The Me I Used to Be Read online

  Patrick Stewart Look-Alike nodded for her to go ahead.

  Soccer-Mom Blonde tore her eyes from Chris’s ass long enough to point her finger at Evangeline and issue a scolding like she was talking to her five-year-old. “You do the right thing and stay out of trouble.”

  Chris’s gaze bounced from Soccer Mom to her.

  She kept her face perfectly blank, though Soccer-Mom Blonde deserved a good smart-aleck retort for talking out her ass. She didn’t know the first thing about Evangeline or her life. What she’d done.

  Or hadn’t done.

  Chris shook his head and walked over to the guard by the door he’d come through earlier. He turned back and stared at her. “You coming or what?”

  She stood, chains clinking, and shuffled over to him.

  “Why are you limping?”

  She didn’t answer. “Are we going, or not?”

  Chris nodded for the guard to open the door. She walked between the guard and Chris down a hallway to a processing area. She stood on the inmate line while the guard unlocked the cuffs at her wrists and ankles. She rubbed her wrists, then held her hands clasped in front of her as a guard behind the glass-protected counter passed a large bag through the metal drawer.

  Chris took the bag and waved her over to another room. “Get changed.”

  She followed a female guard and took a seat on a wood bench and opened the bag that contained the clothes she’d worn the day she’d been processed into the prison.

  She remembered every humiliating detail of the intrusive strip search.

  Shaking off that nightmare, she kicked off her shoes, peeled off her orange jumpsuit, pulled off her socks, and put on her old jeans, musty-smelling navy-blue T-shirt, pink socks, and worn brown leather boots. She found a hair band in her jeans pocket and twisted her hair up into a messy topknot. That was the best she could do.

  The only things left in the bag were her dead cell phone, a pack of four-year-old spearmint gum, and cherry lip balm. She’d asked Chris to hand her purse off to her father the night of her arrest, when her father had come to the police station hoping to take her home only to discover it wasn’t that easy. She stuffed the useless phone in her pocket, tossed the gum in the trash, and used the lip balm on her dry lips.

  The guard led her out of the small room to where Chris waited with a new brown paper sack. He held it up. “I asked one of the guards to clear out your cell.” He opened the bag and showed her the contents. “Is this all you have?”

  “I left the diamonds and cocktail dresses in my other cell.” She rolled her eyes, snatched the bag of books and letters and pictures sent to her by her best friend, Jill, and waited to see what happened next.

  She didn’t do anything in this place without someone telling her what to do first.

  Chris held his hand out to indicate she should walk ahead, down the long hall that led to a door that read NO INMATES PAST THIS POINT.

  Her gut twisted. What if they didn’t let her out? What if Chris busted up laughing behind her and the guard by the door dragged her back to her cell and slammed the door on her once again?

  “Evangeline? Are you okay?” Chris’s soft, deep voice whispered into her ear so close she could smell the coffee on his breath as it feathered across her neck.

  “If this isn’t real, I’m going to kill you,” she whispered back, her whole body vibrating.

  Probably not a good idea to threaten a cop. But she meant it.

  His hand settled on her shoulder. “I’m getting you out of here.”

  The buzzer went off. She jumped under his hand. But the door in front of her opened.

  She walked out of Chris’s light grasp and went through the door.

  They processed her out of the prison, and before she really accepted what was happening, she stepped outside and the soft breeze whispered over her cheeks and feathered through her hair.

  She stopped, closed her eyes, and just breathed in freedom.

  When she opened her eyes, Chris was ten paces ahead and called over his shoulder, “Come on, Evangeline. Let’s go home.”

  She didn’t know where that was anymore.

  Chapter Two

  Evangeline stared through the sheriff’s department’s SUV window up at the two-story house she had grown up in. The sun dipped below the hills and cast the house and property in varying degrees of gray shadows. Nothing had changed and everything had changed.

  The four years had weathered the white paint along with her memories and battered heart.

  So many happy memories. The slap of the screen door echoed through her mind as she remembered her brothers chasing her out of the house and down the five steps to the driveway while she laughed and raced to the fields to escape their torment. Tickle fights, being tossed over her brothers’ shoulders, pigtails dangling, the boys carrying her like a sack of potatoes and threatening to dump her in the water trough or a pile of horse dung.

  A tear slipped over her lashes and down her cheek as she remembered the way her father used to carry her up the steps and to her bed, where he would tuck her in, after they’d been out late at one of her brothers’ baseball games. He would hold her close, then kiss her on the forehead and whisper, “Love you, pumpkin.”

  Nostalgia—a thousand memories of this place, her family, a childhood filled with happiness—bombarded her mind, in stark contrast to today’s reality.

  Her father died yesterday, prompting her immediate release from prison.

  The cop who had arrested her had now taken her to the house she’d been raised in, to a mother she hadn’t seen or spoken to in four long years.

  When you’re a kid, you think your mother knows everything—it once seemed that she did—but her mother didn’t know what really happened when Evangeline got arrested.

  Evangeline had swallowed that truth.

  Her father’s death made everything more complicated and sad.

