I want to be able to have choices. That’s what my mama would’ve wanted. She never wanted me to get stuck where I didn’t want to be.”
Charlie let out a steady stream of breath. Her own mother had been the same way, always pushing Charlie to study harder, to do more, to use the gifts of her intelligence and drive to be useful in the world.
“She was good to me,” Flora said. “My mama. She was kind, and she looked after me, and she was always in my corner, no matter what.” Flora wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m sorry. I still miss her is all. I feel like I need to honor her memory, to make sure some good comes out of what happened to her.”
It was Charlie’s turn to look down at her hands. She felt a lump in her throat. She had thought more about her mother in the last five minutes than she had in the last month. The longing for her, the desire for one more chance to tell her mother what was on her mind, was an ache that would never go away.
Charlie had to clear her throat before she could ask Flora, “How long have you been thinking about emancipation?”
“Since after Paw’s surgery,” the girl said. “He hurt his leg three years ago falling off a ladder. He couldn’t go back to work.”
“He’s addicted to pain medication?” Charlie guessed, because the Pikeville jail was filled with such men. “Be honest with me. Is it pills?”
The girl nodded with visible reluctance. “Don’t tell anybody, please. I don’t want him to go to prison.”
“That won’t happen because of me,” Charlie promised. “But you need to understand that putting this in motion is a public thing. You won’t be a protected minor anymore. Court records are out there for everybody to see. And that’s not even the hard part. In order to prepare a petition supporting your request for emancipation, I’ll have to talk to your grandparents, your teachers, your employer, your friend’s parents. Everybody will know what you’re doing.”
“I’m not trying to do it on the sly. You can talk to anybody you want to, today even, right now. I don’t want anybody to get into trouble, like go-to-jail trouble. I just want to get out so I can go to a good college and do something with my life.”
Her earnestness was heartbreaking. “Your grandparents might put up a fight. You’ll have to be blunt about why you want to leave. You don’t have to mention the pills, but you’ll have to tell a judge that you feel they’re not good guardians for you, that you would rather be on your own than have to live with them.” Charlie tried to paint a picture for her. “You’ll all be in court at the same time. You’ll have to tell a judge, in the open, in front of anybody who wants to hear, that you are unable to reconcile with them and you don’t want them in your life in any capacity.”
Flora seemed to equivocate. “What if they don’t fight it? What if they agree with it?”
“That would certainly make things easier, but—”
“Paw has other problems.”
Charlie’s mind went straight back to the abuse issue. “Is he hurting you?”
Flora did not answer, but she didn’t look away, either.
“Flora, if he’s hurting you—”
The door opened. They both startled at the furious look on Belinda’s face. “What are you two rascals doing hiding out in here?” She had tried to make her voice sound light, but there was no hiding her distress. “I’ve got a whole room full of girls back there with nothing to do but drink punch and talk about how dry my cake is.”
Flora looked at Charlie. “It’s not what you’re thinking.” There was a note of desperation in her voice. “I mean it. It’s not that. Talk to whoever you need to. Please. I’ll make a list for you. Okay?”
Before Charlie could answer, Flora left the bathroom.
“What was that about?” Belinda asked.
Charlie opened her mouth to explain, but she got stuck on Flora’s desperate tone, her insistence that what Charlie was thinking was not what was actually happening. But what if it was? If the girl was being abused by her grandfather, that changed everything.
“Charlie?” Belinda asked. “What’s up? Why are you hiding out in here?”
“I’m not hiding, I was—”
“Did you throw up?”
Charlie could only concentrate on one thing at a time. “Did you make that frosting from scratch?”
“Don’t be stupid.” Belinda squinted her eyes, as if Charlie was an abstract painting. “Your boobs look bigger.”
“I thought your sorority taught you how to deal with those feelings.”
“Shut up,” Belinda said. “Are you pregnant?”
“Very funny.” The only religious thing in Charlie’s life was the schedule by which she took her birth control pills. “I’ve been spotting for two days. I’m cramping. I want to eat candy and kill everything. I think it’s just a bug.”
“It better be a bug.” Belinda rubbed her round belly. “Enjoy your freedom before everything changes.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“You’ll see. Once you start having babies, that perfect, loving husband of yours will start treating you like a milk cow. Trust me. It’s like they think they have something over you. And they do. You’re trapped, and they know that you need them, but they can walk away at any time and find somebody younger and tighter to have fun with.”
Charlie wasn’t going to have this conversation again. The only thing that seemed to change about her friends with children is that they started treating their husbands like jerks. “Tell me about Flora.”
“Who?” Belinda seemed to have forgotten the girl as soon as she left the room. “Oh, her. You know that movie we saw last month, Mean Girls? She’d be the Lindsay Lohan character.”
“So, part of the group but not a leader, and not particularly comfortable with the meanness?”
“More like a survivor. Those bitches are next-level cruel.” Belinda sniffed toward the handicap stall. “Did you eat bacon for breakfast?”
Charlie searched her purse for some mints. She found gum instead, but the thought of the peppermint flavor made her feel queasy again. “Do you have some candy?”
“I think I have some Jolly Ranchers.” Belinda unzipped her purse. “Ugh, I should clean this out. Cheerios. How did those get in there? There’s some mints. Oreos, but you can’t—”
Charlie snatched the bag out of her hands.
“I thought you couldn’t do milk?”
“Do you really think this white crap has milk in it?” Charlie bit into an Oreo. She felt an instant soothing in her brain. “What about her parents?”
“Whose parents?”
“B,
