THE FIRST TIME
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX - OUR HOUSE
"Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, in the middle of our ...
I remember way back then
When everything was true and when
We would have such a very good time
Such a fine time, such a happy time
And I remember how we'd play
Simply waste the day away
Then, we'd say nothing would come between us"
MADNESS (From the album "The Rise and Fall" (1982))
What does it mean to call a place your home? To Joey, the house that she grew up in had been the center of her life, ever since her parents had dragged up their tentpoles and thanks to one coincidence after another, had somehow ended up settling in the "Garden of Eden of the North-East", as they called it in the colorful tourist brochures that were meant to entice people to come to their fair town. Which coincidences were these, you may ask? Well, that was what Joey couldn´t stop thinking about, as she packed most of her meager possessions into moving boxes ahead of the move to their new house, that in every aspect was a vast improvement on the rather poor standard of living, she´d become accustomed to over the years. Just to name a few things, the somewhat annoying lack of living space wouldn´t be an issue anymore, since there were plenty of rooms to accommodate everyone, not to mention that they wouldn´t be freezing during the winter, thanks to a poorly insulated roof that made it impossible to stop the heat coming from the radiators from mixing in with the cold air, that kept seeping in from outside. What their new house didn´t have though, were memories attached to it (yet) and maybe that was why it had felt cold to her and not like a home at all, when Bessie and Bodie had brought herself and Abby over for a tour of it.
Anyway, back to those many coincidences, of which she figured that the first had to be when her mom met her dad, way back in 1973, when The Rolling Stones were still considered to be at their artistic peak, the Watergate scandal had just begun to become public knowledge and was a main talking point at water coolers around the country, and the bigger that the bell-bottoms on your pants were, the cooler you naturally were because of it. Or so, she´d heard, even if she still had her immense troubles, when it came to believing that it actually happened (the pants part, not the rest of it)!
Back then, her mother had just been one out of many college girls at the University of Georgia (down in Athens, Georgia), a natural choice for her with it having been the alma mater of Joey´s maternal grandfather as well, where they´d gladly accepted her in thanks to the 4.0 average that she´d brought with her from her high school days. With her dad, it was a different story altogether, when it came to how he´d ended up there. Being a native of the area and never really having felt like he fit in there, he´d wanted to get as far away from it as he could by the time he´d graduated high school, but his lack of interest in anything school related had also meant that all of his favored colleges had turned his application down. In truth, he´d only been accepted into UGA thanks to a well-placed bribe from his dad to the dean, who happened to be an old school-pal of his. Already there, the chances of them ever having met could be considered miniscule at best, yet from the moment that they´d met one another at a freshman information assembly, love had been in the air. After only a little over a year of dating, her dad had popped the big question, they´d become engaged and from then on, it had been the two of them against the world.
By the time they reached their graduation, Bessie was less than a year away from coming into the world and shortly after leaving school, they´d settled in a mid-sized town in Maryland, close to the town in which her mom´s parents lived. There, her mom had gotten a job at the local newspaper, checking the articles for typos and writing up the TV schedules for the day, while her dad had followed in his own father´s footsteps and ventured into the restaurant business, at first learning the ropes in a small eatery before he was ready to move up in the culinary world. They probably would have stayed there too, if it hadn´t been for a handful of events that changed many things for them, the first one being the loss of both of Joey´s maternal grandparents within less than a year of another. As if that wasn´t enough, the newspaper that her mom worked at went the way of the Dodo and closed down, while her dad´s drinking (that wasn´t nearly as out of control, as it would become in later years, but still bad enough) had led to him getting himself blacklisted among every main restaurateur, not just in their town, but in the surrounding towns as well.
Thus, with a past that both of them wanted to leave behind, they´d moved their family further North up to a small suburb of Bangor, which was also where Joey had lived the first six years of her life and they could have stayed, if it wasn´t for her dad´s constantly more excessive drinking once again getting in the way of any success, they might have had there. She could still vaguely remember the small apartment that they lived in, even if the images of it in her head became fainter with every year that passed by. One thing that she did remember clear as day was how they felt looked down upon, every time they stepped outside the door, thanks to it being one of those small towns, where you can´t let out a fart in public without someone on the other side of town hearing about it the same day, let alone make an ass of yourself in the local bars on a near-daily basis, like her dad did far too much of at that time.
