Chapter 31 – Before Thanksgiving (Ansel Conrad POV) Pt.2
Then. Parents hope that their children, when not in their sights know right and wrong. As a parent I hoped that my children would put each other first as my siblings and I had.
We live in this world where the enemy shouldn't be with someone with whom we live with.
Family should be the people you turn too, not from.
Walking past Brennan I couldn't even stop to talk to my son. Anything I said now would be in the heat of the moment. Words that I may not mean would be released and I knew better.
Climbing the stairs, I stop in my office first and shut down all my electronics. Pulling them offline, I shake my head at each wire, at every email or piece of data that Devin might have gotten her hands on.
Worse even, is whom she may have shared that data with?
Frustrated, the network down, I lock up my room before shooting my sister a message. She was the one with skills to know how to stopping Devin, or in this case catching her in the act.
Right outside of Harleigh's room I hear her strumming on her guitar. Resting my head against the wall, my emotions are wild inside me.
Harleigh was my baby girl. The one that would lay her head on my shoulder when she was little and fall asleep on my chest. Kalenah had a way with our children, but Harleigh, Silas and Paige, they were the children that clung to me.
My kids thought their mother could do anything, but those three thought I was the fiercest and bravest in the world. I made the best sounds during bedtime stories. Could always find them in hide-and-go-seek. Made them laugh, and when they cried and I couldn't make the pain go away, I held them just right.
Harleigh... what was Taylor thinking? To say that Harleigh wasn't a part of them family was the blackest lie or statement ever verbalized.
I wasn't the therapist like Kalenah, but it also didn't take a genius to realize that Taylor only said it because she wanted to hurt Harleigh.
Taylor threw the mud that she knew would have the utmost impact. Harleigh's biological family died, but the smallest part of her I know thinks that in a way they still left her.
It couldn't be explained away. That way she felt.
No amount of love from our part touched those feelings of abandonment. It didn't mean that Harleigh loved us any less as parents. It just was.
That was how it worked sometimes.
When my fury has settled, I tap quietly on her door, removing all expressions of pity from my face.
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Loving Ashlynn (#Wattys2016)
Werewolf"Her name isn't Sophie, I lied, her name is Fatima Safiya Ashlynn - I thought she would die where I left her."
