Page 1 of Every Sunset
CHAPTER 1
ANNA
“MOM!”
My eyes snapped open as adrenaline surged through me at the sound of the terror in my son’s voice. Blinding lights brought me back to consciousness, and I instinctively ripped the wheel of my beat up old car to the right, to get it back on the correct side of the road, with a grimace and a cry of fear.
The other car blew past us in the opposite direction, blaring the horn angrily, and who could blame them? I’d fallen asleep at the damned wheel!
“Oh God!” I gasped breathlessly as I straightened up the wheel and slowed way down. We were on some highway, but don’t ask me which. I’d been too exhausted to care about more than heading in the right direction since about ten hours back.
“Pull over, mom. You have to take a break,” Max told me worriedly, and I turned to glance at him and sighed deeply. I was supposed to be the parent, but not one person would think it to look at us right then. I was a damned mess, and my fifteen year old son was doing all he could to hold me together.
I’d had so many plans when I found out I was pregnant with him. Not at first. Finding out I was pregnant at sixteen hadn’t exactly been in my plans for my life, not that I had any grand plans.My life to that point hadn’t exactly inspired me to imagine any future greater than escaping my crappy, and at times, terrifying home life.
My mom had split before I was even old enough to remember what her face looked like, and my dad had always been a no good drunk and gambler who barely kept the roof over our heads. I’d basically dragged myself up, rather than being raised, and it had been a fight just to do that.
I’d love to say seeing the mess that my parents were had inspired me to be a better person, and that I’d studied hard and aspired for great things, but that never happened. Between the random beatings and constant verbal abuse from my dad and his cronies, and my struggle just to eat each day, school had meant nothing to me but another hurdle I was forced to get over. I’d never been the smartest, and unpopular was an understatement to describe my social life. I’d been the deadbeat kid from the wrong side of the tracks and everyone knew it.
When I was fifteen, a one night hook up with some kid who didn’t know me or my crappy reputation, at a random party of some stoner I knew through my dad, had seemed like a good idea at the time. He was the first guy to ever even look sideways at me and I liked the attention. Losing my virginity was just another hurdle I wanted to get over and out of the way too. So a slightly drunken, and distinctly unsatisfying first sexual experience, in a laundry room piled high with dirty clothes, had resulted in me finding out I was pregnant three months later, just days after my sixteenth birthday.
It changed everything for me. Not once did I consider terminating the pregnancy. Instead I packed a backpack with a few changes of clothes, some cash I’d earned over the summer at the local diner, and I left everything else behind. I was scaredand so unsure of what lay ahead, but I was positive of one thing – I would give my child the childhood they deserved. I would never subject them to the life I had endured for sixteen years.
I spent some time living in a shelter while I worked every single job I could get that would pay me cash without any of the paperwork, and eventually I was able to rent a tiny apartment. I made a home for me and my child, and on the day Max was born I held him close to my body, which still trembled with the exertion and agony of the birth, and I promised him the damned world. I promised him I’d always protect him and I swore to myself I would never fail him.
“Mom?” Max placed a hand over mine on the wheel and I could feel how hard he was shaking. We both were. I’d almost gotten us into a wreck. I’d been such an idiot to think I could drive for over thirty hours straight, but then again, I was an idiot. Such a stupid fucking idiot.
“I’m okay,” I lied breathlessly.
“You’re not. You have to at least take a break. Pull over into the next rest stop, okay? For me? My legs are killing me,” he almost pleaded. I looked down to where his knees almost touched the dash in the seat beside me. He was already almost a foot taller than me. He basically had to fold himself into the seat of my tiny car. His legs probably were aching. I hadn’t even considered that as I drove non stop for the last several hours though. Another parenting fail.
“Okay, honey,” I agreed. I wanted to move my hand to cover his to reassure him, but I dare not take my hand from the wheel after what just happened. I needed to stay focused and not get us killed on the dark road. “Next rest stop.”
“Good,” he agreed as he dropped his hand from my arm. “We’re gonna be okay, you know? We can do this,” he added after several moments of silence.
“Of course we can,” I agreed with a faked easiness I wasn’t feeling inside.
All I could feel inside was guilt. We were fleeing across the country from the only home Max had ever known, and it was all my fault. I’d been selfish, and now it was costing the both of us so much more than I ever wanted my son to be forced to give up. I had never hated myself so much in my life, and considering the life I’d lived to that point, that was saying something.
We pulled into a service station a short while later and as I shut off the engine exhaustion hit me all at once. I hadn’t slept for over forty-eight hours, but it was so much more than that. I was thirty-one years old and in that moment I felt about ninety-one.
I had been so sure we were doing the right thing when I told Max to pack everything he could into a large case. I’d done the same, then I’d packed the car and we’d left with nothing but the address of a place I’d hurriedly signed a lease on via the internet. I didn’t really know what the place was like, or even where it was, except the fact that it was about an hour outside of Chicago. It had two bedrooms and a roof. That had needed to be enough, since I’d been too much of a mess to think beyond those details when I arranged it. We’d left so much behind and we really had no idea what lay ahead. I hadn’t even spoken with Max’s school. Or our landlord of the apartment we’d lived in for the last thirteen years. I’d run, like the coward I was and I’d dragged my kid along too. He was going to be so fucked up after what had happened, after what he’d seen and…
“MOM!” Max snapped as he placed his hand on my shoulder and shook it lightly.
“What?!” I cried as fear reared its head.
“You’re freaking out. You’re breathing is fast again,” he told me, watching me with fear I had never wanted him to live with. My childhood had been filled with fear, but I had never wanted my son to feel one iota of it. I had seriously fucked that up, and continued to do so too.
“I’m just tired. You were right,” I lied again. Another promise I made to him when he was born, broken. “We should have stopped at that motel we passed.”
“Mom. I’m not an idiot,” he said with a roll of his eyes.
“I know you’re not,” I assured him as I sat up and took his hand in mine. It was so large in mine. I could remember when he used to wrap his teeny-tiny fingers around the tip of my pinky and now his hand engulfed mine. He was becoming a man and a sizeable one at that. He was already over six feet tall. All of the sports and swimming, which he spent every spare minute involved with, meant he was bulking up too. He dwarfed my tiny frame now, but he was still my baby boy. He always would be.
But the tables were turning and he seemed to think he needed to protect me, and not the other way around. Hehadprotected me. I hated what it could do to him. I hated that I had failed him in such a monumental way. “I’m so sorry, Max.” The words were forced out through my tight throat as I fought not to cry. If I started I was pretty sure it would prove impossible to stop again.
“Don’t start all this again. I did what I had to do. We did. It wasn’t your fault.”
