Chapter 1

Life isn’t fair. I learned that when I was barely sixteen.

I know, I know. All of you, out there in reader land, already knew that. You probably learned it when you were a teenager. But it was a revelation for me. If you think back on it, it was a revelation for you, too, the first time it hit you... really hit you ... that there were things beyond your control that could have a huge impact on your life or future, and that the whole scenario just wasn’t fair.

For me, it was when my mother opened our front door and caught me kissing Todd Giles ... with his hand in my panties.

I say “caught” intentionally, because that’s how my mother perceived it. Never mind that he didn’t ask me first. About groping me, I mean. I was kissing him voluntarily. I admit that. He’s a great kisser. He’s just also a miserable human being. I didn’t know that then. Actually, I didn’t know it before he put his hand under my skirt and into my panties and almost got a finger in me. And then I didn’t have time to break that finger and set him straight because my mother caught us (again, her point of view) before I could react. At that point, things got out of my control.

I suppose it was partly my fault. I chose to wear a skirt that night. Todd took me to a barn dance and I wanted to be a teeny bit naughty by letting those panties show when I twirled. But it wasn’t an invitation for him to molest me. He’d tried to touch my boobs before, but I always brushed his hands away from there. I’m not a slut.

But now my mother thinks I am. And my father, too, who didn’t take a lot of convincing. He’s grumbled at me for years about how I dress. My brother Tommy was only too eager to believe it. How did he find out? Well, my mother melted down when she “caught” us “almost having sex!“ and screamed for dad, who about had a heart attack. He was dozing in his chair, “waiting up” for me with mom. And this was at least the fifteenth time I’d gone on a date. Geesh! Tommy must have overheard her wailing about how I wasn’t a virgin anymore, and how no decent man would want me. Like that was imminent or something. I was sixteen, for pity’s sake! I’d only had my driver’s license for three months. It was going to be a little while before I got put on the old auction block and sold off to some college graduate with an MBA. That was my dad’s dream, that I’d marry a stock broker and be rich enough to take care of him in his old age.

So there I was, right after the door opened and Mom said, “Cassie!”, which was about to be followed by, “Come inside, now.” I should have expected that, too. It was what a cop would have called her MO, her modus operandi, when she knew I was back from a date. She gave me just long enough to say a few words and then called me in. I was, going, “Mom ... Mom ... it’s not what you think, Mom!” and Todd, miserable human being that he is, just stood there grinning like he should be congratulated. I’m a little amazed I could even say anything, because I was also thinking about how what he’d just done had felt while he was doing it. I mean sure, he only touched me there for a few seconds, but it was the first time another human being had ever touched me there! Then Mom screamed and that insolent grin on Todd’s face became a grimace and he took off running like the miserable coward he is.

And then Dad showed up, with Tommy right behind him, even though it was way past Tommy’s bedtime, and the whole world went to shit.

Sorry. I don’t normally curse. But the world, at least my world, really did go to shit that night. And there wasn’t anything I could do about it, because nobody would listen to me explain anything. It was out of my control.

It wasn’t fair.

Of course now that I’m older, and have had some heart-to-heart talks with my poor parents, I understand things better. Like the fact that my father, my stodgy old dad, with his beginning beer belly and receding hairline, was a virtual satyr when he was in high school, chasing every skirt he saw. Which included my mother’s skirt. He nailed her when they were sophomores in high school. Then they broke up and he chased a bunch of other girls, which made my mother furious. So she catted around with other boys to make him jealous, even going so far as to arrange for him to catch her with another boy between her legs.

Yeah. My parents! You could have sold me the Brooklyn Bridge when Mom told me that. She was trying to justify how they reacted to Todd’s attempt to “woo” me. And knowing that background, knowing that my mother was a slut, and my dad a complete role model for Todd, helps me understand why they reacted the way they did. But I didn’t find out that information until I was nineteen, and a whole lot of life had tumbled me along like a leaf in a hurricane.

It’s still difficult for me to sort it all out, which is why this may seem disjointed to you. I’ll try to think about it and tell it in a more chronological manner from now on.

