Dark Secrets(42)
Vin nodded a little tightly at that, the area around his eyes tightening. "We need to get your mother to the hospital," he said, echoing a thought that was on her own mind.
"Don't you touch her," she snapped when Vin moved toward her.
"Honey, I don't think she's going to get up on her own," he reasoned and Faith's objections fell away when her mother didn't scream or lash out, when she just let herself be picked up and carried outside.
"Come on, kid," Salvatore said to her, holding the front door open, waiting for her to follow.
But she wasn't a kid anymore.
Those men stole the remainder of her childhood, her innocence from her.
She became a whole other animal entirely that night. She became a woman with a mission. There was nothing fiercer in the world.
They got to the hospital a short car ride later, Faith in the back with her mother, tears a burning thing at the backs of her eyes, tears she refused to let herself shed. They took her in and Vin and Salvatore took seats in the waiting area with her. Salvatore was distant. Vin seemed silently angry. As for Faith, yeah, she was a ticking time bomb.
She was also paying attention.
Because she overheard a nurse say the words: child services.
She wasn't going into the system.
She wasn't going to let anyone steer her from her plan.
"Faith," Vin interrupted her as she was getting ready to bolt. "Can you tell me what the men who were in your house were after?"
It was right that moment, after a lifetime of guilty smiling anytime she tried to fib, she became a master liar.
"They didn't. They were just yelling. They weren't looking for anything."
He nodded, accepting that, then looking down at his phone.
"I have to go to the bathroom," she announced, getting up and walking away. Two nurses and a doctor tried to stop her, tried to talk her into getting looked over. She simply ignored them as she turned a bend and took the closest exit.
Because something had occurred to her as she sat there.
One day, completely out of the blue and uncharacteristic of him, her father had come home when she was twelve with a big stuffed bear in a bright pink color and given it to her. She had smiled and shook her head, insisting she was a little old for teddy bears.
To which he said the oddest thing.
He said, "Promise me that no matter where you go, you keep this bear in your possession," he demanded with enough vehemence that she had automatically agreed.
She knew where the list was.
Her father had left it in her care all along.
Without a car, but painfully aware that her time between being discovered missing and being discovered in general was small, she ran all the way back to her house, tearing through her bedroom closet to find the thing, squishing it until she felt that the left leg was much stiffer than it should have been. She grabbed a scissor and cut it open to reveal a black USB drive.
Body humming, she tucked it into her back pocket and went back into her closet for her old vacation duffle bag, stuffing it with clothes and the stash of money her parents kept in a floorboard in their bedroom, grabbing some food out of the kitchen, and dropping down beside her father's body, knowing that she would never get to see his funeral if he had one.
And she touched his cold hand and made a promise to him.
"I'll make them pay for this," she vowed, getting up and leaving.
She never would go back. Part of that was because her father went 'missing' because his body had obviously been removed. The house was paid off and the next of kin ended up being her father's brother who had sold it and put the money away for her mother's medical bills. It would have been a kind gesture, but she knew her uncle enough to know it wasn't out of the goodness of his heart, but his way of washing his hands of the whole situation.
She, well, she found an add on a bulletin board for some college kid looking for a roommate. She was sixteen, but she had a body that passed for eighteen and she doubted anyone would check to see if she was going to class each day. Besides, she was. She was just going to private classes at the gym. She came home bruised so often that her roommate staged a makeshift intervention where she held her hand and told her that domestic abuse was never her fault and that if she needed any help, she would be there for her.
It would have been almost amusing if Faith didn't realize that the world needed more women like that- women willing to never judge, women willing to lend a hand to other women who felt trapped.
She worked odd jobs.
She trained.
She visited her mother under a fake name.
And she made plans.