How did they end up in Capeside, then? That part all began on a family vacation up there, the summer before they left the suburbs of Bangor behind them, and her dad (during one of his untold amount of drinking binges) had managed to sell his cooking skills well enough to "Big Ed" (the Ice House´s original owner, who lived up to his nickname and then some with his enormous, near seven-foot frame!), that when it once again became time for him to look for a new job, Ed was the first one he sent his resumé to and the first one to respond back. After this, it had only taken a short family meeting for them to decide that their new home should be in Capeside. A few weeks later, she´d been introduced to Dawson for the first time and the rest is history, as they say.
"Feeling nostalgic? If you are, I can tell you that you aren´t the only one!" Bessie honestly told her, as only she could, while they were loading up their new minivan (that had also been bought with the proceeds from selling the restaurant to the Von Wenning´s) with the next load of boxes to be brought to their new house.
"You too, huh?" Joey asked her sister, before they shared a knowing look with each other.
"In our case, my guess is that it´s just a natural reaction to change. We sure had some great times in this old house, didn´t we?" Bessie solemnly asked her back and boy, was she right on the money!
"And a few that we could have lived without, like when the police came to arrest dad or when mom ... well, we don´t need to get into that whole story again, do we?" Joey sadly replied and still, even all of those years later, just thinking back to that day when she´d come home from school in time to see an ambulance driving away with her mother´s dead body, could still bring a prickling feeling to her eyes that it was an impossible fight for her to ignore. "Do you think that she would have wanted to move to a different house, if she was still here with us?"
"I really can´t say, but I´d like to think that she´s looking down on us from heaven and smiling to herself, that we´re living out her dream on her behalf. It´s nothing to be ashamed of, that you still miss her, Joey. We all do, even if we don´t say it as often, as we should" Bessie told her in that understanding way that their mom used to use, whenever there was something to discuss, she felt like required it.
On the drive over to their new house, Joey kept thinking about her mom and wondered to herself, if her sister was correct in thinking that heaven was where their mom was. Even if the whole religion thing seemed too far-fetched for her own always rational thinking brain, she´d still like to think that she was.
Over at the high school, the rehearsals for "Barefoot in the Park" were well underway and as he´d hoped, Pacey had been chosen for the lead role of Paul, while Jen was the lucky girl who got to play Paul´s wife Corie. Not that she was better than some of the other hopeful, young actresses who´d auditioned, still he couldn´t deny that it helped to calm his nerves, that he was acting opposite to someone whom he knew about as well, as he knew his own back pocket. What didn´t help was that he was having trouble identifying with his character, but as their director Nikki had explained to him, pretending to be someone who´s different from yourself is supposed to be the fun part of acting, so he tried to embrace their differences, as much as he could.
"I'm beginning to wonder if you´re capable of having a good time" Jen recited Corie´s first line from the play. With them only being a few days into rehearsals, they were still using their scripts to read from and with how long the play was, he was seriously wondering how he was going to remember all of his parts of it, by the time opening night came around.
"Why? Because I like to wear my gloves in the winter?" he answered, reading it straight from the script.
"No. Because there isn't the least bit of adventure in you. Do you know what you are? You're a watcher. There are "Watchers" in this world and there are "Doers". And the "Watchers" sit around watching the "Doers" do. Well, tonight you watched, and I did" Jen continued with a line that made some bit of logical sense, he supposed.
"Yeah . . . Well, it was harder to watch what you did than it was for you, to do what I was watching" he answered her, only barely stumbling over his words in the process.
"You won't let your hair down for a minute. You couldn't even relax for one night. Boy, Paul, sometimes you act like a . . . a . . ."
"What? A stuffed shirt?" he recited his next line, before they had to take a small laughing break.
"Can´t we change that line, Nikki?" Jen broke character and asked Nikki, who was looking a bit annoyed with them for their lack of professionalism.
"I´m with Jen. I mean, have you ever been called, or even heard of someone being called "A Stuffed Shirt"?" he asked Nikki, who shook her head at their blatant lack of refinement, when it came to the fine art of storytelling and scriptwriting.
"If it´s in the script, then we´re keeping it in there! The script was written in 1963 and people talked differently back then. You´ll just have to do the best that you can with it" Nikki said in a "Don´t Argue with Me on This" kind of tone, that was rather unmistakable.
