TOS Ch2 excerpt

It began before the summer of Elsa’s thirteenth birthday.  Her father started coming home reeking of cologne and wine around the same time that his business trips came with more frequency.  And her mother took to slamming things:  Doors, cupboards, drawers.  She’d slam the sliding door if it wasn’t so difficult to pry open.

The tension in the dining room was palpable whenever both of them were together in the evenings.  Dinners were painfully quiet.  And when either spoke, it turned into a match of thinly veiled insults masked with tights smiles.  Elsa preferred eating on the veranda overlooking the lake in the east wing of the house.  From there she could see the moonlight glitter off the water and hear nothing but nature’s love song, as frogs and crickets swelled the damp night air with their lyrical calls.

By mid-summer her mother had stopped slamming doors and spitefully maxing out shared credit card accounts.  And before July could push summer into triple digits, she had become a fixture at their local country club.  Elsa hated being dragged along.  Hated watching her mother act like a teenager, and shamelessly flirt with other men when they pretended to mistake them for sisters.  Men with slick greased hair and smiles too wide, exposing perfect rows of gleaming white teeth.

She hated it and it showed.

“Why don’t you bring your cousin along,” her mother had offhandedly suggested when she’d complained that there was no one there her age.  “I’m sure Anna would come.”

But Anna was not yet ten and still played in the mud trouncing after frogs, always running around barefoot in public as if she were strung out on candy bars.  She wore twin pigtails and pant overalls, and matched all her outfits with scuffed high-top sneakers that always seemed to be left and forgotten somewhere.

So it had not surprised Elsa when Anna showed up at their doorstep wearing dark blue denim overalls that were rolled up well over her ankles and a black and white checkered collar shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows.

“She looks like a farmer,” she’d grumbled quietly to her mother as Anna had made her way toward the house, waving her father goodbye.  But her mother had only vaguely nodded at her as she cracked open her vanity mirror and adjusted her far-too-bright lip-gloss.

Elsa had been even more annoyed when her mother left them to wander as soon as they’d arrived at the country club, and took off for a treatment as the spa.  Anna had hardly noticed her cousin’s annoyed scowl, far too preoccupied gawking at everything they passed.

“This place is like a paradise!” She’d exclaimed as she ran barefoot through the Japanese gardens.  Elsa had already resigned herself to the fact that she was  basically babysitting, following Anna all over the club to make sure she didn’t break anything.  And so far she’d knocked over a lamp, misplaced her shoes, and stomped her foot prints all over the sand gardens.

Elsa had stumbled across her cousin’s sneakers and was picking them up when she realized that she had become unusually quiet.

About time, she’d thought.

But it was odd, even for Anna, so she had been confused when she looked up to find her standing transfixed and motionless at a secluded corner of the garden hidden by scrubs, with a dark blush coloring her face, masking the freckles that started at the bridge of her nose and tapered past the swell of her cheeks.  For that brief moment, Anna looked decidedly like a girl rather than a loud tomboy.

“Anna, what—” did you see?  She had meant to ask as she neared.  But the sight of her mother, with her back pressed up against a tree, her skirt rolled up and her legs wrapped tightly around a man as their mouths mashed together wet and sloppy, stopped her.
She felt sick.  And in that instant she’d felt her world come apart.  A world that had only barely been held together at the seams with lies and false smiles, and had endured through late night shouting matches and doors slammed so hard that they resonated in her chest long after.

They hadn’t notice being watched, and Elsa realized, as she met eyes with her cousin, that they would be noticed if Anna voiced the question that was plain on her face.  Before she could say anything, Elsa took her by the hand and dragged her away.

The girls were clear out of the gardens when Anna whispered, “Do you think your mom knows that people do those kinds of things here?”

She didn’t invite her cousin again after that.  In fact, she barely spoke to her at all.