Drowning the Past

4

Noah didn't break up with her Monday. She doesn't even think he came to school on Monday or Tuesday. On Wednesday, her stepmother came home from her Caribbean cruise. Not tanned and looking like she had some face work done.

She was the splitting image of her daughter if you doubled her daughter's age. An older angel. At least before the first surgery. This last one made the fourth or fifth one, and she looked more like a lab experiment than an angel now.

She's been her stepmom for nearly three years and the only things she knew about the older woman was that she had a thing about her age, she was gone a lot, and she let her daughter rule over her. What her stepmother knew about Quinn would fit in a thimble.

Piper took one look at her mom and dragged her upstairs to have a talk.

It was always the same. Piper pissed off because her mom was throwing away the best thing that ever happened to both of them. Which was Quinn's rich dad. He'd been pissed the last time his new wife had lied about a trip so she could go have surgery. He didn't mind her being gone, he minded her coming back looking like a weird Barbie. Guess his trophy wife wasn't such a trophy anymore.

One good thing about her coming home is that Piper would be busy screaming at her for hours.

Quinn headed back out the door and lit a cigarette. Do you know what she'd do for a few hours to herself? What she'd do to not hear someone else's voice for a freaking hour?

A lot. Her home used to be a home, now it was a freaking maze of screaming and deceit. Games and fights. Business parties and failures. Pain and unhappiness. Once Piper finish bitching at her mom, her dad would be home and it would be his turn, and Quinn would like to miss all it.

Theo's back deck looked good right now but there was no telling who was over there. She wouldn't find peace there.

Realizing she had nowhere to go, she sat on the step. Not one damn place to herself.

There was a garden in the backyard, but it wouldn't be far enough away. There was a cook in the kitchen. A maid probably listening at the door to Piper's room.

Finishing off her cigarette, she reached for another one then she dug out her keys. Nowhere to go or not, she wouldn't stay here.

She sat in her car in the library parking lot and played on her phone for a while.

When she got hungry, she went through a drive through then found another parking lot to sit in.

Most people wouldn't think much about how she spent her afternoon, but to her, alone time was worth its weight in gold. By the time she got home it was after midnight and she was amazed that Piper hadn't ordered her home hours ago.

She was nearly up the stairs when she heard her dad in his office and looked that way. He had a drink in his hand and a folder in front of him. Her mom used to never let him work past eleven. She always said even the best lawyers should be in bed by then or they made the worst husbands.

Seeing that he'd caught sight of her, she turned and rushed up the stairs.