Prologue
She looked at the little girl sitting on the front stoop with her crooked braids and her happy smile, and Elizabeth frowned. This wasn’t the life she’d wanted for her daughter. Paige was much too good to grow up in a place like this. She always had been. She was a sweet girl who deserved to have an incredible life. Elizabeth wanted more for her than just being another trailer park kid, but they had to be careful. They had to be safe. Most of all, they couldn’t draw any attention to themselves.
“What do you want for dinner, pumpkin?” Elizabeth asked, stroking Paige’s hair. Her braids were frizzy and a little bit wild. Elizabeth had never been particularly good at styling hair, but she did her best. She wanted her daughter to look good at school. She might get made fun of for being poor, but she wasn’t going to be teased for having ratty hair or dirty clothes. Elizabeth would make sure of that. If she had to go without things that she wanted or needed to make sure that Paige had a good shot at living a great life, then that was fine with Elizabeth.
“Hot dogs!” Paige said excitedly.
Then, a question.
“Hot dogs?”
There were still three in the pack in the fridge. They were out of buns, but there was a half-loaf of white bread Elizabeth had gotten a few days ago from a church food pantry. They could use the bread to make buns, and Paige was kind enough not to notice the difference. If she did, she never said an
ything to her mom.
“Of course,” she said. “Hot dogs. Then we’ll do your homework, okay?”
“I did it on the bus,” Paige said. She pointed to her backpack and smiled. She was always trying to get her schoolwork done early so she would have extra time to play with the kids in the trailer park. It was a smaller park with only six trailers total, and every single one of the lots had kids who lived there. It was a paradise for Paige, and Elizabeth wanted to let her have as much fun as she could.
She was too young to be worried about other things, like paying bills or not having enough money.
“Good girl,” Elizabeth said. She took her daughter’s hand and led her inside so they could start boiling the hot dogs. Paige sat at the counter and chatted happily while Elizabeth made the food. She tried to listen to what her daughter was saying, but the truth was that she was worried. She’d gotten fired from the gas station. Kelsie said she’d been stealing, which was a lie. The manager hadn’t cared. He’d known Kelsie longer than he’d known Elizabeth, and in the manager’s mind, that gave her an edge. He’d fired Elizabeth without a chance to speak her piece or to explain herself, and now Elizabeth had to make a choice.
How the hell was she going to pay her rent? She had two weeks until it was due. She had two weeks to find a way to keep a roof over their heads. She would do whatever it took to keep Paige safe, happy, and warm. Her daughter was the light of her life, and it was during moments like this Elizabeth wished Paige’s father was someone else: someone who didn’t live the life that he did.
Having an illegitimate child, no matter how sweet, wouldn’t bode well for the guy, and Elizabeth knew that her only shot at keeping Paige safe was keeping her away, by keeping her hidden.
But maybe that had been a mistake. They’d been hiding for years, and he hadn’t found them. He hadn’t come after them. She’d followed his life in the news, and she’d known that he was doing quite well for himself. Elizabeth and Paige, on the other hand, were not doing so well.
Maybe it was time for Elizabeth to make a choice, albeit a hard one. She knew that if she came forward and accused him of being Paige’s dad, the story would be buried before it ever saw the light of day. No one would believe it. Nobody would care. If she went to him directly, though, he would kill her. That wasn’t even a question. He’d made that perfectly clear when she’d told him she was pregnant.
She had to do something else, though. She had to do something slimy, something that made her skin crawl. She had to make a threat. If she could reveal that Paige not only was alive, but was old enough to start asking questions, she could force the father to make a choice. He could send them money. It didn’t have to be a lot: only enough to keep them alive. It would be insurance, she thought, to make sure that she didn’t reveal his secret. More importantly, it would ensure that Paige was taken care of no matter what was happening with Elizabeth.
Elizabeth hatched her plan for blackmail, and although she knew it was a disgusting sort of thing to do, she didn’t know what other options she had. She had hoped, for awhile, that Paige’s dad would make the right choice, but when she’d told him about the baby, he had tried to kill her, so she’d run away, and she’d never looked back.
Elizabeth had spent years protecting her daughter. She pretended that Paige’s father was just some loser, some guy who had run off, and she hoped that one day she could tell her daughter the truth.
About everything.
Chapter 1
Paige
Twenty Years Later