Oblivion

by Karolyn Cairns

**~ ~ ~**

  OBLIVION

  By Karolyn Cairns

  **~~~**

  Copyright 2012 by Karolyn Cairns All Rights Reserved

  I’d like thank my family at Amazon for their effort in helping writers get their work to the people. With that said; I’d like to thank the readers who inspired me. I appreciate their clever incite and helpful suggestions.

  I would like to dedicate this book to my twin daughters, Caitlyn and Claudia Bright, who make life more interesting one page at a time.

  Chapter One

  Heels crunched upon the rocky dirt shoulder as the girl walked down the steep mountain road. High beams dogged her every step on the uneven terrain. She didn’t look back. She didn’t have to. Jace wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Lindsay, come on! Get back in the truck!” Jace called behind her, sounding annoyed. Her boyfriend since the eighth grade wasn’t leaving her to walk back home in the dark. He knew she’d calm down before her ridiculous heels gave out.

  Truthfully, she was already over the fight that sent her flying from the passenger side of his ancient pickup to stomp down the mountain road.

  “You got a lot of nerve, Jace!” She hollered over her shoulder, almost tripping over her own feet again. What had she been thinking wearing these three-inch wedge sandals? “You drop a bomb like that on me and expect me just to take it with a smile?”

  “No, but you gotta hear me out. I love you, Linds! Come on, let’s talk about this.”

  “Talk about how you’re leaving me?” She tossed an angry look over her shoulder.

  “No, talk about how I love you!” Jace called back as the truck kept pace with her now. “We can make this work, Lindsay! Please just talk to me!”

  Blue eyes softened. No, she couldn’t stay mad at him for very long. Even if she felt as if her heart was ripped out she knew he hurt worse. He told her it wasn’t easy making the decision that would put them on opposite sides of the country after graduation. His father needed him at home.

  Jace turned down dozens of football scholarships to good schools to stay here, in Little Bend, Montana. His sacrifice was for his father, Everett Turner. The man was the town drunk. After Jace’s mother died, Evie as he was known, fell off the wagon and rode it around town the last ten years. He left his family farm in upheaval and his three kids high and dry

  Jace was giving up going to school to care for his younger brother and sister claiming he would take classes at the local community college. They both knew that wasn’t going to happen. Dougie, his ten year-old delinquent brother and his fourteen year-old sister Sara would keep him too busy playing father to them. The real one sat in Hooligan’s bar half the day.

  It wasn’t fair he made the choice without considering her. Knowing how close he was with his siblings; she should have known his leaving for Georgia Tech in August would be hard. Now she would go alone.

  Lindsay chose the school for obvious reasons. It was in the heart of the south and close to her favorite Aunt Billie’s residence in Savannah. Jace went along for her, deciding he could play football anywhere.

  How like Jace to wait until the last minute to tell her? He was the recipient of the LBHS unheard of ‘free ride’ scholarship put up by the town’s business owners. Her and their friends would have killed for it. He thought nothing of turning it down to stay here and try to fix his unrepentant drunk of a father.

  Jace had his reasons; all good ones if anyone considered that without him, his two younger siblings would go to foster homes. Still, she wasn’t looking forward to leaving him behind. Jason Turner was her life since they were eighth graders.

  The truck pulled alongside her. The engine growled noisily. His young, handsome features looked troubled in the darkness.

  “Come on, Lindsay, don’t do this to me! Get in and we can talk about this.”

  “Don’t do this to you?” She asked in outrage with a toss of her high-lighted, shoulder-length blonde curls. She shivered under the khaki jacket in the late March chill. The tight low rise jeans accentuated her tiny figure to perfection. “What about me, Jace? You put everybody ahead of me, as usual.”

  “Lindsay just get in the truck!” He ordered her more forcefully. “You’re going to break your neck in those stupid shoes! Now get in!”

  “No, I’m not getting in the truck, Jace,” she nearly shouted, tears in her eyes. “You go and give up everything and don’t say a word to me! When were you gonna tell me you’re staying? The day we were leaving?”