  As much as she wanted to be here, she wanted to run away, because the home she remembered didn’t exist anymore. It disappeared the second Chris slapped the cuffs on her.

  The illusion of the life she thought she’d had before evaporated, revealing all the flaws in the place she lived in and the people she thought she knew.

  For the first time, she had seen things the way they really were. The slap of reality hit hard and made her finally grow up and let go of childish things.

  Being an adult sucked. She wanted to go back to being a kid, merrily living life, carefree and naïve.

  But you can’t go back.

  And so she had to find a way to move forward.

  Elation for being out of prison warred with the grief of losing her father, which tangled with the anger and injustice she’d lived with after her arrest. How could he die now, when she’d been so close to coming home?

  It left so much unsaid and unresolved.

  She’d held her tongue with Chris on the long drive, except to say thank you for the delicious cheeseburger, chocolate shake, fries, and onion rings he’d generously gotten her at a drive-through burger place. After years of prison food, the meal tasted like heaven and punctuated the end of her imprisonment, starting off her freedom on a very tasty and nostalgic note. They’d eaten in silence because she didn’t have anything else to say to the man who reminded her of all the things she wanted to forget.

  She’d let the miles of rolling hills that gave way to fields lined with grapevines in the beautiful Napa Valley pass in silence. But now, before she confronted her mother, she needed to know what happened.

  “How did my dad die?” Her throat ached with the tears she choked back. If she let them loose now, they’d never stop, because she had a lot of things to cry about, not just her father’s passing.

  Chris didn’t look at her, just answered the question. “Heart attack at home just after dinner with the family. Apparently there’d been a heated discussion, he got agitated and angry, and it just hit him. He died at the hospital shortly after he arrived.”

  Something in the
way he spoke of the argument made her suspicious. Her family had always been close. Arguments were few and far between.

  Which led her to one conclusion. “They fought about me.” A ball of guilt settled in her gut.

  Chris turned and stared at her, his eyes filled with something she couldn’t read. Reluctance? He’d never held back. “The funeral is tomorrow. Your father’s lawyer contacted me because he’d spoken to your father the other day about your parole hearing.”

  “How did he know about it?”

  “Your dad had his lawyer keep tabs on you. I met with the lawyer this morning, then went to get you out. Because of the funeral, you could have petitioned for a compassionate release, but extenuating circumstances prompted me and your father’s lawyer to go to a judge to get an order to guarantee your immediate release and the possibility to clear your record.”

  “I probably would have gotten parole anyway.”

  He stared at the scars on her cheek and neck. “You needed to get out of there now.” Chris’s words held a bite.

  She let the subject drop, unsure whether he thought she should get out or belonged right where he’d put her. His behavior didn’t compute. He was a cop. She was an ex-con now. Before, he didn’t like her seeing his best friend, Darren. Why? She didn’t know. He probably thought she was trouble.

  If that was the case, then probably in his mind she’d proven him right.

  “We are going to talk about what happened. And Darren.”

  Did he think one had to do with the other? She didn’t know.

  But she’d had four years and twenty-seven days to think about how she’d ended up in a cell.

  She never liked where her thoughts took her, but that didn’t mean that some of the wild ideas she’d come up with weren’t true.

  Maybe Chris just wanted to remind her that part of her release today included her sworn promise to help him with his open case. Not that she had any information, even though he thought she did.

  Yes, she wanted to clear her name, or at least her record, but she wished she could simply put the past behind her and catch up with the people she missed the most and leave the rest in the past.

  She’d missed so much these last four years.

  She relied on her best friend Jill’s once-a-week letters and visits she made several times a year to keep her up to date on everyone’s lives while Evangeline faded away from who she used to be into the woman she became locked in a cage.

  Her brother Charlie had gotten married six months after she’d gone in. He had a wife and two children. She was an aunt to babies she didn’t even know.

  Jill had gotten married two years ago and now had a six-month-old. Evangeline had missed her brother’s and her best friend’s weddings. She didn’t get to be maid of honor, throw a blowout bachelorette party, cry over finding the perfect wedding gown, pose for pictures in a bridesmaid dress she’d probably never wear again, or give a toast to her friend’s happiness and wish her a lifetime of love. She didn’t get a chance to catch the bouquet with dreamy enthusiasm that soon it would be her turn to walk down the aisle to the love of her life.

  Nope. She’d been standing in line to get a tray of food she barely ate, or to go out to the yard where she ran sprints and did jumping jacks to keep up her strength and get her blood pumping so she could feel alive, if only for a few minutes. Because most of the time, she felt nothing.

  Like now, when she stuffed her grief and overwhelming sadness about losing her father way down deep. It took everything she had to hold back the rising tide of emotions, because when she finally broke, she didn’t want it to be in front of the man who’d put her away. She didn’t want him, or anyone else, to see how truly broken she was inside.

  “Evangeline? You okay?”

  Like Chris cared. He wanted to dump her off and get the hell out of here. Well, she’d like to leave, too, but she didn’t have anywhere else to go or any means to get there.

