CSI--Living Dead Girl (1 of 4)
Mar. 31st, 2007 06:01 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
kosmickway.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
csi_fictionTitle: Living Dead Girl
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kosmickway
Category: CSI Vegas; character back-story; romance; episode-related
Rating: R for violence, drug use, and sexuality.
Pairing: GSR
Complete or WiP: Complete
Author’s Note: This is my interpretation of Sara’s back story. It is by no means definitive. In writing this I attempted to shed some light on Sara’s father’s murder (see “Nesting Dolls,” fifth season, for the complete story). This fic takes place immediately after the fifth season episode “Committed” and focuses on the after-effects of Adam Trent’s attack on Sara during that episode.
Disclaimer: I don’t own them. I make no profit from them. I just worship at the altar of Zuiker and Mendelsohn. All songs are property of Rob Zombie.
“Who is this irresistible creature who has an insatiable love for the dead? Living dead girl.” Rob Zombie, “Living Dead Girl”
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
The screaming woke her, made her bolt up in the bed and sit ramrod straight, heart hammering.
“I come home and find my kid with bruises all over her, can’t even speak a word to me! What in God’s name are you doing to her while I’m not here?”
Sara didn’t need to hear her mother’s reply. She knew what was coming. It was just a party with a few friends; it was just her way to unwind after a hard week at work; it was just a few guys; just a few lines; just a few bottles of booze. With her mother it was always “just” something.
It was hell when her father wasn’t home, days with nothing in the kitchen but the junk food her mother munched on when she was coked up, nights of endless Grateful Dead and Hendrix albums; reefer smoke and roach clips, straight razors left on the mirror-topped table in trails of white powder. She spent as many hours in school and the library as possible– the remaining hours she spent fending for herself in a house completely inhospitable to a 13-year-old with scientific leanings and no friends.
“You’re a waste case, Laura! You’re not fit to be a parent.”
Her mother’s voice was too loud and slurred. Sara couldn’t make out her response. When she heard the sound of feet on the stairs she backed herself into the corner between her bed and the wall, dragging her pillow with her, trying to make herself as small as possible.
The door knob rattled, shuddered against her homemade locking mechanism and the chair she’d shoved against the door. Sara cringed, hugged her pillow tighter. Then her father’s voice called, “Sara. Baby, open the door. It’s Dad.”
Dad. She was lucky tonight. Dad wouldn’t hurt her– no matter how long he’d been away she knew that would never change. Dad was her savior. She bounded up out of bed and hurried to the door, moved the chair and disengaged her locks. Then she was in her father’s arms, his familiar spicy cologne a welcome smell.
“Come on, Peaches. You’re coming with me.” Dad pulled her duffel bag out of the closet and began pulling shirts and jeans off the shelves and hangers. “Let’s get packed.”
“She’s my fucking daughter, too,” slurred the voice at the door. “You’re not taking her away from me.”
Laura Sidle would have been pretty if she’d taken care of herself properly but she spent too much time at the end of a bottle to care about her appearance. She was skeletally thin, her jeans sagging off of her hips. Her thin arms protruded like match sticks from a short tank top that revealed a concave belly with a navel piercing. She was carrying a Coca-Cola bottle in her hand, one that, Sara knew, was always full of one alcoholic concoction or another. Sara could smell the alcohol fumes in her mother’s sweat– the air conditioning had broken down a week ago and her mother hadn’t had the money to get it fixed.
“I come home from a business trip and find you coked out of your gourd, two guys in your bed, no food in the fridge and Sara hiding in the garage. If I’d known things had gotten so bad around here I would have taken her away long ago.” Timothy Sidle stared coolly at his wife and shook his head. “You’re a mess.”
“I am perfectly under control,” Laura retorted, tossing her stringy hair. “I just had some friends over. It’s been a long week.”
Timothy turned to Sara. “Don’t forget to pack your backpack, too, Peaches. I’ll drop you off at school tomorrow.”
“Show’s what you know,” Laura slurred triumphantly. “School is over.”
“School’s not over for another two weeks,” Sara corrected, quickly jamming the novel she was reading into her overnight bag. Her backpack was sitting on the floor next to her desk, neatly organized and ready to go. Sara liked to make sure she was ready for anything the minute she got out of bed. She never knew when she’d have to make a quick escape from the house to avoid listening to the sounds of her mother’s latest “friend” fucking her brains out in the next bedroom.
