Chapter Two: Part Five

 

Riley waited  in the room at the Ebb Tide.  Room 204.   She’d already downed three cups of strong coffee, and was wide awake.  This was where she and Megan always stayed.  It wasn’t fancy, but it was clean.  It was a two-room suite with a fireplace and a perfect view of the beach.  They’d been here several times.  This was their escape from the world of dead-end jobs, broken promises, absent fathers and drunken mothers. 

Riley had chosen to go into the Air Force when she got out of high school.  She’d become a medic and served most of her active time at a base in North Dakota.  After a few years, though, she desperately missed her sister and could tell that Megan needed her.  As soon as Riley received her discharge, she moved back to Portland so the sisters could be together.

That’s how it had been ever since their father left.  Megan didn’t remember him, but Riley did.  She remembered how loving and strong he had been when he was around.  Unfortunately, he hadn’t been around much.  He told them that he worked for the FBI, but would never tell them exactly what he did.  He hadn’t  even married their mother because he claimed  it would’ve been too dangerous for them.  He had frequently disappeared for a day or two at a time.  Sometimes it was even a week.  And then, finally, he never came back at all.  Riley figured he had another family that he’d left them for.  Asshole.

Riley’s mom had been a good mother up until then.  After he left, though, Sue had started drinking.  She wasn’t a mean drunk.  She was more of an invisible drunk.  She’d come home for work, sit down on the couch, and start drinking.  There was usually food in the fridge, but Sue didn’t cook anymore.  Riley got pretty good at making sure that she and Megan were fed.  She’d made grocery lists for their mother, and Sue generally bought whatever she was asked to buy.

Riley thought about how her mother had kept herself sober enough during the day to keep her job at the local factory.  It almost made it hurt worse, because Riley knew her mom could have controlled her drinking if she’d only tried.  Her factory job paid enough to keep them all fed, housed and clothed.  That was their existence.  Sue, Riley and Megan.  Left alone to fend for themselves in the world.  Riley seldom thought about it anymore because it did no good.

So, Riley had grown up being the responsible one, while Megan grew up being the younger and more protected sister. Riley thought that, since their mom had stopped drinking, Megan would be watched over while she was in the Air Force.  Unfortunately, though, alcoholism doesn’t work that way.  Alcoholism still affects the children in a family, even when the alcoholic has stopped drinking. 

While Riley was away in the Air Force, Megan was still biding her time in Portland, just waiting to get out.  It was hard being a lonely twenty-something with limited opportunities.  If you hadn’t gotten a college degree or some kind of technical training, you were either working as a waitress or, if you were lucky, as a hostess at one of the trendy nightclubs in downtown Portland.  That’s how Megan met Nick.  Nick Benson.  The devil incarnate as far as Riley was concerned.  Nick was holding court with his groupies at the club where Megan worked.

Riley could picture the whole thing in her mind.  She imagined the stars in Megan’s eyes when the music producer called her over and asked for her name and phone number.  Megan was probably so giddy, she wouldn’t have known how to react.  This would have fed Nick’s ego exactly as planned. 

Riley knew that Megan usually felt invisible, as if nobody noticed her.  Megan thought her life was, at best, boring and leading to nowhere.  The boyfriends she’d had were good looking, but they all turned out to be losers.  She knew that the best thing she had going for her was her brain, but she chose to hide that from the men she surrounded herself with.  It would have threatened them.  Nick was no different.  “Pompous bastard,” thought Riley as she thought about that meeting between her little sister and the yutz.  Megan, though, would have been thoroughly taken by Nick’s “mystique.”  He was famous.  Sort of famous.  A little bit famous.  At least he was famous in Portland.  And wealthy.

Megan instinctively hid Nick from her mother.  He was rich, good looking and charming, someone her mother would never have trusted.  While Megan thought of him as being edgy, Susan would simply have tagged him as a fake.  Megan knew that her mother didn’t trust men in general.

Ever since Susan stopped drinking, she expected her daughters to start changing their lives, too.  But it didn’t work that way.  The harm that came to Megan and Riley from Susan’s alcoholic years would remain forever.  They could work on it.  They could try to lessen the pain, but it would always be there.  Until they took the time and made the effort to go through long and sometimes painful soul searching, they would continue to think of themselves as less.  Less deserving of love. Less than everyone else.  Less than they were supposed to be.  Never enough.  The prognosis wasn’t cast in concrete, but it wasn’t easy to overcome.

Back to Nick.  Why wouldn’t he want someone like Megan on his arm?  She was twenty-three years old, stood five feet nine in her stocking feet, and could easily have graced the cover of a fashion magazine.  Yet she had very little self-esteem.  She had long blonde hair and crystal blue eyes.  Men stared at her wherever she went.  Megan assumed it was because she was funny looking.

“Funny looking,” Riley thought to herself.  She wished that she could be as funny looking as Megan.  Riley was twenty-eight years old, and was as curvy as Megan was thin.  She had breasts that garnered more male attention than she cared to have.  Riley had wavy reddish-brown hair that hung halfway down her back, and wore thick glasses that tended to slip down her nose.  Her nose.  That freckled nose.  As if being curvy and having large breasts wasn’t bad enough.  She had to have freckles, too.  “Very funny, God,” she’d chided him many times.

Riley never thought of herself as being pretty like Megan.  She, in fact, liked to believe that her most outstanding quality was her “big, sexy brain,” as one past male acquaintance had put it.  That was just one of the reasons that she and Nick didn’t get along.  Whenever Riley hung out with Megan and Nick, it seemed like Nick was intent on proving how accomplished and intelligent he was.  The truth was, though, that he was an idiot!  A moron.  The man had the intellectual ability of a cow pie. “Hell, he probably doesn’t even know what a cow pie is!” thought Riley.

It was too easy for her to keep flying off on tangents related to the brainless group of cells known as Nick.  Riley knew that she needed to concentrate on where Megan might be.  Megan  had gotten a call from Nick while the girls were still at the hotel.  When Megan told Nick that she was at Seaside with her sister, Riley could tell that he wasn’t happy.  She remembered Megan saying “Well, I do have a life besides the one with you, Nick!”  His muffled, angry voice could be heard by Riley, although she couldn’t tell exactly what he was saying.  “Yeah, I know I should’ve told you,” she said quietly, guiltily.  “I’ll call you after dinner.  We’ll probably go for a walk or go back to the hotel afterwards.  I’m not sure.  I’ll call you when we get done.”  Click.  Apparently, Nick didn’t see fit to say goodbye.

Megan didn’t talk with Riley about hers and Nick’s relationship.  She didn’t have to.  Riley had seen the bruise on Megan when they went to the hotel pool earlier.  Megan had explained that she fell at work, when someone spilled a drink on the floor.  “Right,” thought Riley.  “That’s how you got that giant bruise on the top of your foot.”  It looked like somebody had stomped on it.  Riley had also noticed that Megan wouldn’t take her shirt off to go swimming.  How many bruises might there have been underneath?  Riley could only guess.

“How afraid must Megan be to not even be able to tell me what’s happening with that jerk?” thought Riley.  She could barely stand to think of him by name.  What was he threatening to do to her if Megan told anyone about the abuse he was dishing out?  Was he threatening to get her fired from her job at the club?  Was he threatening to hurt her?  Oh, God!  Was he threatening to kill her?!?

A cold chill ran down Riley’s spine.  An honest thought will often do that to a person.