Page 2 of Thirteen Years
I narrowed my own eyes in confusion and glanced at my phone. Eight thirty-two a.m. What the hell?! I’d set an alarm! Grabbing the device, I clicked into the clock app. God dammit. I’d picked p.m. instead of a.m. again. Throwing the covers back I started apologizing.
“Honey, I am so sorry. Can we go through the drive through for breakfast?” I asked pulling a hoodie over my sleep shirt. Pajama pants would have to do. My daughter, bless her heart, had gotten all dressed and ready before coming to check on me. I was grateful I had planned and gotten her outfit, backpack, and lunch ready to go with her the evening before. This was not a typical morning for us. I usually didn’t sleep at all or woke up after only a few hours.
This was the fifth city we’d moved to in thirteen years and Natasha was used to the first day being smoother than this. Thanks to my paranoia about my ex-husband finding us, we regularly moved to different large cities, where I hoped we’d be hard to track and find. We stayed to ourselves,and while she always developed friendships, no one ever came to our apartments. She was allowed to go to sleepovers and live a relatively normal life. I only allowed the schools and doctors to know our addresses. I had even changed my name to my maternal grandmother’s maiden name when the divorce went through.
Wherever we landed, I always thought we were safe at first, but I’d get some sign that made me worry that Clark had found us. A note left on a door. A message left for me at work. It was terrifying and often left us fleeing suddenly with little to no explanation given to anyone we’d come into contact with.
Some people may judge me, but Nat’s father doesn't know that she is his. I’d fought him long and hard for three months to sign the divorce papers in a fiasco of court proceedings, keeping the pregnancy a secret. The divorce paperwork also changed my name back to what it had been before I married Clark Merina. He hadn’t liked that one bit. Within two weeks I’d filed paperwork to change my last name again and had gone with my Nana’s. He’d never cared enough to ask about my family history, therefore he had no idea what that name was.
I still remember the look in his eyes. He stared down at me from the stand during our divorce proceedings. He’d pleaded and begged, even worked up false tears, in his endeavor to get me to stay with him.
No one in town would believe what I’d said about him. The things he’d done to me behind our closed apartment door. It was a small community and Clark had grown up there. He was well-liked and had everyone fooled. The typical narcissist in his natural habitat.
This city was the smallest I’d risked and it was on the edge of simply being a large town. I was just so tired of running and hiding and Nat needed some normalcy. Reading, Pennsylvania just felt like home.
I shook my head. Your daughter is late, Becks. Now is not the time for journeying down memory lane.
“That’s fine, Mom,” Nat replied smiling. I turned and got teary eyed seeing how much she’d grown. She was already standing at five-foot-six at twelve years old. She had obviously gotten the genetics from me, in that department, with my five-foot-ten stature.
My raven haired daughter was resilient and strong. I wanted to raise her to strive for more than just settling. I never wanted her to feel alone in the world as I had after all of my family had passed.
“You have everything you need for your first day of seventh grade?” I asked, clearing my throat.
“Oh God,” she groaned, “are you going to cry again this year?”
“It’s a mother’s prerogative, Natasha Rae Wareman,” I replied as I shoved my feet into some random shoes, and grabbed my crossbody. I was a hot mess but didn't really care anymore. It had been a long time since I’d cared about being overly presentable. I preferred fading into the background and being forgettable. It always helped to hide me from Clark, and after that, the habit stuck.
“Alright, let’s go and maybe I’ll only take three back-to-school pictures!”
She sprinted past me to our small apartment door, screeching that I had a deal, while I shook my head at her antics. I could swing by a coffee shop drive through on my daughter’s first day, in what was hopefully our last new city.
My cleaning job didn’t start until Monday and I still had some funds saved up from selling furniture from this last move. I locked the door behind me and followed Nat at a slow jog to where she bounced on her heels, waiting by the passenger door of my beat up SUV. Slightly out of breath, I reminded myself that I needed to start exercising again.
While I wasn’t severely obese, I was considered overweight by society’s standards and had curves to spare. I’d always been considered pretty, even beautiful sometimes, but I hadn’t cared about that since I had started dating him.
Within ten minutes we had gone through the coffee shop’s drive through that we’d scoped out the day before. A morning like this, called for an extra large, brown sugar, shaken espresso.
I joked, watching out of the corner of my eye as she inhaled her egg white on a toasted bagel, “You could chew your food, Nat.” We pulled into her new school’s parking lot and I hoped that they would be understanding of my child being late on her first day.
My inability to sleep through the night allowed me to stay up unpacking and cleaning everything in the apartment so we didn’t have days of boxes to contend with. I could pat myself on the back for that small achievement at least. Everything had its place and hopefully it would stay there for longer than a year or two this time.
For once, I hadn’t gotten any alarming signs that Clark had tracked us down in the last city we’d been in, so I’d taken the leap and moved one more time just to make sure, and here we were.
Unfortunately, falling asleep at five-thirty in the morning had apparently caused me to set the alarm incorrectly. I was still kicking myself for that, but continued to be grateful for my daughter’s ability to adapt to situations. If the roles had been reversed I would’ve been an anxious mess.
After we climbed out of the car, Nat humored me by letting me snap my three requested pictures by the school sign, and we headed in. These would look great in our photo album. Pressing the intercom button ringing into the office, I glanced over, smiling reassuringly at Nat.
“Can we help you?” a voice asked.
“Hi, I’m Becks, uh Rebecca Wareman. Natasha Wareman’s mother. I registered her yesterday. We’re unfortunately running late today,” I responded.
“Yes! Come in!”
The door buzzed and I opened it so that Nat could step into the office ahead of me. As we approached the receptionist’s desk I was relieved to see a kind smile on her face.
“Rough morning?” she asked, sliding the late form over the worn desk.
“This is all my fault,” I explained, “I didn’t double check my alarm setting and it will not happen again! I am so embarrassed.”