"Alright, you old "Stuffed Shirt", you!" Jen quipped back at Nikki, who only smiled to herself at Jen´s "insult". A smile that quickly faded, when she looked towards the doors to the auditorium and saw an African American boy, that Pacey couldn´t remember having seen before, come sauntering in like he owned the place. To himself, the boy looked like someone who´d come straight out an old Snoop Dog music video with his Tupac hoodie and a gangster vibe surrounding him that even if it was put on, still looked real enough to make Pacey think that this guy couldn´t have been up to any good.
"This is a closed rehearsal. You have to leave" he tried telling the guy, who didn´t seem to care either way, as he made his way towards the stage. What didn´t escape his eyes though, was the look of sheer panic in Nikki´s eyes, like she was seeing a ghost from her past or something akin to it.
"Sorry, I don´t take orders from prissy white boys" the boy, who clearly didn´t care much if he was liked or not, told Pacey off.
"It´s been a long time, Nikki" the guy, who Pacey now already wanted to punch in the face as hard as could, thanks to his hero complex beginning to set in, menacingly said to Nikki while he stared her down.
"Not nearly long enough, if you ask me, Jerome. In case that you didn´t get the memo, I´m done with dating guys, who´ll stab me in the back, the first chance that they get to" Nikki, in a very wavering voice, answered the guy, who apparently was named Jerome and was an ex-boyfriend of hers. In any case, Pacey could see how uncomfortable this was making Nikki, so he felt the urge to step in and, for lack of a better term, be her own personal hero.
"Is that your dad talking or you?" Jerome asked, as he continued to make his way up to the stage, before Pacey stood in his way and this time, made it known that he meant business.
"She doesn´t want to talk to you, so back off, homeboy!" he unequivocally told off Jerome, who only scoffed at his threats.
"Or what? You think, you can take me down, Whitey?" Jerome threatened back, building up what was already a tense situation to almost "Slice it with a Knife" levels of tension, before Jen thankfully decided to be the voice of reason, if no one else was going to do it.
"His dad is the chief of police here. Maybe you´d like to discuss with him why you shouldn´t go around stalking your ex-girlfriends?" Jen (rather bravely) asked Jerome, who only laughed mockingly to himself at her response.
"These are the kinds of people, you call your friends now, Nikki? Back when I knew you ..."
"I´m not that same naïve girl anymore, who blindly followed you around like she was your dog! I´ve grown up a lot since then and so should you!" Nikki bluntly replied to Jerome, who didn´t look like he believed her, or at least that was how it appeared to Pacey.
"We´ll just see about that, won´t we? Have fun with your new pals, Nikki, just know that they couldn´t care less about "our kind", if they tried! Here I thought, you´d learned that about white trash already, but I guess that I was wrong!" Jerome scoffed, before finally leaving them to themselves, after slamming the door on his way out.
After he´d left, both Pacey and Jen tried to be there for Nikki, who looked all kinds of shook up over this whole ordeal, she´d just been subjected to. Even if she wouldn´t tell them in so many words, the way she trembled for several minutes afterwards told him that this Jerome was a part of a dark past of hers, she rather would have forgotten ever happened. When it came to his own undeniable hero complex, this was all it took to send it into a virtual state of overdrive.
Nikki was still feeling all kinds of shook up, a few hours after Jerome had made his most unwelcome return into her life. In truth, she´d never thought that she would see him again and the rude way that he´d acted made her think to herself that he hadn´t changed at all, from back when she knew him.
Luckily for her though, she now had a pair of friends who refused to leave her alone with her thoughts, that probably would have gone to a very dark place, if it hadn´t been for their emotional support and patience with her, when it came to revealing who this guy was that had barged into their rehearsal, and within less than a minute of arriving had almost managed to start a fight with Pacey. That she´d been the one to (even if it wasn´t intentional) bring him into their lives only made her feel worse, like she´d been the snake that messed up this ultra-conservative version of the Garden of Eden for everyone else.
"Feeling better?" Pacey asked her in what she guessed had to be his most understanding tone, while they were hanging out on his boat and taking in the gorgeous scenery that put everywhere else, she´d lived, to shame.
"A little, I guess" she replied in her best casual tone, not wanting to tell them in so many words how much it had shaken her to her foundations to see Jerome again.
"We aren´t leaving you alone until we can be sure, that you won´t go home and cry yourself to sleep. When you´re friends with us, it just doesn´t work that way" Jen softly told her with a sympathetic facial expression to match, that for some reason sent feelings of warmth running through Nikki´s belly.
