~*~

 

It was two hours past midnight when the little girl heard the screaming.  Her eyes flew open, trying to adjust to the dark, her tiny hands clutching her rag doll.  It had been only four nights ago that he had come home from a long trip and already the screaming and fighting had started again.  She clasped her hands tightly to her ears as another scream pierced the night air.  'It'll be over soon,' she thought.  'It'll all be over soon.'  Another scream, closer this time, made its way through her fingers, and she started to tremble. 

 

Her father wasn't a big man, but he certainly had a big temper.  And when that temper got out of control, he had a tendency to be violent.  Especially towards her mother.  When times were good, a year ago, she could remember the whole family snuggling on the couch together, settling down to watch a movie.  They would share a huge bowl of popcorn and laugh together at the funny parts.  They would go for picnics in the park, have water gun fights, and take long vacations on tropical islands.  But that was when times were good. 

 

Before the alcohol and the drugs had taken over her father's life. 

 

Just then, she heard a thud at the bottom of the stairs that led to her room.  Terrified, she left the warmth of her covers to sprint across the hall.  She was in her parent's room now.  The strong scent of Old Spice and alcohol mixed together, causing her to gag involuntarily.  Then, she found herself crawling into her mother's large closet.  She felt around the walls of the darkened closet, searching for the tiny hatch that led to the attic.  Her fingers skittered across the small opening, breath coming in short pants.  Behind her, there was a loud banging, followed by a howl.  A human howl.  Her father's howl.  She didn't look back as she plunged into the blackened opening, bare feet the first to come into contact with the splintered steps upwards. 

 

The hatch closed quickly behind her.  As her fingertips grazed the dusty walls, her feet carried her up the stairs, her mind whirring with fear.  He was following her.  It was something that he had never done before, almost always leaving her battered mother to fend for herself while he went back out for another drink or line of coke.  That's how it always had been, and that's how it should have stayed...if it was to occur at all. 

 

Finding the top landing with her toes, she launched forward into the tiny room.  Her eyes were still not completely used to the pitch black night, so she pressed herself against the wall for protection.  She caught her breath, listening for his alcohol leadened clomping on the stairs.  For the moment, she could hear nothing.  No crickets, no locusts, no mice, no abusive father.  She let out that breath silently.  Maybe he wasn't following her.  Maybe she had just imagined it. 

 

That's when she heard his curses.  He had found the attic passageway, but couldn't seem to fit into it.  His anger was building.  Soon, she knew, he would retreat back downstairs to find some way to knock a hole in the wall so he could fit inside.  He had done it to her mother many times after she had hidden from him.  The house was constantly under repair...but no outsiders ever saw it.  Her mother had always hidden upstairs, thinking that going up the stairs in his drugged state would slow him down.  Unfortunately, he had started to become used to climbing stairs quickly while under the influence.  In fact, he was pretty good at it. 

 

"Come out of there goddammit!!" the voice bellowed up to her.  She was shaking once more, worried that he already had found a way into the attic...to her.  Without waiting any longer, she began moving across the walls, searching for the tiny window.  That's when she could hear his footsteps.  They were heavy and loud, and they were definitely headed upwards.  To her.  Her adrenaline pulsed through her, fingers raking at the small locked attic window.  She was almost too short to open it.  After three tries, and closer, more dangerous footfalls on the stairs, she began to whimper. 

 

"I can hear you up here!" he gasped.  She could smell him now...the alcohol overpowered her nostrils, filling the miniscule room of his addiction.  A final attempt at the window, her little painted nail broke in half.  She let out a loud wail.  'One more time, one more time,' she kept thinking.  'Forget about the nail and get out of here.'  She lunged at the window one more time, this time busting the window with her tiny bare hand.  She let out another cry, but she wasn't noticing the pain anymore.  He was in the room, wobbling on his drunken feet, and coming for her.

 

"Come here you little..." he started.  Then, he began coughing.  As he retched the contents of his stomach up onto the floor, the girl wiggled her way out of the broken window, wincing at the particles of glass that stuck into her body.  Once out on the roof, she paused to look back.  The only thing she could see was the haunted appearance that the broken window gave off.  Inside, she could hear him wheezing and coughing still.  Then, she turned to look down. 