Laura didn’t have anything to say to that. She simply stood in the doorway, eyes narrowed, watching her daughter and husband.
“Sara,” she crooned, affecting a softer, pleading tone. “Sara, honey, don’t leave your mama. She’s lonely without you. Stay here and we’ll do something, just us.”
She wandered over to Sara’s chest of drawers and picked up a hairbrush. Advancing on Sara, she ran the brush clumsily through her daughter’s hair, mussing the neat ponytail and knotting bits of hair in the bristles of the brush.
“We’ll braid our hair like we used to, with flower chains, and watch “The Wizard of OZ” with my red high heels on. I’ll make you a cake for your birthday and we’ll burn sparklers on the lawn, all pink and pretty, like fairies. Come on, baby, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“My birthday’s next month,” Sara mumbled, moving away from the brush and smoothing her hair. She zipped up her bag and looked at her father. “Dad? What about Arroway?”
Arroway was her pet turtle, who she’d found on the side of the road with a crack in his shell. She’d salvaged an old terrarium and had carefully constructed a habitat for him after studying books on turtles’ preferred environments and eating habits.
“Arroway will be okay, here, sweets. We’ll come by and feed him tomorrow.”
“I’m ready, then,” Sara said and jammed her feet into her sneakers, mindless of the fact that she was wearing the running shorts and long-sleeved t-shirt that she slept in. She was ready to leave the house quickly. She hefted her book bag and her father lifted her duffle. Together they brushed past Laura and down the stairs.
“You’re not taking my daughter, Timothy,” Laura yelled, stumbling after them. “Come back here, Sara, and go to your fucking room, right now. Tim! Tim, you asshole, you’re not taking her without me.”
Laura grabbed for her husband’s arm and he shook it off, as if it was something that disgusted him.
“I’m your fucking WIFE, you dickless asshole. I’m the one you said you’d be with forever, not her. Timothy! Tim!”
Laura’s muddled shouts followed Sara and Timothy out of the house and into the quiet streets of their neighborhood. None of the neighbors bothered to see what the shouting was about– they were used to hearing it by now.
Sara stared out of the window of her father’s car as the house receded behind them, leaving her mother standing on the lawn, waving her coke bottle, shouting to the air.
***
“All you know is alone. You see a phantom stranger. Down you go, all alone. You love my phantom stranger.” Rob Zombie, “Return of the Phantom Stranger”
The dream woke her up and she jerked upright in her bed, the covers twined around her legs. Sweat ran down her neck and pooled in the hollow of her collarbone. She flipped on the bedside lamp and mopped her neck and face with the corner of her pillowcase, willing her breathing and heart to slow.
Her cell phone rang as she was calming down and adrenaline shot through her.
“Hello?”
“It’s Grissom. Sorry to wake you.”
“I was awake all ready.”
“Hearing for Adam Trent is scheduled for tomorrow. I need you to come in so we can go over your testimony again. The lawyers are going to grill you over an open flame about what happened in the hospital that night. Let’s make sure we have everything we need to get an assault charge to stick.”
Sara sighed and ran a hand through her hair. “Grissom, I’ve already told you I don’t want to file charges.”
“I know that. But Ecklie insists we file on behalf of the office. Makes a statement about the competency of the mental hospital. It’s a lot of political maneuvering, Sara, you know that.”
“Well, Ecklie can keep me out of it. I don’t want to have to deal with Adam Trent again.”
Grissom seemed to hear the strain in her voice, despite her efforts to keep the conversation as low key as possible. “Are you okay?”
“I woke up on the wrong side of the bed,” she answered shortly.
“Apparently. Look, I know this is a chore. You’re the key to this case Ecklie’s trying to build. In the interest of keeping the peace in this office, I wish you’d cooperate with him.”
When she didn’t answer he tried another tack. “Sara, you’re already on a very short lead with Ecklie, okay? I had to do some fast talking to keep you from getting fired. Show him and me that you’re willing to validate the trust I’ve placed in you.”
Oh, so it’s like that, Sara thought. Tit for fucking tat. She blew out an impatient breath. “Okay, fine. Fine. I’ll see you in about an hour.”
Indulging in her urge to throw something, she chucked the cell phone into the folds of her comforter and sat, fuming. Nothing had been the same since Ecklie had split the team up. Tempers were frayed, nerves were on edge, and it was getting to the point where she almost dreaded going to work. Grissom pressuring her into one of Ecklie’s political schemes was just the latest example of how cockeyed things at the CSI offices had become.
