I remember the day when the beautiful, blazing sunshine glistened off the perfectly cut green grass of my neighbor’s front lawn.
Lying on my back, I looked up to the clouds, watching in awe as the shapes changed from dragons, to rabbits, to bears.
“Look Jessica, that cloud is a spaceship,” Rhett called out as he lay next to me.
“Spaceship? No way. That’s a dragon. Can’t you see the arms and legs?”
Rhett laughed, “They’re not arms and legs – they’re guns!”
As innocent nine year olds, we laughed a lot together.
We were born one month apart, and at that point, we had lived next door to each other our entire lives. We were inseparable.
Life was so perfect then. Best friends forever.
I remember that moment clearly, lying innocently on the grass, gazing into the sky. That was the moment before my life changed forever.
“Are those police sirens?” Rhett asked about the distant noise.
I sat up and watched two police cars and an unmarked black sedan race onto the front lawn of my large house. I remember the black sedan more than the police car because it was the sedan that carried the two men in suits.
The police and the men in suits marched into my house as Rhett and I sat on his lawn next door, watching in silence.
They dragged my father out onto the front steps, throwing him to the ground and handcuffing his hands behind his back. My mother came screaming out of the house after him but one of the police officers held her back.
I felt so sick to the stomach.
They arrested my father, a man I hardly saw thanks to his business, and dragged him out of my life.
I didn’t know it at the time but my father was in charge of large investment firm that was knocking people off for the sake of money. He was charged with conspiracy to murder, fraud and embezzlement. Years later when they read out the amount of money he defrauded people by, my mouth dropped.
That explained our massive mansion in the nicest neighborhood and all his expensive cars.
Mom kept me home from school for a week after that day. She didn’t want to subject me to the rumors about my father. But when I went back to school, I heard them all.
I knew he wasn’t a nice man but I didn’t know how truly bad he was.
In the end, the suits took everything.
My mother sat on the front lawn of our mansion, crying into her hands, while the police, the suits and removal men took all of our possessions.
We were left with almost nothing.
Not even the house.
It was all tied up with my father’s fraudulent behavior and the police seized everything. Luckily, Mom put a little bit of cash aside and was able to buy an old, beaten up car and put a deposit down on a rental apartment in the city. I can’t imagine how much it hurt my mother to drive that old clunker into our very exclusive neighborhood.
But she did.
She stayed strong.
She was, and still is, a very determined, tough woman and she taught me everything I need to know. She is a beautiful, resilient woman.
That experience taught me that we don’t need men. We are strong women. We can look after ourselves.
The day we moved out of the neighborhood stays strong in my memory.
I remember Mom putting one box of belongings in the boot of the car, slamming it shut and nodding her goodbye to our neighbors. Our neighbors all loved Mom, but were afraid to help in case they were seen being associated with my father. All the people in that neighborhood had skeletons in their closets, and none of them wanted the police snooping around in there.
Nine-year-old Rhett stood on his front lawn, staring at our car.
I waved goodbye but he just kept staring. As Mom started the car to leave, I couldn’t bear it any longer. I jumped out of the back seat and ran across our lawn to him.
He hugged me, tightly.
“Don’t go,” he said.
“I have to go.”
His eyes were full of tears as he looked to the ground.
“But we’ll see each other again,” I reassured him.
The look on
Similar Books
