Daddy - An SVU fic

15.Salvation

"Maddie, I wish you wouldn't dress like this around Harlan, if he decides he wants what you advertizin, it's your own fault!"

"You sound like momma!" she said, rolling her eyes. Johnnie had no idea that Harlan had long ago noticed her young cousin, she'd begun developing that bombshell body at twelve and by thirteen, Harlan couldn't keep his eyes or his hands off her and took her virginity two months before her fourteenth birthday while Johnnie was in the hospital with pneumonia.

"You should listen to yer momma! Anyway, William is in the kitchen eatin - let him have as much as he wants, same with dessert; ice cream until he don't want it." she pulled Maddie in for a hug. "Take care yerself" she said as she headed for the door, stopping to take one last look at the place she called home before she left and got in that old pickup truck to head into her new life.

... ... ...

It took her almost two hours to drive from Wallins Creek to the Greyhound station in London. She probably would have driven faster had her eyes not been so blurry from the tears she cried the entire way there. She arrived and bought a one way ticket to New York City and she never gave leaving a second thought.

She arrived in New York and tried to look for work in beauty salons but this wasn't like back home and without a cosmetology license, the most they'd let her do was sweep up hair for a few dollars a day and with her savings quickly dwindling, it just wasn't enough. She hadn't expected that New York city would be so expensive. She wanted to enroll at Robert Fiance Beauty Academy but tuition cost a pretty penny and she simply couldn't afford it. She needed a better paying job - preferably one that paid off the books since she couldn't risk using her social security number and have Harlan somehow track her down.

Money was tight and she was desperate. Now at almost three months pregnant she was famished all the time and spent a lot of money - way more than she meant to on food but was still hungry. She was thankful that approaching mid-September it was still quite warm so she didn't yet have to worry about winter clothes but she was getting bigger and what little she had barely fit anymore. She had to come up with something. After a month in the city, she had barely enough to afford another week in the run-down Times Square hotel where she'd been living and she was homesick to boot. This place was so unfriendly. It wasn't at all the dream she thought it would be. She hadn't made a single friend and all she wanted was someone to talk to. She couldn't call her family because they were afraid of Harlan and she knew that they'd tell him where she was. Johnnie just had no idea that he already knew about the pregnancy - a letter came from the clinic about her next appointment a week after she left. Harlan was livid and vowed to find her but by the time he did track her down over a year later, it was too late and she had disappeared again, this time never to be found.

One day, six weeks after arriving in New York, feeling particularly depressed and homesick she was going about her duties and trying desperately to fight the tears that wanted to be cried. When a few would slip out, she'd quickly wipe them away before anyone could notice and continue working. When the day was done, she collected her pay from the owner and was about to leave when one of the patrons who was also leaving, stopped her.

"Dear, are you alright?" the woman asked.

"Yes ma'am" She quickly answered

"Why am I disinclined to believe you?" the woman asked. Johnnie had no idea what that word meant.

"Ma'am?"

"You look as if you could use a friend. I've been told that I'm a good listener. Hugette Freed" the woman said, extending her hand.