Swearing under her breath and stifling a yawn, Sara swung her legs out of bed and started for the shower.
***
When she arrived at CSI headquarters, Grissom shanghaied her and led her to his office.
“Ecklie’s been sniffing around. He’s wants you to testify on behalf of the office if this goes to court instead of just letting you give a sworn deposition.” Grissom drummed his fingers on the desk. “Look, I’ve got better things to do than watch Ecklie build some trumped up case against a lunatic and so do you. So I want to get you down to the county clerk’s office, give the deposition, and get all of this behind us.”
Sara stared incredulously. “Today? Now?”
“Right now.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“Does it look like I’m kidding?”
Since Grissom was wearing his most difficult to read expression, Sara decided it was better not to answer– she honestly had no idea when he was kidding anymore. He had already turned back to the stack of paperwork on the desk, apparently considering the matter closed.
“Grissom, I just don’t think–“
”Sara.” He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He looked incredibly tired. “Please.”
She snapped her mouth shut and nodded. “Okay. I’m going.”
She left him to his stacks of paper, trying hard not to notice how empty the halls felt with no Warrick around to tease her, no Nick to flirt with her, and no Catherine moving through like a manic whirl-wind. Things were awfully quiet when it was just Sara, Grissom, and Greg.
***
“Blood on her skin, dripping with sin, do it again, living dead girl.”
Rob Zombie, “Living Dead Girl”
“Peaches, does your mother hurt you when I’m not home?”
Sara stopped mid-way through her strawberry sundae. Even though it was the middle of the night, they’d stopped at a diner to eat. Timothy Sidle was sipping a coffee and eating a plate of eggs and toast. He’d insisted that Sara have something sweet to eat. “You’re skin and bones, Munchkin,” he’d said, taking her chin in his hand and looking her up and down. “I know all you girls want to stay thin but you don’t look healthy at all.”
Now here it was. The big question. Sara swallowed the mouthful of ice cream and took a sip of water to buy herself time.
Did her mother hurt her while her father was away? Yes, in a hundred different ways. Her carelessness with harsh words and slaps and the occasional wallop with the back end of a hairbrush. Her neglect of the cooking and cleaning until Sara was living on toast and fruit and whatever she could scrounge up with her baby-sitting money, which sometimes meant nothing at all. The men and women with hard eyes and cruel laughs who populated the house day and night. The lifestyle that kept Sara from having any friends because her clothes were always out of fashion, her hair cut was always awry because she trimmed it herself, and because she lived inside her books, the only things that made sense in her world.
“Sara?” Her father reached out and took her arm, gently, pushing up her sleeve to reveal the bruises on the inside of her elbows and upper arms where she’d been grabbed by rough hands. “Baby, did your mother do this?”
“No,” she said softly.
“You’d tell me if she did, right?”
“Yes.”
“So who grabbed you? Who hurt you? Who were you hiding from when I came home tonight?”
Too many questions. Who didn’t make a grab for her when she walked through the living room?
“Some guy.”
“Can you tell me about him?”
Sara shook her head.
“Peaches, listen. I know it’s hard when I’m gone and I’m sorry, I really am. But I’m trying to do better by you.” Timothy put down his coffee cup and took Sara’s hand. “Sweetie, you’re old enough to hear what I have to tell you so I want you to pay attention. Are you listening?”
Sara nodded.
“Your mom and I married way too young and way too stupid. We spent too much of your childhood coked up or stoned out. I didn’t want to keep being that person, Sara. I changed. I wanted to be someone you could respect, someone you’d be proud to call Dad.
“I’m trying to do the best I can, you know, trying to make sure that you can go to college and have an education. But to do that I can’t stay here. I make better money out of town. And I hate leaving you with her but that’s the only way this is going to work.
“If she’s hurting you, Sara, if she’s doing things to you that she shouldn’t be doing, I can make that stop. You have to tell me, though, what she’s doing to you. You have to let me know what’s going on before I can do anything to take you away from her for good. Understand?”
Sara licked the sundae spoon and thought and finally said, “Can I tell you tomorrow? It makes me not want to eat if I talk about it now.”
Timothy stared at his daughter and felt his heart shudder. “Sure, Peaches,” he said, stroking her hair. “You can talk about it tomorrow.”
