Growing up Hadley by Dana Harp

Author:Dana Harp [Harp, Dana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: 2024-06-24T00:00:00+00:00

Part Two: The Determined Years

1989 - 1992

Seven Years Later

Hadley never moved far, far away like she once had hoped. In fact, she didn’t move away at all until shortly after her twentieth birthday. She wanted to escape countless times but was afraid her father wouldn’t survive without her, and as mad as she was, she couldn’t stomach losing another loved one. No matter how loose the term. Her father had grown increasingly dependent on her cooking and cleaning and relied on her to obey whatever he could think up and demand. She felt responsible for him in a way a child never should. She felt bad for him, but mainly she felt angry. So angry.

Even worse, he knew how to press her buttons and never missed the opportunity to remind her to grow up and stop playing pony. She had to pull her weight, then pull some more. To hell with the farm. He made sure of that. She had built up so much resentment toward her father, but afraid of making things worse, she kept it buried deep, gnawing like an ulcer in her gut.

Hadley, laying with her legs sprawled across her perfectly made bed, thought back to that day seven years ago when she showed up on Dorothy's front steps in tears. She wouldn’t be able to balance everything the way she promised she could. She remembered noticing how much slower Dorothy moved and how much her face had aged, her skin a thin crepe paper. It all had made Hadley feel that much worse to be abandoning someone who actually needed her.

She would never forget how kind and understanding Dorothy was in that moment; explaining to her that she knew the day would come and how much she appreciated all the hard work she had done. Dorothy made her promise to stop by and visit when she could, no matter how rare. She would always be welcome. Hadley’s promise back was as thinly veiled a lie as she believed Dorothy’s open invitation was. There was no way, in Hadley’s mind, that she would be welcomed back.

Still, in the months that followed, Hadley woke up on Saturdays and walked to the farm, planting her feet on the outside of the fence to watch the horses. Often she would see Dorothy or Kimberly teaching a small group of seven or eight-year-olds the basics of how to interact with horses and watch them guide the lucky children around in slow circles. Whenever her eyes found Snow White, her heart would race with a desire to duck between the fence posts and run toward her. She’d visualize Dorothy pulling her into a tight hug while Snow White pranced in place and the children clapped with excitement over the unexpected reunion.

Or. Hadley’s mind always wandered to the ‘or’. Or Dorothy and the children would be annoyed by the interruption, Snow White would give her the cold shoulder, and her father would wake up and angrily notice she was not at home. The ‘or’ always made her back away from the fence and sulk home.

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