Illicit Liaison by Katelyn Skye Page B

them to or not and right then the past was pressing her down.
    Her apartment looked down over the hills of Los Angeles. She opened the blinds and stood at the windows, a chilled glass of white wine in her hand, thinking about the past.
    She had been born Carla Green, a small town girl from Hale, Missouri. She was only sixteen years old when she had killed Jack Lewis, her stepfather. Her lawyer’s defense was that she had done it because he had touched her one time too many but that was only part of the truth, the other part was that he had begun to look at her nine year old sister Jamie a little too closely—Jamie with her sweet and sunny disposition and her slow childlike mind.
    Even then, she had known asking their mother for help would do no good. Hallie Lewis had never had any use for her daughters except to get the welfare checks and food stamps that had sustained them while she worked her wiles on every man on the rounds until she finally hooked one into marriage.
    Hallie thought she had married well and Lolita supposed that if she had been her mother she would have thought so too. They went from living in a two bedroom trailer on the outskirts of town to living in a three bedroom, two bathroom ranch house in a little suburb where the grass was green and lush instead of patchy and dead, and the cars were all parked in driveways instead of up on blocks.
    Hallie had not cared what the house cost her daughter; she batted away her attempts to tell her about what was going on with one hand, usually right across the mouth. It ended when Lolita, then Carla, was fifteen. It seemed Jack found her too old for his tastes right around then. Fortunately, Jamie had also been too young but she had known that would change eventually and she had watched and waited, helpless to do anything else.
    She had not plotted to kill him, despite what people thought. It had been a spur-of-the-moment thing. It had begun with her coming home from school to find her mother drunk again and Jack holding Jamie on his lap. Her mother had been asleep on the couch, her mouth open in a snore. Jamie had looked calm but it was hard to tell what was really going on behind her placid face, it always had been. Jamie had been a breech birth child and it had prevented her breathing for far too long so she had never progressed much further than being able to sing short nursery rhymes or count to twenty-three.
    Lolita had told Jamie to go to her room. She watched her sister leave before she turned to Jack, whose eyes were now full of contempt.
    “”Just what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he asked.
    “I want you to leave her alone.”
    “You need to get out of my house. I’m sick of you meddling in my business. You don’t belong here anyway.”
    Icy fear ran through her veins. He could throw her out and they both knew it. Her mother would not help and she had nowhere else to go. What was worse was that Jamie would have no protection. The silence spun out, Hallie had continued to snore, her breath sending Scotch fumes into the room. Jack had grabbed her by her arm and she had lashed out, slapping him across the face.
    What had happened next was what had sent her to prison. He had stood up, probably to hit her back and she had kicked him. She had meant to kick him too and right where she had. His face had gone the color of moldy cheese as her sneaker-clad foot had hit dead center in his testicles. He had staggered toward her and fear had turned to panic. She had grabbed the fireplace poker, brandishing it like a sword and he had fallen over the ottoman trying to reach her. Fear and self-preservation mingled with love and terror at the thought of what he would do to her sister if she did not stop him.
    Hallie woke up just in time to see the blow and she was the prosecution’s best witness. She sobbed on the stand as she described her daughter as a problem child and her former husband as a saint. Lolita supposed the hundred thousand dollar life