"Thanks, I suppose. I can´t stay here all day though, or my dad will probably call the cops and have the entire force out looking for me before sundown hits. In case you haven´t noticed, he´s kind of overprotective that way" Nikki confessed to the other two.
"Does it have something to do with that rather obnoxious guy, who showed up unexpectedly today?" Pacey logically inquired, seeing as it must have been obvious from Mars, that it hadn´t been the kind of reunion that you´d want to look back on in the future or anytime, for that matter.
"It has everything to do with him and he isn´t always like that, it´s just ... Jerome has his reasons to be mad at the world, proper reasons too, but he never takes it out on those, who deserve the blame for it. Instead, he always takes his frustrations out on anyone, who happens to say the wrong thing to him, and what that thing is can easily change from day to day, or even hour to hour. If you want to know the main reason why we´re not a couple anymore, that´s pretty much where the story begins and ends" Nikki continued with her confession, albeit with a few vital details being deliberately left out, of course.
"Did he beat you?" Jen asked, as somberly as she could, while it felt to Nikki like their sympathetic glances were staring into her very soul.
"He slapped me across the face a handful of times, but he always apologized afterwards" Nikki tried to explain to them, even if she, as she was saying it, could hear how she was sounding like a poster girl for every beaten girlfriend, who´s making excuses for someone that doesn´t deserve it.
"That´s still no excuse for what he did, and guys like him don´t change, unless they´re being forced to. If that Ice-T Wanna-Be ever tries to threaten or intimidate you again, I want you come to me immediately, okay?" Pacey asked of her, sounding like modern version of a knight in shining armor from those cheesy fantasy novels, she loved reading back in her tween and early teen days.
"My problems aren´t your problems" she tried replying to him, even if it didn´t seem to work all that well.
"Let me explain something to you about Pacey, Nikki. When he sees a girl like you, who´s in trouble, he has to act on his natural instincts to help them, or he wouldn´t be Pacey, period!" Jen explained, and in doing so, was only pouring more fuel onto the fire that was Nikki´s undeniable crush on him. "If you ask me, it´s his way of making up for his all too obvious inferiority complex!"
"Who are you to talk about inferiority complexes, huh, Lindley?" Pacey playfully asked Jen back. "Little miss "All of the other girls at school are so much prettier than I am"!"
"Okay, so I´m just as bad at it, as you are! Actually, I´m probably worse, if we do a close examination!" Jen half-joked and for the first time in a few hours, Nikki couldn´t help smiling to herself.
Was this what it´s like to have the kind of true and honest friends, she´d only read or heard about until now? All Nikki could say was that if it was, then she wouldn´t mind having as many of them, as she could!
As she sat on the floor in what would soon become her new room and gazed around at its walls, Joey wondered to herself how she would ever begin to feel at home there, like she did in her current room. One thing was that most of her things, her bed in particular, hadn´t been brought over yet and it would no doubt start to feel more homely, when she´d put her posters and pictures up on what at this time were still bare walls, that had recently gotten a new coat or two of white paint, from what she could tell. With the window open, she could also hear what must have been their new neighbor´s kids playing in the front yard, yet another reminder of how different it would be to live here, compared to the peace and quiet at their old house (or "Their Real House", as she still called it in her head), where they had enough distance to their nearest neighbors that the only sounds of civilization came from whenever someone came driving up to their house, and had an old enough car that it made enough noise for them to hear it. In its stead, they woke up every day in the summer to the sounds of the birds chirping at one another in their own secret language outside, and it made it feel like she was one with nature, something that was completely missing in their new surroundings in what could be called downtown Capeside. Although, to be fair, as for what constituted it being called that, she wasn´t entirely sure, seeing as their small town was only spread out over a distance of a little under four square miles, and even that was only if you counted the houses on the outskirts, that in most of the inhabitant´s minds were only barely thought of as a part of the town itself.
She could see it becoming a place, where she felt at home, it wasn´t like that and it wasn´t like there weren´t parts of living there, that she looked forward to. Having more than one bathroom meant that she wouldn´t have to wait until Bessie was done with her morning routine, before she got to use it and having Abby living with them again would take some of the pressure off herself, when it came to who should babysit Alexander, on the rare occasion that her sister and Bodie were out for a night on the town. The best part about it however, was that it put some distance between her dad and Bodie, two men that they now had to accept were simply too different to be more than casual aquaintances, who saw one another whenever there was a reason for a family get-together and otherwise, close to never.
