Chapter Two: My First

Chapter Two: My First

My room was cozy, but after living in a van for months it seemed like a huge palace. I was allowed out and around the vast farm but never was I allowed to go into town with Jack. No matter how much I asked, Jack always insisted that I stay home. I obediently stayed, helping Emma with chores and the like.

It was like I fit into their life just perfectly. Almost like I was their daughter. No, their daughter was dead. Not like their daughter then. Emma took me down to see the creek one day. She refused to let me wade in it. There were unspoken rules with her. Never ask for second helpings, never complain about the frilly dresses she made for me and things that didn’t seem quite...right, to be honest.

One day, about two weeks later, Jack came home with a man riding in the passenger seat of his truck. Emma and I prepared a stew for dinner and cleared a place in the spare bedroom for him. I overheard Emma tell Jack that he needed to stop picking up strays. I didn’t think too much of it, because she hadn’t been especially warm towards me either, at least in the beginning. Now she was like an affectionate aunt. Loving, but not motherly. Jack was more like a father.

We fed the man, whose name (for all intents and purposes) was Corey. Corey had been found in a similar situation to mine. His car had run out of gas and he was completely lost. We talked it over, Jack, Emma and myself, and we agreed to let him stay the night.

When I woke up the next morning I was told that Corey had left early that morning. The smile that passed between Emma and Jack didn’t go unnoticed by me. Jack then asked Emma and I to go enjoy the day in the garden.

The freshly turned flower bed didn’t bother me too much, then, I just thought Jack had gotten up early and plowed it for Emma. Emma’s flower beds were her pride and joy. Row after row they lined the backyard, beginning just under my bedroom window. On those sultry summer nights I would lie on my bed with the window open, allowing the sweet floral fragrances to waft in and banish the slightly putrid odor that pervaded the house. As we left the kitchen my stomach grumbled with the realization that, with all the discussion last night, I had forgotten to eat supper. I darted back into the kitchen and grabbed a freshly made roll off the table. I went out back to face a day toiling over the freshly churned earth. I didn’t know it then, but Corey was my first victim. I could have saved him and the others, had I only known.