The ground was about thirty feet down, dark and lonely.  There were woods to the right side of the house, a town about four miles in the other direction.  She knew that he would believe that she had gone into town when he finally got out of the house, so she decided that the woods were the best hiding place for her.  She crawled across the steep roof to a drain pipe and shimmied down it. 

 

As soon as her feet touched the soft, cold grass, she began to shiver.  The night air pierced her soft skin through the thin nightgown she wore, and the chilled wind teased her hair off her face.  She looked through the nearby window, finding that all the downstairs lights had been cut off.  Timidly, she made her way to the glass and pressed her face to it.  Her mother was lying face down on the carpet, arms and legs sprawled every which way, head cocked unnaturally to the side.  The tears had started to run down the girl's cheeks, but she could hear her father's bellowing once again.  Suddenly, she could make out his figure, standing over her mother's, scouring the house for her.  Letting out a small cry, she took one last look at her mother before running off into the forest.

 

~*~

 

They had found her three days later, curled up and shaking inside a hollow log about six miles from the house.  She was dirty and bleeding, smelling mostly of excretement and sweat.  Her small feet were rubbed raw from running from him, her right hand swollen and bearing two large hangs of flesh from breaking the window, and her torso sliced from ribs to hip after her climb out of the attic.  She hadn't eaten at all in those three days and the only way she got water was from the morning dew.  When they came to pull her out of the log, she had let out a bloodcurdling scream.  A loud hiss followed.  There had been an old tomcat lying next to her, emitting a growl and hiss as his new friend was plucked from the log.  His name was to become Hero, but only after the child realized that he had saved her life.

 

It would be years before she learned the ugly truth that her mother was dead, her father having killed her.  She was plopped into foster care not long after the investigation was over.  It was an open and shut case, they said.  An addict father beat the weak mother, chased the frightened child into the woods, and then, after giving up his search for her, headed back to the house to drink himself to passing out.  When the cops had arrived a day and a half after the incident, they found the mother still sprawled on the carpet in her own blood.

 

But the father was draped in the upstairs bathroom, clutching a bloody rag doll, a half-empty bottle of whiskey, and a long butcher knife.  The blood on both the doll and the knife matched the mother's and with the only suspect unconscious, they hauled him off.  When he had woken up in the hospital later that day, he confessed to everything...including chasing his daughter into the woods.  That's when they had found her. 

 

It was an open and shut case.  Or so they said.

 

~*~

 

"I have a living grandfather?"

 

"Yes, you do.  And he wants to come take you to live with him!"

 

Isabella Black's spoon of cereal fell from her hand and landed in the milk-filled bowl.  "What?"

 

"I know this is sudden and out of the blue, but you should be happy!  This means that you will finally be reunited with your family!" her foster mother, Janet, said.  Her smile stretched from one ear to the other as she walked quickly around the table, filling the juice glasses of her six children.  "The agency called yesterday morning with the news, but I wanted to wait until after your softball tournament to tell you.  I didn't want you to worry about it.  Concentrate on the game, you know?" she rattled on.

 

Isabella couldn't believe what she was hearing.  She was being adopted?  By her grandfather?  She tried to process it all in her mind a minute before speaking.  "So, you're saying that I have a grandfather who called the agency looking for me and he's adopted me?  And all of this happened now?  Where has he been for the last ten years of my life?" she demanded.  The tears were about to fall, she could sense it. 

 

Janet stopped mid-pour and turned to face her oldest daughter.  Those were questions that she just didn't have answers for.  She had cared for many children over the last 12 years, and all had had questions, but none of them had asked unanswerable ones like that before.  Of course, most of the kids she was fostering weren't in her care for more than a year, let alone ten.  Isabella had been there the longest.  Ten years next Friday.  She glanced around the table at the smaller children, most of whom were quickly ingesting the corn flakes and juice that was in front of them.  The two girls at the head of the table, however, noticed the oncoming fight, and left the room, backpacks in hand. 

 

"I think it's time to go brush your teeth, boys," she said, watching as the three giggling boys left the table.  They made machine gun noises as they bounded the stairs to their bathroom.  "Now," she started.  She crossed over to her daughter's place at the table, putting down her orange juice and sitting down in a chair.  She placed a gentle hand on Isabella's leg.  "Is that any way to talk about your family?  About someone who wants to take you in?  Your own flesh in blood no less?"

