The Promised World: A Novel by Lisa Tucker

Author:Lisa Tucker [Tucker, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 1416575391
Amazon: B005CDVMUC
Publisher: Washington Square Press
Published: 2010-08-03T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Ashley left the TV on night and day, but it didn’t help. With her kids gone, the silence of the house seemed louder than even the most blaring commercial. And the whole place felt so weirdly empty with all their toys and clothes and things put away in dressers and closets. According to the social worker, keeping the house clean was an important part of showing that Ashley was a decent mother. Never mind that a house with kids in it would never be this clean. A house with kids could never stay the same for an hour, much less for day after silent, empty day.

At first, she had her anger at CPS to distract her. That and Kyle, who’d somehow managed to make bail and was staying with some guy he’d met at the truck mechanic’s shop—and calling Ashley constantly to beg her to see him. He knew if she agreed she would jeopardize her case, but he kept saying, “I’m innocent,” as though that was the only thing that mattered. Usually she just repeated that she couldn’t risk it, but after a few more talks like this, she got annoyed and asked him what would happen to her kids if the court didn’t figure that out. “They will, baby,” he said. “They have to or they’re a bunch of lying bastards.”

“You sound like you don’t even know there are tons of lying bastards in this world. What, were you born yesterday?”

“I know all about liars.” His voice was low and mean and she knew he meant Pearl. “I know more than I ever wanted to know about liars.”

She couldn’t really blame him for being angry if he was innocent, which she honestly believed he was—and not because he kept saying so. It was Pearl’s statement to the police that was the problem. It sounded way too much like one of Billy’s stories about Lila.

What made it particularly strange was that as far as Ashley could remember, Billy had only told this story once, during the last month before he’d moved out, when he’d already started telling those whoppers about their kids’ past. For all Ashley knew, this Lila “memory” was no more real than Billy’s bullshit about William solving the Rubik’s Cube when he was five. Then too, she didn’t think Pearl had even been in the room as Billy described the night fifteen-year-old Lila had been forced to lie facedown on her bed without her shirt on while her stepfather struck her back and shoulders repeatedly with his belt. Lila’s only crime, Billy insisted, was questioning that bastard, and for that his twin had been beaten so badly she couldn’t lean against a chair or lie on her back for weeks. The rest of the story involved Billy’s mother, who didn’t know anything about it, Billy said, and something about him and Lila running away shortly after it happened.

There was nothing about trying to have his stepfather punished or put in jail, but everything else in

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