Page 70 of Mine To Possess
“You said ten minutes, boss. Now I reckon we have about six or seven minutes to disappear before the cops get here.”
“We’d better move then.”
As we hurry from the house, Jerome pulls his cell phone out.
“It’s done,” he says to the clean-up guys. “Get in and out quickly. You have less than six minutes.”
He cuts the call off without waiting for confirmation, then drops his cell phone back into his pocket.
Jerome pulls off and goes down the cul-de-sac calmly to not call attention to us, but within a few minutes, we’re back in the throng of the city traffic, another anonymous car in a stream of endless cars.
I feel lighter than I have in a long time. Igor is gone. I’m free of worry, free of threats. I’m free to get my Amelia back.
“Where to, boss?” Jerome asks, although judging by the smile on his face, I think he knows the answer to that one.
My smile in return is answer enough and Jerome does a U-turn, heading for the trailer park and for the girl of my dreams.
38
AMELIA
The last two weeks have been bad.
Like, really bad.
Not only am I missing Viktor even more than I thought I would, and trust me, I thought I would miss him a lot, but being back here has taken me back to being some dumb, defenseless kid again. It’s like my childhood reliving itself, and this time, it’s even worse, because this time, I know how much better it can be for me, how much better it was away from this dreary trailer park… and my mother.
If it wasn’t for the fact that Viktor would be beside himself if I texted him a new address in the middle of all of this, I honestly would have upped and left by now.
The first day wasn’t so bad. In fact, I would go so far as to say the first day was good. My mom was right about the trailer. The one she’s living in now is much nicer than the one we moved into with Dan. It’s clean, tidy, airy, and bright. And yes, the curtains do fit the windows and unlike Dan’s they got opened in the morning. We spent that first day chatting and giggling, catching up, and for that one day, I let myself believe that things would be different this time around. That my mom wasn’t going to go out and make the same stupid mistakes all over again.
On the fourth day, my mom came to me looking shifty and I felt the familiar dread in my stomach, the familiar feeling that I was about to be let down. My mom told me she owed a couple of thousand dollars on a credit card – money she insisted she had to use to get away from Dan. She said she used it to pay the security deposit and the first month’s rent in advance on this trailer.
I didn’t believe that for a second.
There was no way that would have been so expensive, and besides, I’d already seen the clothes with their tags still on them hanging in the closet in the spare bedroom, the shoes still in their boxes stashed underneath the bed. She asked me if I could lend her fifty dollars to make the monthly payment, saying she was a little short this month, but she’d be ok next month, and making it clear how many charges she would have to pay if I couldn’t lend her the money.
I knew if I gave it to her, I’d never see it again, but I had it to spare and I told myself it was only fifty dollars. What was fifty dollars compared to years she had fed, clothed and sheltered me? At that point, I was still hopeful she could be different, we could be different.
I gave her the money and she smiled coyly and started to tell me all about the interest on the card and how she would be paying back nearly twice what she had borrowed if she paid the card off monthly. I was disappointed, I wanted to cry, but I wouldn’t show how hurt I was. I told her I would pay the interest, hoping she’d then give it up and walk away so I mourn the death of my little dream, but she didn’t.
Delighted that she had manipulated me into agreeing to pick up her bill she then suggested I call Viktor and tell him I was owed money, more than what he had put into my account. I stared at her in shock. She had taken my card, checked the balance in my account, and seen the lumpsum Viktor had put into my account.
Without showing the sadness in my heart, I pointed out that Viktor had already given me far more than I was owed. She shrugged and grinned that shifty little grin again and told me to call it alimony. She basically suggested I bug Viktor twenty-four hours a day until he got so sick of hearing from me that he paid me to leave him alone.
Fortunately, I hadn’t let her in on the truth of Viktor and my real situation. I didn’t trust her not to talk – my mother was a gossip and there was no doubt in my mind that if she knew what was going on with Viktor and me, that everyone she worked with and half of the trailer park residents would soon know it too, and then whoever they told and whoever those people told, and so on and so on until the whole fucking city knew the situation.
But even if Viktor and I had really split up, I wouldn’t be doing that. I was perfectly capable of living without a man paying for me and if my mom wasn’t, then that was her problem.
I told her in no uncertain terms I wasn’t planning on doing any such thing.
She pretended to understand, but the cogs where her brain should have been were still turning, and a couple of days later, she suggested maybe I should give Viktor another chance. It was clear why – she thought if I married into money, she’d be set for life.
Again, I made it clear it wouldn’t be happening. I told her Viktor and I were done and I wouldn’t be calling him or texting him, and I certainly wouldn’t be accepting any money from him. She got pretty huffy then, and tried to make out she was just looking out for me.
Learning that my mom didn’t really want me back because she actually loved me was painful, but that she wanted me back just to access someone she had decided was a meal ticket was even harder to take. My mother was greedy to almost immoral proportions. I had missed that completely.
The worst part of being back in my old life came on day five. I had been into town and wandered the shops for a few hours to kill some time. I debated calling some of the girls I worked with to meet for lunch or something, but I didn’t. It would’ve been nice to see them, but I didn’t want to lie to them, and I would’ve had to.