Chapter One
I lay on my bed staring at the ceiling. My life was over. I was fourteen and my life was over.
Not that I was trying to be melodramatic but it was. Shooting me would be a much kinder end than what fate awaited me. Fourteen and very soon I would be married to a man I hardly knew named Remy LeBeau.
Most didn't meet their matches until they were twenty or older simply living a normal life until they would throw together with a stranger for a life partner.
But ever since my dad had walked out on my mother and me, my mother had been working at any job she could find. Waitress, cleaning, anything she could do to pull in an extra bit of cash, but then she began to get tired more easily, couldn't pull herself out of bed in the mornings to get to work and she was wasting away.
So to keep me from slipping into the system of child care, my mother had called up my fiancé's father and had arranged for the two of us to get married a little earlier than most people. He agreed.
I gripped my pillow and buried my face in it as hot tears welled in my eyes and trickled down my face. I didn't want to leave Caldecott county and Momma for New Orleans and Remy. My heart ached, a stone nestled in my chest heavily.
A light tap on my door heralded my mother's entrance to the room. One my mother had had long perfect curly red hair but lately it had faded to almost a pinkish tinge and framed a too gaunt face. She had once had the southern belle curves that I always hoped that my too thin body would take up someday, but now she was a step above skeletal. "Anna-Marie?" she asked.
I scrubbed away the tears before I looked up at her. In the dim light, she didn't noticed my eyes were red and puffy. She squinted at me. "Are you ready to go?"
"Almost, Momma," I replied quietly. "I'll be down in five minutes."
She nodded and turned away. "You're being very brave, Anna-Marie," she told me.
I don't have a choice, I thought bitterly as I went over to our small bathroom and scrubbed away the last of the tearstains and picked up my two suitcases and head down the hall. For a moment, I stood in our shabby little living room. My life wasn't fancy, but it was a good one.
And now I would be leaving it behind forever. Again tears welled in my eyes, but this time I blinked them away furiously. I wouldn't cry. Not any more.
Taking up both bags in a vice like grip I opened the door and stepped out into the hazy Mississippi day. Down the steps and into the cab that would whisk me away from everything that I had once had, once known.
Defiantly I set my chin and allowed the cabbie to take my bags and put them in the trunk before sliding in next to my mother in the back.
I settled in for a long trip.