  She managed to find her rusty manners. “Thank you for what you did to get me out today, buying me lunch, and bringing me home.”

  “I’ll be in touch.”

  Right. Freedom didn’t come free.

  She owed him, and he aimed to make her pay.

  She didn’t look at him, just nodded, slipped out of the SUV, walked up the path and steps, and stood in front of the door.

  For the first time in her life, she knocked at the door to her house. Not just because she didn’t have a key, but because she didn’t know if she’d be allowed in.

  Her mother opened the door and stared at her through the screen. The automatic smile despite the deep sadness in her eyes went flat.

  “Hi, Mom.” Hope tinged those two words, a hope that maybe her mother would see her and not be angry about what happened. That maybe seeing her would allow her mom to forgive.

  Evangeline made a mistake. That was all.

  She’d never meant to shame or embarrass her mother or the family.

  “You look terrible.”

  Evangeline tugged one side of her jeans up her hips, but the weight of the material just dragged them down her skinny frame again. “This is what happens when I don’t get your home cooking.” She wanted to keep things light and let her mom know in some small way that she missed her.

  “That’s what happens when you go against everything I taught you and end up in jail.” Her mother’s gaze went past Evangeline’s shoulder to where Chris now stood. “Taken away by the cops and returned the same way.” Scorn like she’d never heard filled her mother’s words.

  “Mrs. Austen.” Chris gave her mother a nod and handed Evangeline the sack of her meager belongings. His green gaze stayed on her face for a long moment before he turned to her mom again. “I’m sorry for your loss. If there’s anything I can do, please let me know.”

  The words were meant to comfort, but they only seemed to make her mother angrier.

  “You didn’t have to bring her here now. She broke her father’s heart. She killed him.”

  All the blood drained from Evangeline’s head. The world spun, but all she could do was stand there and take it.

  If the contempt in her mother’s words could cut, she’d bleed out all over the floor, because that accusation sliced deep.

  Chris planted his hands on his hips, hung his head, sighed, and then looked her mother in the eye. “I’ve been a cop a long time now. I’ve learned in some harsh ways that nothing is ever black and white and that the gray area in between can be a murky mire that’s hard to navigate.” Chris turned his penetrating gaze to Evangeline. “Sometimes people do the wrong thing for the right reason. Sometimes their silence speaks volumes if you only listen for what they aren’t saying.”

  “She’s held her tongue for four long years, keeping her father wondering why she did what she did and why she turned her back on him and this family. She didn’t have the decency to face him when he tried to visit her. He just wanted to see her.” Her mom’s voice shook with those words.

  Evangeline wanted to defend herself, but remained silent, even under Chris’s steady gaze, even as nervous butterflies fluttered in her stomach.

  What did he know?

  Maybe he only suspected something and wanted her to finally spell it out. Not going to happen. She’d held her tongue this long. She’d take it to her grave.

  Which might be sooner rather than later, if her mother kept glaring at her like she had lasers in her eyes and wanted to blast Evangeline to hell.

  “Seeing someone you care about in a place like that isn’t easy. It breaks your heart to see them alone, isolated, and suffering. She spared Mr. Austen that consequence.”

  “Spared him? He drank. He wallowed in his grief, and not understanding why. He became so depressed he couldn’t work, let alone get out of bed some days. In the last weeks, he barely spoke to anyone.” Her mother stared her down again. “Your brothers stepped up and did what was necessary to keep this ranch alive, but it’s failing, just like your father’s health did. He’s gone.” H
er mother choked back tears, even though they shimmered in her eyes. “And because of you, this ranch will be lost soon, too.”

  Before Chris tried to make another excuse for her bad behavior, she touched his arm and spoke for herself. “I’m sorry you’ve suffered because of what happened.”

  “You should have thought about us before you broke the law.”

  You’re all I thought about.

  “It’s too late now. He died missing his little girl, worried sick over someone who couldn’t be bothered to even talk to him. A few words from you, and he’d have been happy again.”

  If it was so damn important, and her father had felt that bad, how come her mother never, not once, asked Evangeline to intervene? Her mother never tried to come and see her. She didn’t send a letter. Nothing. Not one word. It hurt that she had given up so easily on Evangeline.

  “Do you want me to leave?”

  Chris would then have to find her a place to stay. She felt sick with worry, desperate for her mom to stop acting like this and hug her.

  Say one nice thing.

  Pretend, if she had to, that she was happy to see her.

  “Unlike you, I care about family.”

  Yeah, Evangeline could feel the love.

  She remembered her mother’s stern lectures and the way one look could put her in her place. Evangeline never wanted to disappoint her mother. Making her mom hate her this way had never been her intent, but it was the result she never saw coming.

  Just another consequence she had to live with for what she’d done.

  “I promised your father that you would be allowed back here so you could get on your feet. I won’t go back on my word, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. You will have a roof over your head, but I expect you to figure out what you’re going to do next and get it done as soon as possible. There’s enough to take care of around here, I don’t need you dragging us and this place down any further than you already have. Understood?”

  “I’ll get my shit together and be out of here as soon as possible.”