  Jace’s face tightened. “I was waiting for the right time.”

  “Well, looks like your buddy Cameron spilled it for you,” she said in resentment, irritated his best friend Cameron Chase knew his plans before her.

  “Lindsay, I can’t leave my family. Pa’s a mess. Dougie is on probation until he’s forty almost. I can’t dump that all on Sara!” Jace snapped and slammed on the brakes, getting out of the truck to follow her down the shoulder. He grabbed her arm and stopped her, looking down at her with a sad look in his brown eyes. “Please don’t be like this. You know this isn’t what I want.” His handsome face looked stricken in the glow of the halogen beams. She could see how upset he was to let her go alone.

  Lindsay Morgan loved Jason Turner since they met in science class back in the eighth grade. The only thing they had in common back then was the desire to be anywhere but Little Bend. The last four years the relationship deepened into something that seemed to annoy her mother and amuse all of their friends.

  They knew they would be together for the rest of their lives the minute they set eyes upon one another. The way Jace adored and doted on her was obvious and envied by every catty girl in her graduating class. He only had eyes for her. Lindsay took comfort in that when every girl in school tried to steal him from her over the years.

  When Cameron stuck his head in the truck window tonight and asked how she felt to be going to Georgia Tech alone; she felt her life unravel. Jace glared Cameron into silence. He was drunkenly promising to keep her boyfriend in line after that. They drove away from the party with a fight brewing.

  She saw how anguished he was to make the decision to stay behind. Jace would never hurt her or disappoint her unless he had no choice. A frustrated sigh escaped her as his strong hands guided her to the hood of the relic he called transportation.

  He was built like a linebacker and towered over her, always a pillar of strength. He stared down at her with a sorrowful expression. His brown eyes held hers.

  “Lindsay, just give me one year to get Pa in a program,” he began and she cut him off with a sarcastic laugh.

  “I don’t see your pa doing twelve steps anywhere but back to Hooligan’s, Jace,” she countered with flashing eyes. “He doesn’t deserve you giving up your life for him. What’s he done for you since your mom died? All he does is layup drunk and let the state take care of you guys. What do you think giving up your life is going to solve?”

  Jace stiffened at her angry words and his hands dropped from her forearms. He stepped back, his dark eyes dark with resentment. He knew it was the truth, every word she said. Still, it had to hurt to hear it. He was sensitive about his dad’s issues, having lived with it all his life. Evie Turner for a father was hard for any kid to live down.

  “Some of us don’t have the choices you do, Lindsay. We don’t have a big bank account to see us through school.”

  “You have a choice and you just threw it all away,” she flung back, biting her lip, hating the tears that sprang up.

  “Lindsay, I’m staying here. My mind’s made up. I gotta get my dad on track before I leave the kids.”

  “Jace, I won’t have a long distance relationship,” Lindsay warned softly, pain in her heart as she looked up at him. “If you don’t go with me this is it. You need to d
ecide here and now.”

  He looked outraged at her words. “Don’t pull that on me, Lindsay!”

  “No! You need to think about what you’re giving up. I’m not letting up on you until you see that you can’t help him. This is our life! Our time, Jace! Why can’t you think of yourself for once?”

  Jace looked sad as his eyes met and held hers briefly before he looked away. “We’re done if you can’t wait for me a year. My brother and sister aren’t going to any damn home, even for you, Lindsay. You’re nuts if you think I could ever walk out on them now. Get in the truck.”

  Lindsay’s mouth dropped at his words. She hadn’t expected him to accept she would break up with him if he didn’t go with her. Obviously her ultimatum backfired. She went around to the passenger side of the truck and got in huffily.

  He got back in and put the truck in drive. “I’m sorry, Lindsay, but maybe it’s for the best. We both know you aren’t coming back here, not with your mom and dad splitting up and Lance gone.”

