Prologue

            Jewel sat on the edge of the bed being careful not to look Max in the eye as he stormed through the room gathering things to pack in his “home”. He had gotten the call that she had been dreading. “I’ll only be gone for a few days. I promise.” Just like last time she called you, Jewel thought to herself. The look she had on her face must have given up how she really felt because he grabbed her chin and forced her to look up at him. He gave her fake sweet smile, the kind he always gave Jewel at moments like this to get her to trust him and not ask questions. “Hey please don’t pout; you know how my mother is when she gets in one of her moods… I have to go Jewel. You understand that right?” Max’s excuse was his sick mother a couple of hours away in the town he had come from in her senior year of high school and he had been a smooth talker from the day he got here. Jewel had looked into his mother once because she wanted to know who she was. Max had refused to let Jewel meet her and Jewel had figured out the reason why. During her research Jewel found out that Max’s mother had died in a car accident just before Max had showed up in Ridgeway to live with his father. After that she knew the real reason Max had been leaving all the time… there was someone else…

            He kissed the top of her head and she nodded even though she knew it was all a lie. He zipped up the big black duffel bag and yanked it off the bad. Max yelled some type of farewell and Jewel yelled a goodbye back she was sure, but she was too consumed by her thoughts to realize if she had actually replied or not. She slid of the bed and went to the window to watch the big black caddy rumble out of the gravel drive. She was frozen in anxiety as she watched it disappear down the barren country road. As soon as she saw the car disappear around the bend she sprang into action. She flew through every action as if she had done them a thousand times even though she had only done them in her fantasies. She lifted the bed skirt up and reached under the bed to grasp the handle of the bag she had had packed and ready for months now. In one fluent motion she got up off her knees and threw the bag on top the bed and moved toward the bathroom door. She reached under the sink and felt for the box of tampons that held the cash she had been stashing since she was seventeen. Most people would have put this amount of money in the bank by now and watched as it doubled itself over time, but Jewel knew better than that. She knew that even if she had hidden the bank account Max would have found it and dwindled away the money, but not before he would have tossed her around a bit for hiding it from him in the first place. No, she knew this was the one place on earth Max would never find it. See, feminine issues scared Max more than spiders scared some one with arachnophobia. She stuffed her slew of cash in the open pocket of her bag and zipped it closed. As she walked out of the bedroom she pulled a soft pink envelope and laid it gently on the nightstand for Max to find. She rushed down the stairs and out the door. Jewel almost stopped to look at the house, but she didn’t because she knew if she did she wouldn’t go through with it. She jumped into her beat up old Chevy 4×4 and hastily pulled out of her drive. She smiled slightly as she watched her pain slowly shrink and disappear in the rearview mirror.