***
END PART 1
Author:
kosmickwayCategory: CSI Vegas; character back-story; romance; episode-related
Rating: R for violence, drug use, and sexuality.
Pairing: GSR
Complete or WiP: Complete
Author’s Note: This is my interpretation of Sara’s back story. It is by no means definitive. In writing this I attempted to shed some light on Sara’s father’s murder (see “Nesting Dolls,” fifth season, for the complete story). This fic takes place immediately after the fifth season episode “Committed” and focuses on the after-effects of Adam Trent’s attack on Sara during that episode.
Disclaimer: I don’t own them. I make no profit from them. I just worship at the altar of Zuiker and Mendelsohn. All songs are property of Rob Zombie.
“Who is this irresistible creature who has an insatiable love for the dead? Living dead girl.” Rob Zombie, “Living Dead Girl”
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
The screaming woke her, made her bolt up in the bed and sit ramrod straight, heart hammering.
“I come home and find my kid with bruises all over her, can’t even speak a word to me! What in God’s name are you doing to her while I’m not here?”
Sara didn’t need to hear her mother’s reply. She knew what was coming. It was just a party with a few friends; it was just her way to unwind after a hard week at work; it was just a few guys; just a few lines; just a few bottles of booze. With her mother it was always “just” something.
It was hell when her father wasn’t home, days with nothing in the kitchen but the junk food her mother munched on when she was coked up, nights of endless Grateful Dead and Hendrix albums; reefer smoke and roach clips, straight razors left on the mirror-topped table in trails of white powder. She spent as many hours in school and the library as possible– the remaining hours she spent fending for herself in a house completely inhospitable to a 13-year-old with scientific leanings and no friends.
“You’re a waste case, Laura! You’re not fit to be a parent.”
Her mother’s voice was too loud and slurred. Sara couldn’t make out her response. When she heard the sound of feet on the stairs she backed herself into the corner between her bed and the wall, dragging her pillow with her, trying to make herself as small as possible.
The door knob rattled, shuddered against her homemade locking mechanism and the chair she’d shoved against the door. Sara cringed, hugged her pillow tighter. Then her father’s voice called, “Sara. Baby, open the door. It’s Dad.”
Dad. She was lucky tonight. Dad wouldn’t hurt her– no matter how long he’d been away she knew that would never change. Dad was her savior. She bounded up out of bed and hurried to the door, moved the chair and disengaged her locks. Then she was in her father’s arms, his familiar spicy cologne a welcome smell.
“Come on, Peaches. You’re coming with me.” Dad pulled her duffel bag out of the closet and began pulling shirts and jeans off the shelves and hangers. “Let’s get packed.”
“She’s my fucking daughter, too,” slurred the voice at the door. “You’re not taking her away from me.”
Laura Sidle would have been pretty if she’d taken care of herself properly but she spent too much time at the end of a bottle to care about her appearance. She was skeletally thin, her jeans sagging off of her hips. Her thin arms protruded like match sticks from a short tank top that revealed a concave belly with a navel piercing. She was carrying a Coca-Cola bottle in her hand, one that, Sara knew, was always full of one alcoholic concoction or another. Sara could smell the alcohol fumes in her mother’s sweat– the air conditioning had broken down a week ago and her mother hadn’t had the money to get it fixed.
“I come home from a business trip and find you coked out of your gourd, two guys in your bed, no food in the fridge and Sara hiding in the garage. If I’d known things had gotten so bad around here I would have taken her away long ago.” Timothy Sidle stared coolly at his wife and shook his head. “You’re a mess.”
“I am perfectly under control,” Laura retorted, tossing her stringy hair. “I just had some friends over. It’s been a long week.”
Timothy turned to Sara. “Don’t forget to pack your backpack, too, Peaches. I’ll drop you off at school tomorrow.”
“Show’s what you know,” Laura slurred triumphantly. “School is over.”
“School’s not over for another two weeks,” Sara corrected, quickly jamming the novel she was reading into her overnight bag. Her backpack was sitting on the floor next to her desk, neatly organized and ready to go. Sara liked to make sure she was ready for anything the minute she got out of bed. She never knew when she’d have to make a quick escape from the house to avoid listening to the sounds of her mother’s latest “friend” fucking her brains out in the next bedroom.
