she didn’t care.

  Evangeline cared so much she choked on it.

  But it wasn’t fair to fall apart and make her mother console or comfort her.

  “Some of us can’t simply move on. I have to bury my husband tomorrow.”

  Evangeline hung her head and wondered if she could live with a broken heart. “I miss him. I missed all of you every day I was gone. You’re not the only one hurting.”

  Her mother rolled her teary eyes. “Of course you’d make this about you. I’m the one who watched your father fall apart, bringing this family and the ranch along with him.”

  She’d take the blame.

  She’d been doing that a good long while now, it felt like her due.

  She followed her mother into the house. It smelled the same. A mix of dinner, lemon dusting spray, and coffee from the pot that was always hot and fresh. Somewhere in there lingered her father’s outdoorsy scent: wind, hay, horses, and leather.

  “Your grandmother moved in two years ago after she had shoulder surgery. Even she couldn’t get through to your father.” Her mother waved her to follow down the hall next to the dining room with the table filled with platters and plates of baked goods. “People have been dropping off food and offering their condolences all day. I finally got tired of visitors and asked them to leave so I could have some peace and quiet. I sent Joey to the funeral home to drop off your father’s good suit. The one I hoped he’d wear to your wedding to Darren, but you put Darren off and decided to screw up your whole life instead.”

  Not true. She’d never intended to marry Darren. You don’t marry the bad boy once you figure out he’ll never grow up and be a responsible adult. “Mom, I wasn’t even twenty. I hadn’t finished college. I wasn’t sure what I wanted.” Which was why Darren had so easily distracted her from what was important.

  “Too late now. He was a good man who adored you and would have taken care of you.”

  He could barely take care of himself. He was all about fun. And she lost herself in that. For a while. Until it wasn’t fun anymore.

  “I don’t need anyone to take care of me.” Least of all a guy who wanted her to go along with everything he wanted to do. Darren didn’t want to make her happy, he simply wanted her to be a passenger in his life. Well, she didn’t want to simply go along for the ride. She had dreams. She had plans. And while she’d been partying with him and cutting classes, she’d neglected school and what she wanted.

  Until everything went south and that life disappeared.

  She didn’t miss him at all.

  Her mother stopped outside the open guest room door and raised a disapproving eyebrow. “You needed someone to talk sense into you before you did what you did. Darren must have been devastated when you were arrested.”

  Based on the three very short letters she received, it didn’t seem like it.

  She didn’t want to talk about her ex. Not with Chris. Not with her mom.

  They cared more about his feelings than hers.

  “But you weren’t thinking about him or anyone else. Were you?”

  She held her tongue. Her mother wouldn’t like what she had to say to that.

  She needed a place to stay and didn’t want to blow it two minutes inside the door. She could hold it together for a little while. She had a plan to get on her feet as soon as possible. All she needed was a laptop and she’d be on her way to making her own money.

  “I gave your room to your grandmother when she moved in, since it’s next to the bathroom and she needed her own space. I went through your stuff, got rid of most of it, but I saved your clothes and a few things I thought you’d want.”

  Evangeline couldn’t believe her ears. Her room wasn’t hers anymore.

  But it was supposed to always be hers.

  A wave of sadness crashed over all her memories of her bed, her things, and the person she’d grown into in that room.

  She stared at the boxes stacked next to the tiny closet. An insignificant amount of things left over from her past.

  She wanted her room and her old life back.

  She wanted her mother to talk to her like she was her beloved daughter, not some ex-con charity case she’d tolerate but not accept as anything more than someone passing through.

  She wanted to wail that she’d done the right thing and didn’t deserve this.

  But she couldn’t do that to her mom. Not then. Not now.

  Just because her mom wanted to lash out and hurt her didn’t mean Evangeline needed to do the same. Because it wasn’t the same.

  If Mom knew the truth, she wouldn’t be treating her like this now.

  But the truth wouldn’t make Mom feel any better. It would only make things worse.

  “Hopefully you can find something suitable for the funeral tomorrow, though I hope, out of respect for your father and this family, you’ll keep your head down, your mouth shut, and stay out of my way.” Evangeline glanced into the rarely used room. Her mother didn’t offer her one of her brothers’ rooms upstairs. They got to keep theirs, even though they didn’t live here anymore. But not her. She’d become an unwelcome guest in her own home. “It’s small, but I’m sure you’re used to much less.” Her mother rushed past her and fled toward the kitchen, tears in her eyes.

