Read The Mistletoe Promise for Free Online Page B

it mildly. He thought the world was going to hell, and since the ‘lunatic’ Californians were buying up all the land around us, he sold our farm and moved us to a little town in Utah of ninety-six people. We made it an even hundred.”
    “What town?”
    “You’ve never heard of it.”
    “Try me.”
    “Montezuma Creek.”
    “You’re right,” he said. “Why there?”
    “Because it was about as far from civilization as you could get. And, don’t laugh, because there was only one road into town and he could blow it up when the Russians invaded.”
    “Really?”
    “It’s true,” I said. “He had a whole shed of dynamite and black powder.” I shook my head. “The biggest thing that ever happened in Montezuma Creek was when the Harlem Globetrotters came through town. I don’t know what brought them to such a small town. I guess they weren’t that big anymore, but the whole town showed up. I think the whole county showed up.”
    “What did your father do in Montezuma Creek? To provide?”
    “We had greenhouses. Big ones. We mostly grew tomatoes. We sold them to Safeway.”
    “How did you end up in Salt Lake?”
    “I just got out as fast as I could.”
    “Didn’t like the small-town life?”
    “I didn’t like my father,” I said softly. “He talked constantly about the end of days and the world being evil and corrupt, but the truth is, he was evil and corrupt. And violent and cruel. I lived in constant fear of him. I remember I was at our town’s little grocery store when a man I’d never met said to me, ‘I feel sorry for you.’ When I asked why, he said, ‘That you have that father. He is one awful man.’
    “My father was always trying to prove that he was in control. Once I told him I was excited because we were going to have a dance lesson at school, so he made me stay home that day for no reason. Some days he would keep us home from school just to prove that the government couldn’t tell him what to do.
    “He would rant that the police were just the henchmen of an Orwellian government conspiracy, and anytime one tried to pull him over, he’d try to outrun them. It was a perverse game with him. Sometimes he’d get away, sometimes they’d catch him, and they’d drag him out of the car and handcuff him, which only proved his point that the police were brutal. He lost his license, but that was irrelevant to him. He didn’t see that the government had any right to tell a person whether they could drive or not.
    “I remember watching him being handcuffed and arrested, and I was afraid they were going to take me to jail too. I grew up terrified of police. Police and snakes.”
    “Snakes?” Nicholas said.
    I nodded. “My father used to think it was funny to chase me around the house with live rattlesnakes. I remember him holding one on a stick and it trying to strike at me.” I looked down. “I have a terrible phobia of snakes. I can’t even see a picture of one without being paralyzed with fear.”
    “That’s abuse,” Nicholas said.
    I nodded. “He was all about abuse. Only he didn’t see it that way. He saw us as property, and, if something is yours, you can do what you want to it. Property doesn’t have needs. Property only exists to suit to your needs.
    “One time we had a problem with our truck. He said it was the carburetor, so he made my sister lie on the engine under the hood and pour gasoline into the carburetor while we drove. What kind of father puts his kid under the hood of a moving vehicle?”
    “A deranged one,” Nicholas said. “What were his parents like?”
    “That’s the strange part. My grandparents were sweet people. They used to apologize to me about him. Once my grandmother said, ‘We don’t know what happened to him, dear.’
    “He considered reading for entertainment a waste of time. Once he found me in my room reading a Mary Higgins Clark book and he was furious. He called me lazy and said that if I had time to waste, he’d find something for