Laura didn’t have anything to say to that. She simply stood in the doorway, eyes narrowed, watching her daughter and husband.
“Sara,” she crooned, affecting a softer, pleading tone. “Sara, honey, don’t leave your mama. She’s lonely without you. Stay here and we’ll do something, just us.”
She wandered over to Sara’s chest of drawers and picked up a hairbrush. Advancing on Sara, she ran the brush clumsily through her daughter’s hair, mussing the neat ponytail and knotting bits of hair in the bristles of the brush.
“We’ll braid our hair like we used to, with flower chains, and watch “The Wizard of OZ” with my red high heels on. I’ll make you a cake for your birthday and we’ll burn sparklers on the lawn, all pink and pretty, like fairies. Come on, baby, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“My birthday’s next month,” Sara mumbled, moving away from the brush and smoothing her hair. She zipped up her bag and looked at her father. “Dad? What about Arroway?”
Arroway was her pet turtle, who she’d found on the side of the road with a crack in his shell. She’d salvaged an old terrarium and had carefully constructed a habitat for him after studying books on turtles’ preferred environments and eating habits.
“Arroway will be okay, here, sweets. We’ll come by and feed him tomorrow.”
“I’m ready, then,” Sara said and jammed her feet into her sneakers, mindless of the fact that she was wearing the running shorts and long-sleeved t-shirt that she slept in. She was ready to leave the house quickly. She hefted her book bag and her father lifted her duffle. Together they brushed past Laura and down the stairs.
“You’re not taking my daughter, Timothy,” Laura yelled, stumbling after them. “Come back here, Sara, and go to your fucking room, right now. Tim! Tim, you asshole, you’re not taking her without me.”
Laura grabbed for her husband’s arm and he shook it off, as if it was something that disgusted him.
“I’m your fucking WIFE, you dickless asshole. I’m the one you said you’d be with forever, not her. Timothy! Tim!”
Laura’s muddled shouts followed Sara and Timothy out of the house and into the quiet streets of their neighborhood. None of the neighbors bothered to see what the shouting was about– they were used to hearing it by now.
Sara stared out of the window of her father’s car as the house receded behind them, leaving her mother standing on the lawn, waving her coke bottle, shouting to the air.
***
“All you know is alone. You see a phantom stranger. Down you go, all alone. You love my phantom stranger.” Rob Zombie, “Return of the Phantom Stranger”
The dream woke her up and she jerked upright in her bed, the covers twined around her legs. Sweat ran down her neck and pooled in the hollow of her collarbone. She flipped on the bedside lamp and mopped her neck and face with the corner of her pillowcase, willing her breathing and heart to slow.
Her cell phone rang as she was calming down and adrenaline shot through her.
“Hello?”
“It’s Grissom. Sorry to wake you.”
“I was awake all ready.”
“Hearing for Adam Trent is scheduled for tomorrow. I need you to come in so we can go over your testimony again. The lawyers are going to grill you over an open flame about what happened in the hospital that night. Let’s make sure we have everything we need to get an assault charge to stick.”
Sara sighed and ran a hand through her hair. “Grissom, I’ve already told you I don’t want to file charges.”
“I know that. But Ecklie insists we file on behalf of the office. Makes a statement about the competency of the mental hospital. It’s a lot of political maneuvering, Sara, you know that.”
“Well, Ecklie can keep me out of it. I don’t want to have to deal with Adam Trent again.”
Grissom seemed to hear the strain in her voice, despite her efforts to keep the conversation as low key as possible. “Are you okay?”
“I woke up on the wrong side of the bed,” she answered shortly.
“Apparently. Look, I know this is a chore. You’re the key to this case Ecklie’s trying to build. In the interest of keeping the peace in this office, I wish you’d cooperate with him.”
When she didn’t answer he tried another tack. “Sara, you’re already on a very short lead with Ecklie, okay? I had to do some fast talking to keep you from getting fired. Show him and me that you’re willing to validate the trust I’ve placed in you.”
Oh, so it’s like that, Sara thought. Tit for fucking tat. She blew out an impatient breath. “Okay, fine. Fine. I’ll see you in about an hour.”
Indulging in her urge to throw something, she chucked the cell phone into the folds of her comforter and sat, fuming. Nothing had been the same since Ecklie had split the team up. Tempers were frayed, nerves were on edge, and it was getting to the point where she almost dreaded going to work. Grissom pressuring her into one of Ecklie’s political schemes was just the latest example of how cockeyed things at the CSI offices had become.
