Relentless (Elisabeth Reinhardt Book 1) by Nancy Alexander Page A

sisters, but they had each other and they had their mother. Gina didn’t understand her mother. She thought Hattie Raines was basically a kind person, but she was simple and had no interest in complex issues. She was overworked and tired most of the time. And Hattie didn’t want to hear about problems. She just didn’t want to know about unpleasant things. It seemed odd to Gina but her mother seemed to have ‘an uncurious mind.’ It was like she was determined not to think much or question anything. “Just work it out between yourselves,” she’d say dismissively and go back to her housework. Right! Like a five year old could work something out with an abusive 9 year old. It was ludicrous, but that was what she said and that’s all she would say.
    Her father, Earl was another story. He had a rigid set of values that didn’t fit in th is world. He was in a time warp. His ideas and beliefs were like those his great, great, great-grandfather had. He didn’t make sense to those around him and they didn’t make sense to him. A family member talking to a neighbor would infuriate him, but bad behavior in school didn’t matter in the least. Farm work mattered, how people felt or how they treated one another did not matter. There were certain schedules for doing things that mattered, farm chores for example. How those schedules affected others didn’t matter. Earl had a bad temper and could lash-out with no warning. He drove his family with an iron will and a cast iron set of beliefs. He never explained what he did or why he did it. He figured people around him should just know or just listen whether they understood or not. Gina guessed that when he was a kid there’d been lots of other people like him around and that it made sense to be the way he was if you had lived that way. She remembered her brothers really never wanted to help on the farm and how mad he’d get when they didn’t do their chores. Farm chores were important. You couldn’t skip them for any reason. The cattle and chickens had to be fed. The crops needed care and had to be planted or picked when the time was right. Her father worked from morning till night and when he came home for supper, he was dead tired. You could see it in his step. She always thought he probably exploded because he was exhausted. If the boys hadn’t done their work, he exploded. If supper wasn’t ready on time, he exploded. If anyone got in his way, he exploded. People learned pretty fast to do things his way. Alcott Earl Raines Jr. was not a man to be crossed.
    Gina remembered that she and her father had gotten along pretty well, because she liked being out on the farm and helped him with tasks whenever she could. He never hit her and rarely yelled at her. He rarely hit the women in the family , unless he’d been drinking. Sometimes he pushed them into walls or knocked them down on the floor. When he’d been drinking, all bets were off. He and Hattie would yell and fight with each other. Sometimes the boys had to get in between them to break things up. There had been some horrible and frightening times and Reggie Lee remembered trying to help her brothers when they’d been hurt. Sometimes Earl’s elderly aunts would come over to stop the fighting. They lived a few hundred feet from the great house and believed family matters fell under their purview. Earl would stop dead in his tracks when he heard the aunts knocking on the door. Earl held a deeply ingrained respect for the elderly and granted them a respect he granted to no one else. A single scowl or frown from those wrinkled faces and angry words disappeared under the façade of genial host.
    When she was a bit older and more capable, Reggie would rush out the kitchen door and fetch the Aunts at the first sign of trouble, but when she was small, Reggie just ran and hid. She had many hiding places that no one knew about. She stocked her hiding places with food and blankets so she could stay hidden for hours at a time.