Her rock throughout all of this, like she´d been for her so many times in the past, that Joey had long since lost count of it, was (to no one´s surprise) Bessie. It was for that reason also a bit of a shock to her, when she couldn´t find Bessie inside of the house, until she went out in their new and rather large backyard to look for her. Seeing her standing there, looking like a crying mess if you want to be exact about it, somehow made Joey feel less like it was only herself, who wasn´t dealing with all of these changes in their lives in the way, that she guessed most people would have.
"Life sure takes some strange twists and turns sometimes, doesn´t it?" she rhetorically asked Bessie, who looked a bit embarrassed to have gotten so emotional on a day like this, that was meant to be one where they looked towards the bright futures, they hopefully had ahead of them. "After all, if you´d asked me a year ago, if I thought that I´d be dating Pacey, would be calling Abby my friend or we´d end up living in a nice house like this one, I probably wouldn´t have believed a word you´d said".
"Pacey and you were meant to find your way to each other sooner or later. If it hadn´t happened now, it still would have happened before you finished high school" Bessie replied, as she wiped the tears from her eyes. "I´ve never been surer of anything in my life".
"You really think so?"
"I´m a hundred and ten percent positive, that you would have. God, my romantic life in high school was such a huge mess, compared to yours!" Bessie stated and from what Joey could remember from that time, she wasn´t wrong either. Before Bodie had come into Bessie´s life, the longest that any of her boyfriends had hung around was a handful of weeks, before she started seeing their faults and only their faults, leading to yet another swift break-up of a relationship that even from the get-go had no chance of reaching the kind of heights, that Joey´s relationship with Pacey already had.
"You were just more selective, than I am" she tried reassuring Bessie. "Anyway, it all worked out for you in the end, didn´t it?"
"I guess so. Honestly, Joey, I don´t even know why I´m crying. I just got to thinking about mom and what she would have said and done, if she´d been here with us right now. Have I ever told you why I couldn´t bring myself to cry over losing her, before the day of her funeral?"
"I don´t think so".
"Up until then, my mind wouldn´t accept that it was all really happening, and I could keep convincing myself that it was all some sort of bad dream, I would wake up from and everything would be okay and as it should be again. Only, it wasn´t just a bad dream, was it?" Bessie asked her, and like it usually happened in these situations, whenever the loss of her mother was brought up in conversation, Joey felt a lump rise up in her throat.
"More like a nightmare with no end in sight, if you ask me. We´re making her proud, though. Even if I´m not sure of a lot of things in my life, if there´s one thing that I don´t have the slightest bit of doubt about, that would be it" Joey explained, before they shared what for them was a rare, albeit very quick, sisterly hug.
Would she wind up feeling at home there? In all honesty, Joey couldn´t say yet, but if there was one thing that she could say for sure, it was that she would give it the old college try. Not only for Bessie, Abby, Bodie and Alexander, but just as much for the one, who while she couldn´t live in that house with them in person, would still very much be there with them in spirit.
In Pacey´s teenage life, there were only a handful of situations, where he could claim to be "In His Element" and more than enough of them, where the case was the opposite. Out at sea in his boat (and especially, if he had Joey there with him) was where he felt at home, something that he attributed to nearly all of the men on his mom´s side of the family having been sailors, who´d spent the great majority of their youths sailing the seven seas, until they started yearning for something more substantial in the lives and found the right woman to start a family with. On the other side of that coin was whenever he was in school, and with there not having been a single schoolteacher in his family tree on either side, he figured that there was logical reason for it. Heck, before Gretchen went off to college, you could easily count the number of family members of his that had given higher education a try on two hands, so if anything, he was par for the course with the rest of his ancestors!
What the Witter men were to the core though, was helpers in one way or another. Like the DNA-strings that tied them together, it was as plain as day and when it came to the number of soldiers, firemen, rescue workers and police officers in his dad´s side of the family, they were an anomaly for sure. That Doug had decided to follow in their father´s footsteps and joined the police force wasn´t a surprise to anyone, and although Pacey didn´t particularly feel like taking the same path in life as his brother did, he still understood why Doug felt some kind of satisfaction, whenever he busted someone for treating their local highways like a playground, with little to no thought put into what could happen, if everything went wrong in a split second. Knowing this, he´d decided to embrace this side of himself and if there was one thing that made his ingrown inferiority complex subside for a while, it was the feeling that he´d done something worthwhile for someone, who needed him to. Whether their name was Abby, Andie, Joey, Jen or in this case Nikki, in his mind nothing could beat that feeling of pride for having made their lives that little bit better, if only for a short while.