  Lindsay felt a cavern open in her heart with every word. True, she wasn’t taking her parents imminent divorce well. That didn’t mean she would never come back. Her mother was a mess. Her father was dating a waitress half his age. Her older brother left home and they hadn’t heard from Lance in months. It didn’t mean she wasn’t coming back. How could she stay away with him still here?

  “You don’t go and make decisions for me, Jace! You spring this on me tonight and expect me to just accept you’re giving your whole life up to take care of a drunk.”

  “Sara and Dougie need me.”

  “How are you going to take care of two kids, Jace? You make minimum wage at the mill and barely get fifteen hours a week. Zeke can’t give you any more hours.”

  “I have to try.”

  “You aren’t doing them any favors,” Lindsay said in a hard tone. “They deserve better than that. I told you they could get into a good foster home. That probation officer told you he would hand pick one.”

  “I don’t expect you to understand.” Jace looked away. “I promised my mom I’d take care of them. I always have. I can’t be selfish.”

  “What good are you to them without a decent job, Jace? Try getting a better job than the mill without school,” she pointed out, determined he listen to her. “We both know you won’t go to college if you don’t go now.”

  “My dad could get help.”

  “Jace, you got a lot riding on that hope. Where was he the night your mom died?”

  He said nothing as he guided the truck back onto the road. The night his mother passed away from a relatively short struggle with cancer, his father was dead drunk in an alley alongside Hooligan’s.

  He was then responsible for his three-month old brother and four-year old sister. Lindsay couldn’t know how hard it was for a seven year-old, and a boy at that, to take care of a baby and a little girl.

  He did it. In the short time his mother had left in this world she instructed him on how to take care of Dougie. He raised him; literally. His father was pretty absent in those days after Dawn Turner died. They would go days without a word from their father. Thankfully, Jace was in tight with Ms. Hawthorne at the pharmacy and she cashed his mother’s welfare checks so they had food and diapers.

  After her death, the woman cashed their social security checks. Jace was both a mother and a father to his younger siblings. Who could understand such an unbelievable situation?

  Lindsay was a spoiled little rich girl until her parents split up. She never knew what it was like to shop at the Goodwill store or pilfer the lost and found at school for decent clothes. She never worried about where her next meal was coming from.

  Until recently she drove a brand new vehicle, never realizing how much he depended upon this ugly, two-toned rust-bucket truck with nearly four hundred thousand miles on it. No, Lindsay would never understand.

  He recalled staying up all night with a colicky Dougie, missing unimaginable days of school to stay home with him. That was when the State of Montana stepped in. Everett Turner was found and sobered up. For a few years he stuck close to home, unwilling to lose his meal tickets, as he called his children.

  Things went bad quick after that. When Jace turned twelve he was going to work, taking every paper route and odd job he could find to keep food in the house. Welfare paid the utilities but their food money fell prey to Everett’s addiction every third of the month.

  Jace had his hands full with the kids and trying to avoid truancy officers. Finally at thirteen, he was emancipated and able to get his driver’s license and a work certificate. His grades suffered then. Lindsay Morgan was assigned his tutor in eighth grade science and math.

  She was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen with her huge blue eyes, creamy complexion, and bouncy blonde curls. The first time he saw her he knew he would marry her one day. From that moment on they were inseparable.

  She brought up his grades. If not for her, he would have never gotten a passing score on his SAT exam to get into Georgia Tech. Coach Dawes assured him it was just a formality.

  They wanted his throwing arm bad enough to overlook the score. He took it personal. He strived to do his best on it. His score wasn’t nearly as high as Lindsay’s was, but few could claim that. Lindsay was one of those naturally brainy people who never forgot anything they were taught. She wanted to be a doctor one day.

  “How do you think I’d feel if I left knowing they were in foster care, Lindsay?” Jace asked her in a choked voice thick with emotion. “Do you think everything would just be hunky dory knowing I walked out on them?”

  “I worry you’ll wind up like your dad if you stay.”

  “I won’t ever be like him,” Jace said in contempt, staring broodingly out over the dashboard.