This chapter might not make sense at the moment but it is needed for the story to go on.
I hope you ENJOY!
Chapter 4: Sarah
Sarah Bolton had been married to Jack Bolton for almost 5 years now. They had gotten married just after four months of knowing each other when they had found out that she was pregnant. She had been fresh out of College and 22 and believed that she had been madly in love. He was then 34, a high school basketball coach with a twelve year old son.
It had taken a month after they had gotten married for her to realize that he was an abusive father and a month more to learn to fear her husband. By that time it had been too late to back up, she had known that she was pregnant with twins and she had been paying of college loans and had no family to fall back on; there was no way she would have been able to afford to look after her children if she couldn't work.
So she had had decided to stay believing that she could change him. It had not worked. All this time knowşng him he had never raised his hand against her and to be honest she never witnessed him beating his son but the signs were there. He would call his son to his office and then there would be loud opera playing and when they came out she knew the boy was in pain. He also pushed the boy above and beyond his limits both in sports and academically. He boy was woken early every morning just so he could get in an extra basketball practice; weekdays, weekends, holidays, it did not matter he got up and was seen in the back yard practicing.
The time she had tried to intervene was the time she had learned to fear her husband. He had swiftly moved towards her and while towering over her had shouted, "Troy is not your son! His bitch of a mother left him to me, he is my son! I will raise him the way I think he should be raised and no one is going to intervene with it. Not even you! You should get it into your head that you are not his mother and never will be his mother. I did not marry you so you can be a mother to the dumb kid! You understand me!"
She had understood and watched helplessly as the man she loved and still loved beat his own son into submission. She believed that he was already halfway there when she came into the scene as Lucille had apparently left when the boy was nine and she was just there to watch the end results. She tried to help when she could, she did many of his chores that his father told him to do and fed him another serving of food when Jack's back was turned.
It had been shortly after they were married that she realized that Jack was also not going to spend a lot of money on the child. He might have told her that she was not his mother but he had given her a fifty one day and told her that the boy needed clothes as he had had a growth spourt. She at the time didn't know what to buy, fifty dollars was not a lot money if you wanted to get a 12 year old boy some new clothes. She had then fallen on a trick she had done at College and went to visit the Salvation Army store. There she had brought slightly used new clothes for the child and not worry about him not having enough clothes to wear.
Before the twins were born she also had been worried about where their room would be. Their house had three bedrooms; she had been hoping that Jack would move his office downstairs to the den as his office was second biggest bedroom upstairs, Troy's being the smallest. When she had mentioned it to Jack he had told her that he had it covered. One day when she came back from shopping she had found him painting Troy's room as the nursery and when she had braved the question to where Troy's bedroom was he had just pointed upstairs.
She had taken the stairs up to the attic to find that Jack had cleared the attic and had moved his son there. The space was tiny. There was room for a single bed, a dresser, a tiny table and not much else. She had found that there was nothing she could say to the despondent boy that had been sitting on his bed trying hard not to cry.
After the twins were born Jack had been very happy and Sarah had fallen into a make believe world that everything in her life was fine. Jack was a loving husband, attentive to her needs and a caring loving father. She had found herself ignoring that there was a silent thirteen year old boy that also lived in their house. She had been grateful for the help he provided as he had never complained about doing chores or helping out when needed and he had become a quiet presence in the house that she had been able to over look.
It had been a call from his school that had jarred her back to reality. He had gotten into a fight with four other boys and had come out on top. She had been shocked that her quiet step-son could possibly do something like that. The school then had taken disciplinary measures however he hadn't been suspended or anything as it was the other boys that had thrown the first punches. The principle had told her that her step-son had an anger management issue that he needed help with.
She hadn't known what to do, of course when Jack had found out Troy had spent a week at home being 'sick' as Jack had been determined that Troy pay for the crime. From then on she tried to be more attentive to the boys needs. It had been her who suggested that he work on the weekends and she had been the one who found him the caddying position at the club. She had known that Troy would enjoy the physical activity and the fact that he not only enjoyed playing golf but was surprisingly good at it had come as a pleasant surprise. She knew he had fun over the weekends and did everything in her power to keep his father away from it. They did not even go to watch him play, because she knew that the moment his father showed any interest in his golfing abilities all would be lost.
When he started high school she had brought home applications from universities that were on the other side of the country all with their scholarship programs attached. He had looked up at her and had understood; she had just provided him with a way out the situation that they both found themselves in.
Things got a bit better when she had gone back to work two years ago when the twins turned two. She didn't become a banker like she wanted but became a personal assistant. That way she could do some of her work from home. She had known that they were tight on money as looking after a family of five was not easy on the teachers' salary that Jack got; no matter how much of the expenses he had cut e.g. not paying for anything for his son. With her salary they were able breathe a bit easier and she had found that she herself enjoyed the fact she had little money to spend. Troy's eyes had lit up the day she had got him a brand new rock band shirt just for the fun of it. On Christmases and his birthdays his father got him things that were necessary such as new sport shoes and stuff instead of gifts so she knew that there were not very enjoyable for him.
She had also been worried that her children and their older brother were not bonding. She suffered from having no siblings and while her daughters would hopefully always have each she knew they would benefit in the future from having an older brother and Troy would benefit from having siblings that he could rely on. However she had known that they did not get much bonding with the silent boy that sat at the dinner table. The only thing they had learned from Troy about dinner time was that children should be silent. They also couldn't see him much as his schedule was always so busy with training, studying and chores. Sometimes she wondered if Jack had done it on purpose but could not see why he would.
Then about a year ago when Jack was away at a seminar in another city a solution had presented itself. There had been a crisis at work that had made her late at getting home. She had called home several times getting the answering machine and by the time she had gotten home around nine she had been very worried. She had found Troy sitting at the kitchen table studying as he was known to do and the twins fed, bathed and in bed. She had been grateful, Troy had just shrugged his shoulders and had told her that they were his sisters of course he could take care of them.
She had used that fact to her and his advantage, when Jack had gotten back she had inquired whether or not he would like to go out at night, when he had mentioned the twins and the expense of getting a sitter she had told him that Troy could look after them, after all he was their older brother and a free babysitter. Jack had liked the idea and she found out that they would go out every Saturday night as well a week day night once a week. She knew this gave her children and Troy time to bond as the twins came to adore their older brother. It also gave her an excuse to slip Troy some money. After a night of babysitting, she would put money for him to find usually in his lunch bag. Sometimes she could even spare a twenty for him and every time he found the money he would give her a dashing smile and when his father was not in the premises a kiss and a hug.
She was still sorry that they were stuck (especially him) in this situation and would have loved to have taken her daughters and him and gotten away from Jack, who she still loved very much, but she knew that they would never make it on their own. She was determined that Troy would get as far away from his father as possible and she would make sure that he never laid a hand on her daughters. That was all she could do for the moment.
