Читать книгу All the Little Pieces - Jilliane Hoffman - Страница 24

Two weeks later Nick was out.

Actually, since the bank had initiated foreclosure proceedings and no one had done anything to stop them, eviction was imminent, so Charity and the kids were out, too. Charity, however, didn’t want to be out with her husband. According to the order of protection, she didn’t want to be within five hundred feet of Nicholas Lavecki.

He’d hit her. She’d hit him first, but he’d hit her back, and that’s what finally did it. After a night out drinking with the Nicknames, Nick had passed out on the futon and Charity had gone through his cell, something she probably should’ve done months, even years, before. Nick didn’t lock his phone or try to hide it; she’d never looked because she didn’t want to see for herself what everyone else knew was going on.

While Nick was passed out, Charity cleaned house. She read the texts from the multiple women and saw the pictures. Then she went looking and found the gambling chits in his sock drawer, and the credit card statements from the Visa card she never knew he had – most of the charges were made at bars and strip clubs. They were drowning in debt.

When he came to, she had out the Louisville Slugger. She’d finished off a bottle of wine herself. She got in one round, and then Big Mitts got in his. Kamilla called the cops. Both of them went to jail – which is where Charity had called her from. It was the first time they had spoken since the birthday party. Charity got out first, thanks to Faith, who’d wired the bond money. And Charity got the first restraining order, thanks to Faith who’d hired the defense attorney. When she got back home from the hearing she saw the Notice of Eviction taped to her front door. That’s when she found out she was going to be homeless.

Her sister was in no state to put her life back together. All she could do was cry and count down the days she had left in the duplex while her three kids tried to figure out what to do about dinner.

Numerous times over the years Faith had asked Charity to come stay with her, but that was not an option now, for a number of reasons. In order for Charity to successfully break away from Nick and her life in Sebring she needed a long-term plan, not a short-term solution. Emotionally she was weak: Nick had gutted her self-esteem, so that she was unable to see a future without someone in it supporting her – that someone being him. So from the moment she stepped away from her old life she had to be invested in her future – emotionally, physically, and financially – not camping out on her sister’s couch, irritating her brother-in-law, wallowing in self-pity, biding time till Nick came calling. She needed her own life and she needed to see she could be successful at running it. With Vivian’s help, Faith found a modest, three-bedroom apartment in Coral Springs near the bakery and within walking distance of the middle and elementary schools. Their mom agreed to give Charity her old Jetta, as the bank was going to repossess Charity’s mini-van once they found it. She set Charity up to work at Sweet Sisters when the kids were in school, and found a low-cost daycare down the street from the bakery for the little one.

And she footed the bill for it all, on the understanding that Charity would be responsible for at least a portion of her monthly bills until she got on her feet, however long that took. All she had left to do was physically get her sister down to South Florida before Nick came back around. The day after wiring the bail money, she drove to Sebring, rented a small U-Haul and in a single morning she and Kamilla packed up the kitchen, the kids’ stuff, and Charity’s closet, loaded everything in the U-Haul, and headed back down to Coral Springs, with Charity following right behind her. She took the Turnpike up and back, avoiding 441 and the rural back roads. With any luck, she would never have to drive on them ever again.

Faith was a month shy of her nineteenth birthday when she’d left home for college. She had never returned. Oh, she’d gone back for Thanksgiving and Christmas and summer breaks, but she never boomeranged back to the nest after graduation, like most of her friends had. But when she’d walked out the door of her childhood home in Miami Shores that sweltering August morning in 2001, she had no idea that she wouldn’t be back. She probably wouldn’t have left if she had, because the thought of leaving her home and her family forever would have been too overwhelming; even though she was aching for independence at that age, she was still a homebody. On that day Charity was sitting at the breakfast bar in sweatpants and a Nirvana T-shirt eating a bowl of Captain Crunch, watching Faith load the car. Their mom couldn’t get off work, so Vivian’s parents were taking them both up to UF. Once the last bag had been thrown in the trunk and she’d reclaimed her favorite jeans from the back of Charity’s closet, she’d returned to the kitchen, patted her sister down for anything else of hers that she might’ve tried to ‘borrow’, kissed her goodbye, and … that was it. There was no fanfare. No mopey tears or drawn-out clutching, lamenting when the two of them would be together again. She’d just driven off, hand waving out the window, watching in the side-view mirror as her house and her mother and her sister got smaller, never understanding at the time how nothing would ever be the same. Because she had no idea she wouldn’t be back. She was looking forward to the future, not missing the past as it waved goodbye to her.