  Despite her mother’s anger,
the last thing she wanted to do when she came home was upset her mom. She couldn’t imagine what she’d been through these last years, thinking the worst of her daughter and watching the man she loved die so young.

  At fifty-nine, her father should have been thinking about retirement, not about whether his daughter would survive behind bars.

  Evangeline closed the bedroom door, went around the bed, moved the side table out of the way, went back around, and shoved the bed into the corner of the room. She moved the table to the side of the bed, went to the window, and opened it to the breeze.

  The room wasn’t much bigger than her cell, but it was prettier, with the crocheted cream bedspread, oak dresser with an oval mirror, and floral prints in silver frames. She set the paper bag filled with her meager belongings on top of the boxes. From the bag she laid out the notebooks and letters neatly on the dresser, inserted the photos into the mirror frame, and touched her finger to Jill’s beautiful freckled nose in the picture of the two of them when they were five and sitting on their big-girl bikes, hands braced on the handlebars, smiles big as the sky.

  “Thanks for sticking by me.”

  She turned off the single crystal lamp on the dresser, sat on the edge of the bed, toed off her shoes, lay down on her side with her back pressed to the wall, clasped her hands under her chin, and settled into the quiet and gave in to fatigue.

  She’d learned crying in jail didn’t earn you any sympathy and only made you look weak. But right now, a guest in her childhood home, her heart broken, her soul raw, no one to see, no one who even cared, she let the tears fall. For a past she couldn’t change. For her father. For the loss of it all. Her innocence. Her freedom. The future she might have had. For the lost chance to make things right with her father.

  Her wracking sobs shook her body, vibrated the bed that wasn’t hers, and echoed in the quiet, but didn’t ease her mind or heart. The hurt, sadness, anger, and anguish amplified with every tear, gasping breath, and hiccup. She resented every futile tear. She’d waited so long to shed them, hoping they’d take away the pain, but all they did was remind her that she couldn’t change the past.

  She wasn’t who she used to be.

  She didn’t really know who she was now.

  Not the beloved daughter. Not the little sister watched over by her overprotective brothers. Not the college student with a bright future. Not the naïve girl she used to be, but a woman who kept her back to the wall and didn’t trust anyone.

  Tired to the bone of carrying the heavy burden, she cried herself to sleep with a promise to herself that she’d find a way to make things right with her mother.

  She didn’t know how, she just knew she couldn’t live the rest of her life with her mother hating her.

  Chapter Three

  The pressure inside Rhea pressed on every cell in her body. Her husband had died and her daughter had come home. Both of those events made her so angry she wanted to explode.

  But she sat at the table, wearing her black dress and pearl necklace, perfectly still, silently raging.

  Her mother-in-law, Ines, appeared in the kitchen doorway, looking Rhea up and down until her eyes filled with concern. “Did you sleep at all?”

  “How can I sleep when the ranch is a breath away from going belly-up and she is back under this roof? I can’t believe she came back now.” Rhea looked up at her mother-in-law’s sorrowful eyes, and the grief overpowered her anger. “How can I sleep without him beside me?”

  Ines laid her hand over Rhea’s clasped ones on the table. “It doesn’t feel like it right now, but you will be okay.” Ines lost her husband nearly seven years ago. That had been the last funeral Rhea had attended. Not to be unkind, but she thought the next would be Ines’s. Not Richard’s.

  They had plans. Richard would turn the ranch over to the boys and let them run things. She and Richard would finally have time together. They’d take that trip to Hawaii he promised her. He’d finally have time to repaint their bedroom. They’d go on more dates, reconnect, and reignite the spark that brought and held them together for the last thirty-three years while they raised their children and built a business.

  Empty nesters, they’d finally have time for each other without all the distractions from their grown children.

  “We raised our kids. It was time for us to have our time together again. This wasn’t supposed to happen,” she raged. “He wouldn’t let it go. He worried and worried about her and it sent him right to his grave. I wish it had been her.”

  “Ssh! She’ll hear you.”

  Rhea stared up into Ines’s reproachful gaze. “I don’t care. She wrecked him. If not for what she did, he’d still be here. He spent thousands for a lawyer to try to get her out. She wouldn’t even see him. She sent all his letters back.”

  Ines went to the coffeepot and poured a mug. “She was such a sweet girl. Kind. Always ready to pitch in and help. Strong-willed and feisty when she needed to be. Especially with her brothers. When she got arrested, everyone was surprised by what happened. No one expected her to break the law. Now, Joey, he’s a wild one and a bit impulsive. You might think he’d get caught up in some trouble. But Evangeline, no way.”

