First Torrey House Press Edition, January 2014
Copyright © 2014 by Melanie Bishop
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or retransmitted in any form or by any means without the written consent of the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. References to real establishments, organizations, locales and television shows are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. Characters, incidents and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination, and are not to be construed as real.
Published by Torrey House Press, LLC
P.O. Box 750196
Torrey, Utah 84775 U.S.A.
International Standard Book Number:
978-1-937226-22-0 eBook
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013952249
Cover art by Christy Hawkins • christy-hawkins.com
Cover and book design by Jeff Fuller, Shelfish • Shelfish.weebly.com
CONTENTS
Chapter Three: Just When She Was Beginning…
Chapter Six: In a Place Like This
Chapter Seven: Some Tidal Wave
Chapter Eight: Past Tense
Chapter Nine: Maybe
Chapter Ten: Her Head
Chapter Eleven: A Nice Mom and Dad
Chapter Twelve: No Chimpanzees
Chapter Thirteen: Forgetting
Chapter Fourteen: Chivalry
Chapter Fifteen: Who I Am
Chapter Sixteen: Golden
Chapter Seventeen: A Girl Like Her, A Girl Like Me
Chapter Eighteen: When the Weather Is Cold
Chapter Nineteen: Merry Christmas
Chapter Twenty: To Be Jolly
Chapter Twenty-One: Every Unsad Thing
Chapter Twenty-Two: Like a Small Pregnancy
Chapter Twenty-Three: Here or Anywhere
Chapter Twenty-Four: Endangered
Chapter Twenty-Five: Benevolence
Chapter Twenty-Six: Nothing But the Truth
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Yes and No
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Genuine Love
Chapter Twenty-Nine: A Place to Start
Chapter Thirty: Wow
Chapter Thirty-One: A Cinderella Night
Chapter Thirty-Two: Fairy Godfather
Chapter Thirty-Three: Flesh and Blood
Chapter Thirty-Four: Studying the Ode
Chapter Thirty-Five: Hate List
Chapter Thirty-Six: A Thousand Buffalo
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Momma Bear
Chapter Thirty-Eight: That School In Arizona
About Melanie Bishop
Acknowledgements
About Torrey House Press
This book is dedicated to all the young people in my life: nieces, nephews, great-nieces and great-nephews, Godkids, and all my students, current and former.
MY SO-CALLED RUINED LIFE
It’s one thing to lose your mom shortly before your sixteenth birthday. It’s another thing to know she was murdered. When they decide it’s your dad who did the murdering, nobody cares that you disagree. He is hauled off; you are farmed out. If you are wondering about now how this could get any worse, try living with this fact: you and your mother had not been getting along—barely speaking—for almost two years.
Saying it in second person doesn’t make it better. This didn’t happen to you, it happened to me. But some hypothetical you can use the terms “mother” and “mom,” which aren’t words that have come out of my mouth for some time. Since we’d stopped speaking, I’d referred to her as Carla. Like some distant relative, a second cousin twice removed, maybe someone I’d never even met. Therefore, someone I couldn’t possibly miss.
While I know there’s no way my dad did it, apparently dads far and wide are capable of this. If you watch TV shows like Dateline or 48 Hours, you know how common it is for people to kill their spouses. Mostly it’s men who kill their wives, but it happens the other way too. In fact, the minute someone is murdered, they will look first of all at the spouse. Some don’t even pretend to be grief-stricken. A man on the show calls up 911, says my wife’s dead on the floor, and doesn’t shed a tear.
I don’t watch these shows because they’re good. They are, in fact, some of the worst journalism you can find. I watch because my father is on trial for the murder of his ex-wife, Carla, and there are reporters in the courtroom. These so-called reporters from 48 Hours and 20/20 and Dateline have tried to talk to me. I watch to prepare myself for when my own family’s tragedy shows up as entertainment on prime-time TV.
The shows are terrible—even if the topic is riveting. They repeat everything a minimum of five times (I’ve counted), and after each commercial break they review the tale from the beginning, in case someone has decided to tune in mid-show. They flash the same pictures on the screen, over and over—the woman, beautiful and happy, smiling with her children. Family portraits where you’d never dream someone was thinking of killing someone else in the photo. And then there are the graphic crime scene pictures—blood-soaked carpets and mattresses, a body on the laundry room floor. They interview