"You´re absolutely, one hundred percent sure that you´ll be okay tonight?" he asked Nikki, after he´d walked her all the way to her front door. With Jen having promised to help Abby with her project for history class, they´d given her a pardon and allowed her to have the rest of the evening off, away from talking about stalking ex-boyfriends and all of the negativity that comes with a situation like that.
"I´ll be fine, Pacey" Nikki reassured him, but he could tell from the expression on her face that she wasn´t telling him the entire truth. "Anyway, if I stay out any longer, I´ll just end up making my dad worry about me again and having him on my back is the last thing, I need right now".
"He´s probably right to worry, all things considered. If there´s anything and I mean anything that I can help you with, please don´t hesitate to ask, okay?" he understandingly told Nikki, who from what he could tell, was all kinds of grateful that someone cared this much about her well-being. Besides her dad, of course.
After they said their goodbyes, he got on his trusted bicycle to make his way home and, like he often did when the weather was nice and he had plenty of time on his hands, he planned on taking one of the scenic routes to get there, through the woods and following the shore of the creek until he got to "Dawson and Jen´s street", from where he planned on taking a few shortcuts to get him the rest of the way to his final destination for the day.
Unfortunately, he wouldn´t get nearly that far before someone, and it wasn´t hard to guess who, knocked him off his bike and showered him with enough punches to the face, that his lights quickly went out, in more ways than one.
After she´d heard from Jen about what had happened to Pacey, Nikki was in a state of the purest kind of shock. Was this all thanks to her having refused to talk with Jerome? The question kept running through her mind, as she was being driven to the hospital by her father, in the hope of getting some news about the kind and caring boy, who´d done nothing wrong to warrant being beaten so badly that his face was probably a mess of black and blue, joining together in a morbid kaleidoscope of bruises. Or at least, that was how she pictured it in her head.
"You should have told me instantly, the moment that juvenile delinquent showed his face around here!" her father sternly told Nikki, before realizing that showering blame on her wouldn´t help anyone, least of all a daughter who was blaming herself more than enough, as it was.
"Don´t you think that I would have, if I knew what I know now?" Nikki snapped back at him, through the feelings of self-loathing that were coursing through her system in a steady stream, that it was impossible for her stop.
"I´m just glad that it isn´t you who´s lying in a hospital bed right now" he corrected himself, before clearly again realizing that what he´d said conflicted with his job as a principal to keep all of his students safe, no matter if they were directly related to him or not.
Walking through those cold, white hospital hallways, she kept getting chills and picturing the worst, when it came to what kind of shape that Pacey would be in, when she saw him. Already, several of his friends and family members had gathered in the waiting room, and as she sat among them, she couldn´t help feeling guilty whenever she heard one of them share some kind of anecdote of how Pacey had selflessly helped them in the past, even if it went against what was logically best for himself. "That´s just the kind of guy that Pacey is, always thinking of others first" she heard it being said many times over the minutes that each felt like they were hours long, before they finally got some news from one of the doctors, who´d been tending to him. Luckily, he´d only suffered a concussion and had some severe bruising on his face, still it only helped to take the top off her feelings of guilt, and even if she knew it was selfish of her to think that way, all she could think about was how she was going to apologize to him, when she finally got to see him again.
With it only being his immediate family, who were allowed to visit him, there was little reason for them to hang around at the hospital longer than they had to, and on the drive back to their house, she began thinking about Jerome and how this would affect his future too, when he eventually got caught up with by the law. Did she even know him anymore? After all, it had been a year and a half since she´d last seen him, prior to what had happened earlier that day, and she´d heard many times how being in prison can change even the best of them into someone, who´s nothing like what they were when they were initially given their sentence and locked up.
One thing was for sure, though. That whatever loyalty to him that she had left in her was now completely gone, once and for all.
END OF CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
This ended up being sort of a rough chapter, so if you have any comments or thoughts on it, I´d sure like to hear them.
In any case, thanks for spending your time reading my little story here and have a wonderful day, wherever you may be in the world!