So, back to that night. I was banished to my room, and then ignored, while they decided my fate. I know I was ignored because Tommy came into my room (without knocking) with a grin on his face and triumph in his eyes.

“You are in sooo much trouble,” he giggled. He was fourteen ... and he giggled. That’s how immature he was. Then he actually capered around, doing a little dance of joy. Why he hated me and loved my misfortune, I’ll never understand. I never did anything to him! He would have pointed out all the times I dimed him out for breaking rules, or lying about something to Mom and Dad, but that was my duty as his older sister! He was an idiot, and somebody had to save him from himself.

Never mind. Don’t get me started on Tommy. I chased him out, throwing my lamp at him. It was plugged into the wall and only went as far as the cord would let it, but he got the idea. Actually, it went a little farther than the cord would let it. It came unplugged and the room went black. I made a sound like a cougar and he fled. Maybe he thought I was going to bite him.

If he’d stayed ... maybe I would have bitten him. But nobody came to find out what all the commotion was about. I was being ignored.

I fumbled around in the dark, tripping over things as I went to the door. Maybe Mom was right. Maybe I should clean up my room. I made it, though, and flipped the switch. I plugged my lamp back in, but it wouldn’t come on. I figured the bulb had gotten wonky when I threw it and, since I didn’t have anything better to do, unscrewed the bulb and went to get another one. We keep those in the closet in one corner of the kitchen, where my mother and father were still having their breakdown. I got yelled at for not being in my room, where I’d been sent, and when I held up the bulb and said it had gone out, my mother said, “Well, you deserve it!” and started crying. I went back to my room with the old bulb. I didn’t feel like reading anyway.

It didn’t blow over. My mother, remembering her own lack of teenage control, was convinced that the only solution was to send me to boarding school, one for girls only. Seeing as how it was the first week of June, however, that wasn’t really an option, at the moment. So Dad rose to the challenge and called my mom’s brother, who lived on a ranch in Montana, thirty miles from the nearest convenience store. That convenience store was in a town called Geraldine.

The ranch was also ten miles from the nearest teenage boy. My dad actually asked about that, and begged Uncle Bob to sequester me on the ranch until they could order a chastity belt.

He didn’t actually say that about the chastity belt.

Then again, there were some parts of the conversation I couldn’t hear.

I did not have a choice in this brilliant solution to an age-old problem. I’m talking about boys and girls being attracted to each other. My mother was so intent on not allowing me to become the old her, and my dad was so worried that all boys were like he’d been, that they sort of had the equivalent of an emotional stroke. They were paralyzed. By the end of summer, they would have healed from this stroke ... but by then it would be much too late for the virtue of their one and only daughter.

This is where the music in the movie goes: Dun dun DUN!

But it wasn’t that dramatic. Not at all. It wasn’t dramatic because neither me nor Uncle Bob had any intention of anything happening to my virtue at all.

It just happened. I’m not sure how. In fact, that’s the whole purpose of writing this story. It’s to help me figure out what happened, how it happened, why it happened. I’m going to re-live it in my memory, and write it down just like things happened, and think about stuff.

I have time. The baby isn’t due for another month, but I was diagnosed with preeclampsia and the doctor put me on bed rest.

I keep getting ahead of the story, but I’m telling it from the here and now, instead of like diary entries. So I’ll try to keep on track.

Uncle Bob wasn’t enthused about babysitting a sixteen year old girl. We weren’t a close family. I’d seen him maybe three times in my life, at family reunions, and never talked to him at all. My dad basically begged him to take me in, “Just for the summer, Bob, I swear, just until we can make other arrangements!” It sounded like I had AIDS and was being sent to a hospice to die while my bereaved parents arranged for the funeral.

I had tried several times to explain to Mom that I hadn’t let Todd do that, but it was water off a duck’s back. It had brought back too many memories of other boys, with their hands in her panties, and how much she’d loved it. She’d loved a lot more, too. There wasn’t AIDS back when she’d done that, in the sixties. If there had been, she’d have been one of the first victims. I’m not being mean. She said that herself.

