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Ch. 7

I've met naïveté, she is young and so hopeful. With a round face and wide eyes that gleam with starlight, she believes the best in everyone. She has a smile that shows all of her teeth and a warmth that no fire can match. She is doubtless in her beliefs and she gets frustrated easily. But she lives with all of her heart and soul. Pain has sired her but he has yet to taint her heart. Those she holds dear can only pray that he never does.
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Do you realize what your voice does to me?
Do you ever think of the kids we used to be?
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It had been two weeks.

Two weeks, and I had called everyday. I was sitting on the Gallagher porch smoking and waiting on Lip and Ian to come home. It was about six in the afternoon so Carl and Debbie were running around in the house and Fiona had just gotten in from work a while ago. I was more watching the smoke rise from my cigarette than anything when I heard the front door open.

"Hey! What are you doing out here?"

"Just thinking, I just got off the phone with the home. Still busy." Fiona sat down next to me on the step and grabbed my cigarette.

"She's probably just still mad, she can't hold a grudge for too long." I stared at the road for a minute. I had never told her about my mothers grudges and kicking me out, even though I had stayed here at the Gallagher house when it happened. It was now or never.

"You remember when I was younger, and I stayed here for a few months?" I asked her.

"Of course."

I could feel my face burning so I was staring down at my feet on the old steps.

"My mom had kicked me out."

"What?" She asked, I could hear the hard edge in her voice.

"Yeah, she uhm, she caught my dad trying to..." I stopped.

"Trying to what." I was silent for a moment. My eyes were glossing over and my vision blurred.

"Please don't make me say it," I whispered. She mumbled to God under her breath and pulled me into her side. We sat like that for a long while, my head resting on her shoulder and her chin on my head.

"She said I was an abomination, a husband stealing... a husband stealing whore," I said choking on my words.

"You were only thirteen," she said as if she was trying to make me see it wasn't my fault.

"Not when it started," I said. She was silent as she waited for me to continue. I had to wait a minute to collect myself.
"He started coming in my room when I was nine."

"Four years Lydia? Why didn't you tell anyone? Why didn't you tell us? We could have helped you," She said. She almost sounded scared.

"It was my fault," it was as simple as that.

"No." She said firmly, "a nine year old girl against a grown man doesn't stand a chance."

"I could have locked my door. Or Like you said I could have gone to you, or—"

"Stop. For four years your father attacked you in your own home. And she didn't notice. God—" she choked off her sentence. "Do the boys know?" She asked.

I nodded slowly. "I didn't tell them until after he died."

"They would have... we should have killed him." I looked down.

"The night she kicked me out, I had locked my door. I was scared that I was... that I was pregnant. He tried to open my door but when he saw it was locked he started banging on it, he was drunk but he could still pick a lock... I tried to tell him that I thought I might be... and he started yelling at me and he grabbed me, he didn't care. My mom ran in and she just started screaming, at me and him, I told her everything..."