  “I thought the worst of it was failing a few of her classes at school. And yet, she not only did it, she pled guilty.”

  Ines eyed her. “Did you ask her why, last night?”

  “What difference does it make? She broke her father’s heart. The sight of her makes me so angry.” Rhea squeezed her hands into fists, her nails biting marks into her palms. She didn’t feel them. Nothing hurt more than losing Richard.

  “She’s your daughter, Rhea. Nothing changes that.”

  “The way I feel about her has changed. I cannot believe after what she did she came back here.”

  Ines’s disapproving gaze bore into her. “She didn’t kill anyone. She drove a truck with stolen goods. She took responsibility, just like you taught her.”

  “I taught her not to steal in the first place.”

  Ines rolled her eyes. “You taught the boys not to swear, but they do that all the time.”

  Rhea tried to hold on to a sliver of patience and her sanity. “It’s not the same.”

  “People make mistakes. Richard hated that she was in that place. He drove himself crazy with worry for her. But that wasn’t the only thing weighing on his mind. Ranching isn’t what it used to be. The California drought has taken its toll on the land and cattle prices. He had two boys expecting to inherit a prospering business so they could take care of their families. But with each passing year, and profits drying up as fast as the fields, he saw the legacy he’d built turning to a mirage. What he wanted to leave his kids just wasn’t there. He became desperate to find a way to turn things around.”

  “I can’t believe he actually entertained that offer to work with Warley.”

  Ines spoke over her mug. “Charlie and Joey will have to consider it. Something has to change.”

  “I can’t think about that right now.” Rhea stared at her wedding ring. Missing Richard swelled in her chest like a rising tide, temporarily smothering her anger. Tears gathered in her eyes. One slipped down her cheek. “I can’t believe he’s gone.”

  “Your daughter is here. You can’t bring Richard back, but you can repair your relationship with Evangeline. He’d want that for both of you. Talk to her. Get the answers to the questions I know you’ve been asking yourself.”

  Rhea met Ines’s steady gaze and read a knowing in them she didn’t understand. “Do you have something you want to tell me?”

  Ines sipped her coffee. “You’re so angry at her, but you won’t give her a chance to explain her side. I can’t imagine what she’s been through the last four years, separated from her family, friends, that man she was seeing. Everything she loved in her life taken away. She comes home and everything is the same but different.”

  “That’s what she gets for what she did,” Rhea snapped, letting loose some of her pent-up aggression.

 
; “You need to forgive.”

  “She killed him. I can’t.”

  “You know that’s not true. He didn’t want her to suffer. He loved her so much he couldn’t take her absence. He missed her. Didn’t you?”

  Rhea couldn’t give in to her tender emotions. She needed to hold on to her anger or she’d crumble. Missing Richard was an ache that throbbed and grew within her until she felt like her whole body would crack, then burst with all her sorrow and drown her. She wore her anger like a shield to protect herself.

  “I was so busy trying to take care of Richard and worrying about this ranch, I didn’t have time to miss her.”

  What she didn’t admit—couldn’t admit—was that she blamed herself. When Richard sank deep into his depression, she’d wanted to demand that Evangeline do the right thing and speak to him. But then he’d get better, and she didn’t speak to, or write, or go see her only daughter. She let Evangeline suffer the consequences for what she’d done.

  She’d called it tough love. Evangeline had been selfish and reckless and irresponsible, drinking, partying, and cutting classes to the point where she’d been put on academic probation.

  But seeing her child physically scarred and emotionally changed from the bright, fun-loving girl she’d been stabbed Rhea’s heart.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t care.

  It hurt to care so much.

  Ines shook her head, frustrated, disappointment in her eyes that Rhea wasn’t giving an inch. “How did she look?”

  Rhea pressed her lips together and fought off the sympathy she didn’t want to feel but was there in the background all the same. No mother wanted to see her child so . . . broken. Gone was the sparkle in Evangeline’s eyes. She didn’t smile. Not once. Not that she had reason to with the reception she’d received, but it didn’t look like Evangeline had had reason to smile for a good long time. Rhea wanted to say, Good. You deserve that. But it made her heart ache to think that way about her only daughter.

  It was so much more than the disheartened look in Evangeline’s eyes. She hated seeing her daughter’s gaunt face, stick-thin body, and the weariness that sagged her shoulders. It reminded her too much of what she’d seen in Richard’s face and the disillusionment that had settled heavy on her husband’s shoulders and in his heart.