Speak No Evil_ A Novel - Allison Brennan [132]
I hate you I hate you I hate you!
She pounded her fists on the steering wheel until her hands ached. The rage circulating in her blood made her ears hot, her sight dim. She wanted to break something, but the words of her shrink battled against the anger.
Take a deep breath. Again. Let it out slowly. Focus on your calm place. Picture a blank canvas. Now paint your oasis, the place you feel safe. Paint that in the canvas of your mind. Put yourself there, in the picture.
Emily released the car’s clutch and slowly drove into the garage. Mentally, she was in the ocean, the middle of the sea, with nothing around her. The sea was calm, peaceful, the water a brilliant blue, the sky orange, red, violet in the setting sun.
Her oasis.
As Emily parked her car next to Victor’s Jaguar, her safe place disappeared. She held her keys in her hand and considered running them along the side of his precious sports car. But they’d know she had done it and find a way to punish her. Make her spend another weekend in juvie. She could hear her mother’s cold, disapproving tone. “It’s for your own good, Emily. Your antics have embarrassed the family yet again.”
When you get angry, you let your enemies have control. Take a deep breath. Picture those who torment you getting what’s coming to them. Justice for you and everyone like you. Write about it. Talk about it. Get it out of your system. When you keep your feelings inside, anger wins. Your enemy wins.
Don’t let him win.
Emily took a deep breath, then another. Through the windows on the far side of the garage, the quality of light seemed to have changed. How long had she been sitting in her car? She looked at the time on the dashboard. Five-thirty? A full hour? That couldn’t be right.
She picked up her cell phone to check the time. Five-thirty.
This wasn’t the first time she’d worked on controlling the rage only to discover that she’d blanked out on the passage of time.
She grabbed her backpack and reluctantly left the safe haven of her Bug. It was Wednesday, which meant her mother would be home late. Wednesday, Wednesday . . . right, planning for her annual charity auction. This year it was puppies and kitties. Last year it was children. Every year a new cause, a cause that came first. A cause more important than her daughter.
The one year Emily thought her mother had actually cared was the year she raised money for runaway children. Spent time with her, but it was all for show. She had been the poster child. The tears and forgiveness were all an act. It was all for the cameras and society page and to help Judge Victor Montgomery win reelection.
Crystal Montgomery didn’t care about her daughter, and Emily had almost given up caring about that sad fact. But she couldn’t. She even sometimes wondered if she’d ever really had a mom. Maybe the memories of them walking on the beach, playing with Barbie’s, making cookies were all a dream. Those good times seemed so far in the past that Emily wasn’t sure if she’d made up some of the details to get herself through the nights when her mother was gone. To get through the days when Victor wasn’t.
Thirteen months and she would legally be able to walk out the door and live on her own. Her trust fund would be hers. She would no longer be dependent on her mother and Victor.
Thirteen months. She prayed she survived that long. It wasn’t that she was worried about Victor killing her. She feared her own hand.
She closed the large, overhead garage door with the remote and walked to the side door that led to a covered walk. Their house was huge, far bigger than the three of them needed, but Crystal and Victor entertained, and that meant they needed a big house with huge rooms to fill with people as phony as they.
It struck her as sad that when her dad had been alive the house hadn’t seemed as big and scary, even though she’d been smaller. And there’d only been the three of them