Swearing under her breath and stifling a yawn, Sara swung her legs out of bed and started for the shower.
***
When she arrived at CSI headquarters, Grissom shanghaied her and led her to his office.
“Ecklie’s been sniffing around. He’s wants you to testify on behalf of the office if this goes to court instead of just letting you give a sworn deposition.” Grissom drummed his fingers on the desk. “Look, I’ve got better things to do than watch Ecklie build some trumped up case against a lunatic and so do you. So I want to get you down to the county clerk’s office, give the deposition, and get all of this behind us.”
Sara stared incredulously. “Today? Now?”
“Right now.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“Does it look like I’m kidding?”
Since Grissom was wearing his most difficult to read expression, Sara decided it was better not to answer– she honestly had no idea when he was kidding anymore. He had already turned back to the stack of paperwork on the desk, apparently considering the matter closed.
“Grissom, I just don’t think–“
”Sara.” He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He looked incredibly tired. “Please.”
She snapped her mouth shut and nodded. “Okay. I’m going.”
She left him to his stacks of paper, trying hard not to notice how empty the halls felt with no Warrick around to tease her, no Nick to flirt with her, and no Catherine moving through like a manic whirl-wind. Things were awfully quiet when it was just Sara, Grissom, and Greg.
***
“Blood on her skin, dripping with sin, do it again, living dead girl.”
Rob Zombie, “Living Dead Girl”
“Peaches, does your mother hurt you when I’m not home?”
Sara stopped mid-way through her strawberry sundae. Even though it was the middle of the night, they’d stopped at a diner to eat. Timothy Sidle was sipping a coffee and eating a plate of eggs and toast. He’d insisted that Sara have something sweet to eat. “You’re skin and bones, Munchkin,” he’d said, taking her chin in his hand and looking her up and down. “I know all you girls want to stay thin but you don’t look healthy at all.”
Now here it was. The big question. Sara swallowed the mouthful of ice cream and took a sip of water to buy herself time.
Did her mother hurt her while her father was away? Yes, in a hundred different ways. Her carelessness with harsh words and slaps and the occasional wallop with the back end of a hairbrush. Her neglect of the cooking and cleaning until Sara was living on toast and fruit and whatever she could scrounge up with her baby-sitting money, which sometimes meant nothing at all. The men and women with hard eyes and cruel laughs who populated the house day and night. The lifestyle that kept Sara from having any friends because her clothes were always out of fashion, her hair cut was always awry because she trimmed it herself, and because she lived inside her books, the only things that made sense in her world.
“Sara?” Her father reached out and took her arm, gently, pushing up her sleeve to reveal the bruises on the inside of her elbows and upper arms where she’d been grabbed by rough hands. “Baby, did your mother do this?”
“No,” she said softly.
“You’d tell me if she did, right?”
“Yes.”
“So who grabbed you? Who hurt you? Who were you hiding from when I came home tonight?”
Too many questions. Who didn’t make a grab for her when she walked through the living room?
“Some guy.”
“Can you tell me about him?”
Sara shook her head.
“Peaches, listen. I know it’s hard when I’m gone and I’m sorry, I really am. But I’m trying to do better by you.” Timothy put down his coffee cup and took Sara’s hand. “Sweetie, you’re old enough to hear what I have to tell you so I want you to pay attention. Are you listening?”
Sara nodded.
“Your mom and I married way too young and way too stupid. We spent too much of your childhood coked up or stoned out. I didn’t want to keep being that person, Sara. I changed. I wanted to be someone you could respect, someone you’d be proud to call Dad.
“I’m trying to do the best I can, you know, trying to make sure that you can go to college and have an education. But to do that I can’t stay here. I make better money out of town. And I hate leaving you with her but that’s the only way this is going to work.
“If she’s hurting you, Sara, if she’s doing things to you that she shouldn’t be doing, I can make that stop. You have to tell me, though, what she’s doing to you. You have to let me know what’s going on before I can do anything to take you away from her for good. Understand?”
Sara licked the sundae spoon and thought and finally said, “Can I tell you tomorrow? It makes me not want to eat if I talk about it now.”
Timothy stared at his daughter and felt his heart shudder. “Sure, Peaches,” he said, stroking her hair. “You can talk about it tomorrow.”
***
END PART 1
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}