Ever Bound by Odessa Gillespie Black

over a shoulder, revealing a thin night dress. In large curls, her hair flowed down her back.
    Heat singed every nerve ending in my body. “I don’t care what he’s doing. I only care about you and that you still want to be with me.”
    In the shadows of the small oil lantern, a look transformed her face into something womanly. Not like the girl I’d known for years.
    We really needed a chaperone and soon.
    A door slammed elsewhere in the house.
    I jumped and my heart pounded even worse now.
    A loud, drunken male voice came closer. “I’m here. What do you want from me now? I give you everything you ever wanted as it is, and now you ask for more. I will be free of you one day. I just want you to know I look forward to that.”
    “It’s like he’s standing right beside us.” I cuddled Annabeth closer.
    “Grace and I have adjoining rooms. I hear everything that goes on inside there. I’m sorry you have to witness this, but I can’t send you out now. There’s no telling when…” Annabeth’s voice trailed as shame darkened her eyes.
    “Daddy, I don’t ask much from you. Just that you keep our little secrets and that you do my bidding. There’s never much money involved so I don’t know why you complain. Now are you going to undress or am I going to have to do it for you?”
    Silently, Annabeth stared at me.
    I was frozen in hell.
    After the bed groaned and squeaked, I went to the wash bowl and looked in the mirror hanging above it. I angled my head down and tried not to gag.
    “I lock my door when he’s like this,” she said softly, absently. “Could you stomach being part of such a family?”
    Shoving my way past dresses and frilly girl clothes, I stumbled out of the closet, out her door, and into the hallway. I needed out of the house before I vomited all over their marble floors.
    Annabeth followed me out. Tears choked her voice. “Wait.”
    “No. I have to get out of here. Now.” I stopped and turned back to her. “Are you coming?”
    Her pale, tear-streaked face brightened as she stretched out her hand.
    I took it.
    Nothing would change my feelings for her, but I wouldn’t sicken myself further by staying there to witness more of Grace’s twisted atrocities.
    Down the steps, onto the first floor hallway, past her unsuspecting mother’s room, down the stairs, past the living room, dining room, kitchen, library, and out the back door. We ran.
    I stopped in the barn. I thought that’s where we’d stay, but after I got the lantern lit, Annabeth pulled me out the door.
    “I want as far away from that house as possible. Let’s go to the pond.”
    I couldn’t say no. Tonight wasn’t about me.
    At the embankment, a half-moon floated on the murky water.
    In the exact spot I never wanted to see again, she collapsed in my arms.
    I sat the lantern beside us. Smoothing her hair, I lowered us both to the ground and let her cry for a while. After her whimpers passed and she seemed to stare at nothing in the distance, I wrapped her curls around my forefinger.
    I didn’t care about the house or its sordid happenings. I didn’t care that her father was a monster or that he’d turned Grace into one. There was only Annabeth, now.
    She stayed in my arms but didn’t look up at me. It was another few minutes before she spoke. “She has always gotten what she wanted. Now you see how.”
    She?
    “Shouldn’t the blame fall on your father? I mean, he is the patriarch of the family.”
    “You don’t understand what you heard.” Annabeth leaned back from me. “Grace did this. She started this when she was thirteen. One night, Daddy came home from a social down the lane, and he’d been drinking. She called him to her room. When I looked through the door, she was on top of him, and it was—” Tears welled in her eyes again. “I was horrified. When she was finished, I listened to what she said. It was the most cold-blooded form of blackmail I’ve ever heard. ‘Give me what I want, or I tell Mama,’