 

The tears were held at bay as the anger started to build up.  "I'm sorry, mom.  I just don't know how I can deal with this.  I mean, come on.  He's obviously been around for a while.  Why hasn't he come to get me before now?  I'm almost sixteen years old!  I'm practically an adult!  The agency must have checked for relatives before sending me to live here."

 

Janet nodded.  "The agency did check for relatives in your family, Isabella.  But they forgot about your father's other family."

 

"My father's other family?  What are you talking about?"

 

"I didn't think I'd see the day when I would have to tell you about your past.  I promised myself that when the day came, if it did, that I would only answer your questions directly and simply.  There are certain things that you just shouldn't know, or remember, Isabella.  Your past was a painful one.  I don't want to subject my children to that kind of pain again."

 

Isabella looked down at her right hand.  The scars were still visible, though small enough not to draw too much attention to it.  She had had those scars for as long as she could remember, but she never knew why they were there.

 

There were thin scars on her abdomen as well.  She had never even thought of asking where they came from, until now.

 

"Okay.  I respect that.  But I need to know where I'm going to live.  Especially now that you tell me that my father had another family."

 

Janet took a deep breath.  "Well...your father, John, was married when he began seeing your mother, Marlena.  He had been married for about two years before you were born.  You were a surprise for the both of them.  Marlena was struggling at first, trying to raise an infant daughter on the streets.  She had apparently been kicked out of her parent's home when they discovered that she was pregnant with a married man's baby.  When John saw that his daughter was having a rough life, he offered to take you to live with his married family, saying you had been adopted by him.  But Marlena would have none of it.  So, he decided that he would have to do something about his marriage so that he could be with you and your mother."

 

"So, he divorced his other wife?"

 

"Yes.  He left his wife and took their son, Brady, with him.  At first, his wife was sad.  She begged at your door to give her her son back.  But John told her no.  In fact, he had a restraining order put on her, to keep Brady from seeing her.  Needless to say, it worked on the part of Brady's weaning off his mother.  But, soon after, John's ex-wife committed suicide.  He was heartbroken.  You were about a year old, and Brady was two.  That's when your father started drinking.  This is where your grandfather comes into play.  Or rather, your grandfather through marriage.  He saw John wasting away at the bars and decided that his daughter's baby shouldn't be subjected to a broken home.  So, he ordered that Brady be adopted by him.  The courts ruled in his favor, taking your half-brother away when you were only one."

 

"What happened after that?  Why did I get taken away?"

 

"John went further into his depression, eventually moving from beer to cocaine by the time you were three.  He would come home at night high as a kite.  He silently blamed your mother for taking his son away from him.  Soon, he began acting on this thought.  He started to abuse her.  Many times a week, she would be found unconscious in the house, or bruised all over her body.  She tried to leave one night, bags packed in the car, house empty of his presence.  She was about to come wake you, because it was the middle of the night, but instead, she was confronted by him at the doorway.  Apparently, he was intoxicated at the time and killed your mother.  You, however, escaped through the attic and ran into the woods.  That's where you got Hero."

 

As she glanced at the fat sleeping cat, Isabella's mind flickered.  She saw a brief glimpse of a skinny yellow tomcat curled up against her shivering body.  She was inside a log, it looked like, and she was hurt.  But, before she could explore it any further, the memory was lost. 

 

"Oh," was all she could muster.

 

"Your grandfather is sorry that he didn't take you with him, but your father had relocated you and your mother to a country house outside of town before he could have you adopted as well.  He has been searching for you ever since that horrible day they found you.  The courts, however, found that he was unsuitable for adopting a child that wasn't a direct relative because he was living alone as a bachelor shortly after the incident.  They ruled you a ward of the state, and the agency picked you up.  That's how you came to live with us."

 

Isabella placed her face in her hands.  The tears wouldn't come now.  Silently, she wished that they would pour down her cheeks like rivers, calming the burning feeling of embarrassment she was feeling there now.  Her family was horrible.  She had been a victim of both physical and substance abuse.  That was why she was sent to the foster home.  She stood, hands dropping to her sides, and walked across the room to the fat yellow sleeping cat.  She reached out and stroked the soft fur, with her back to her mother.

 

"So when will he be here?" she whispered.

 

"Tomorrow."

 

~*~

(more to come soon...and Isabella will be taken back to her past...back to Salem, Illinois!)