Anyway, it became clear that there was nothing I could say or do, and that my internment was going to happen. So I started collecting books I wanted to read, and music I wanted to listen to. I didn’t plan on making waves in Montana. Who knew where they’d send me if I did that? A convent, maybe? I figured I could work on my tan. I could text my girlfriends and stay current that way. They were all horrified at what was being done to me. I found out later Todd couldn’t get a date until school started because the girls boycotted him all summer. Just because of me! Is that friendship or what?!

Dad drove me up there. Maybe he was afraid I’d take off into the unknown if allowed to board a bus or plane by myself. You hear all those stories about teenage girls going to California to be “discovered” and becoming prostitutes instead. He drove straight through, because he had to get back for work. I wore my headphones the whole way. I had to do this, but that didn’t mean I had to be civil about it.

Uncle Bob wasn’t there when we arrived. Maria, his maid, was the only one around. She said, “No English” in a thick accent and handed us a note. In it, Uncle Bob said he was fixing a fence and for us to make ourselves at home until he got back. Maria took me inside. Dad left my suitcases on the porch and drove away. It was almost dark when I heard tires crunching gravel. I was sitting in a rocking chair on the porch, with a blanket wrapped around me. It was pretty chilly in Montana. This dark pickup (it would turn out to be rust-colored) clanked and coughed its way around the barn. The lights weren’t on, but the setting sun was shining through the glass. I could see a single occupant in it. I’d been admiring the sunset which, I had to admit, was pretty phenomenal, so I just sat there, waiting.

This tall, gangly guy got out of the truck, looked around like he expected to see his brother-in-law’s car, and then trudged toward the house. I was easy to see. The setting sun was on me like a spotlight.

“You must be Cassie,” he said. His voice was mellow. I couldn’t see his face because that setting sun was spotlighting his back.

“And you must be Uncle Bob,” I returned.

“Your dad leave already?”

“Yup. Had to get back for work.”

“He always is in a hurry,” said my uncle.

“My dad? You mean the one who procrastinates about everything?” I asked.

I didn’t see him grin, but I heard it in his voice.

“I guess life changes all of us. You eat, yet?”

“I didn’t think I should be that much at home,” I admitted.

“Nonsense,” he snorted. “You’re one of the herd, now. I’m starved. Let’s get some vittles. I can’t wait to hear your side of the story.”

“My side?”

“There’s always two sides to every story,” he said. “I’ve only heard one of them about what got you here.”

That’s when I relaxed for the first time since Todd Giles shoved his hand into my panties.

I think, in retrospect, that what made me like Uncle Bob so much was that he was the first adult to treat me like I had a brain. I had complete freedom, the kind of autonomy a kid dreams about, as long as I wasn’t doing something that was likely to hurt me or one of his animals. That sounds odd, when you factor in all the chores and jobs I got assigned. Let’s see. There were so many things. I’ll try to remember them all but I might miss a few.

He had chickens and they laid eggs. I became the egg lady. Maria had been doing that. Maria was probably delighted I was there, because I took a lot of work off her back. I had to feed both dogs, and put out food for the cats where the dogs couldn’t get to it. He had a few goats and sheep that he let run around free for the most part, but every once in a while they had to eat some kind of vitamins or supplements or some such thing and I got assigned to go catch them and lead them back to the house on a rope, where he took care of giving them their medicine. There was a peacock on the ranch, too, but all he did was sit up on the roof of the barn and make noise. I didn’t have to do anything with him.

I had to brush down the horses each day and I actually learned how to milk a cow. You had to do that twice a day. I learned how to drive a tractor, and what the various implements I could hook up to it did. I helped while a calf was born when it got all turned around in its mamma’s innards.

Maria did the dusting inside, but I had to sweep the porch daily. I had to do my own laundry (though not his) and since he didn’t have an electric dryer, I had to learn how to hang stuff up on a clothes line.

Hmm. What else? Oh. Riding fence, looking for breaks in the barbed wire. I did that a lot. He said I helped herd cattle, though all I really did was sit on my horse while it capered about and the dogs ran around barking like crazy. Oh. I handed him tools. I must have handed him a thousand tools. And then there was the garden, which grew wonderful, tasty vegetables, but also grew lots of weeds. I bet I pulled a zillion weeds that summer.