Read Online Wife-In-Law by Haywood Smith - Free Book Online

scanned the room with tears in his eyes, then latched the big, beat-up suitcase he’d found in all the stuff Mama piled into our little house, I stopped swinging my legs.
    His tears came faster, flooding his cheeks as he looked at me as if his heart would break. Then he hugged me, drawing me into his lap on the bed. “If there was any other way to do this,” he whispered, his words shaking, “my darling girl, I would find it. I tried, spent everything I had to try to keep you, but the judge was a throwback to the Middle Ages.”
    Throwback? What was that?
    Daddy sure wasn’t acting like this was a joke. My blood congealed inside me, prickling everywhere there was life. “Keep me?”
    Daddy’s body quaked, holding me tight. “I thought sure they’d let me take you when they saw how sick Mama is, but they didn’t. So now it’s too late. Your mother signed the divorce papers, and the judge said you have to live with her.”
    I loved my mama, but her sickness had made me dream of escape with my father ever since I was old enough to realize that other people didn’t live like we did.
    “Now, the only way I can make the payments is to take the job in Saudi Arabia.” He broke down and sobbed.
    I didn’t know exactly where Saudi Arabia was, but I knew it was very far away.
    Divorce.
    This couldn’t be real. Daddy couldn’t go off and leave me with Mama.
    Cold. My hands and feet were so cold.
    I grabbed on to Daddy with all my might. “You can’t leave!” My voice came out high and shrill as a two-year-old having a tantrum. “Take me with you! I’ll do anything, just don’t leave me here with her ! Please, God, no!”
    Daddy pried himself from my grasp and stood. “I have no choice.” He wiped his eyes with his shirtsleeve, suddenly looking like an old man.
    “Betsy,” Mama shouted over the blaring TV, “let your father leave in peace. Remember what I told you.”
    That he’d never call or visit if I tried to talk to him about it.
    Grief and fear battled inside me, but in the end, fear of never seeing him again kept me silent. He was really going, saving himself, going to a normal family. And leaving me behind as a human sacrifice to Mama’s never-ending needs and craziness. I sat there, crushed by the horror of being responsible for Mama. It weighed so heavy, I could barely breathe.
    “There’s a good girl, now,” Daddy soothed. He reached into his pocket and handed me a business card that said “Family and Children’s Services” with some woman’s name and number at the bottom. Daddy’s voice dropped to a tight whisper. “Hide this from your mother. If she doesn’t take care of you, call this lady, and they’ll get in touch with me.”
    He kissed the top of my head, then started working his way through the narrow path to the front door. “I’ll write you,” he called without looking back.
    Too devastated to cry, I just sat there on my parents’ bed as I heard the front door open, then slam.
    This couldn’t be happening. It had to be a nightmare, and I would wake up, and everything would be the same. Daddy would just be traveling on business. He was a very good salesman, so he traveled a lot.
    I closed my eyes, hard, and willed it to be a dream. But I didn’t wake up. My parents’ room was just the way it always was, crammed with junk on Mama’s side, and clean on Daddy’s.
    Crazy, how little of the piles and piles of things in our house had been his.
    Hate exploded inside me, aimed at the idiot judge who’d refused to let me go with my daddy, and at my mother’s sickness that had driven the one person I truly loved from my life. I started screaming from the bottom of hell and couldn’t stop.
    Mama appeared at the door to her room. “Good Lord, Betsy, you’ll raise the dead. Shut up, before someone calls the police.”
    “I hope they do call the police,” I shouted through my rage and grief. “And I hope they put you in jail, so I can go with Daddy!”
    I expected her to scream