Exploited
Page 33

I needed the lies to remind me of the truth.
Yet as I had listened to him talk about a brother I already knew about, I had felt compelled to give him some of my pain. Pain that for years had belonged only to me.
I wasn’t used to sharing.
It was a strange sensation.
Giving part of yourself to someone else.
It worried me that I wasn’t more terrified of the idea.
So here I was, trying to relax while I forced myself not to think of the things I should be doing. Plans I should be making. Lies I should be living.
Instead I was giving myself a day where none of that existed. Before I had to see him and it all started again. The careful deliberation. The excitement I felt when he looked at me and the intense denial that I felt anything.
It was exhausting.
I deserved this moment of quiet. I couldn’t remember the last time I had allowed myself to indulge in a day like this. A day that didn’t involve me hunched over a computer until my brain wanted to pack up and die.
When I had gotten up that morning, I had poured myself a cup of coffee and fired up the laptop, prepared to spend the day doing what I always did. But then I stopped. I turned off the computer. I walked away. And I hadn’t looked at it since.
When I had started my online life, it had been daring. Exciting. I had a purpose. A mission. A clear idea of what I was doing and why.
The thrill was still present at times. The exploits were daring and dangerous, and I was still the master of my own contrived universe.
But…
I stuffed my mouth with popcorn and tried to focus on the movie I had been aimlessly watching.
I loved being Freedom Overdrive. It consumed me. Motivated me. It had given me an outlet when I had been lost and floundering.
Yet I couldn’t help wondering what sort of person Hannah Whelan was without the shadowy alter ego.
What sort of person could she be?
Did I dare to find out?
What would happen if I liked what I found? The idea scared me. I didn’t want to think about it too closely. Not with my current crowded headspace.
For now, though, I could enjoy this taste of what normal felt like.
I stretched out my legs and smiled to myself. It was almost perfect.
Almost…
A knock on my door had me sitting up in surprise. I didn’t get visitors. I didn’t have people in my life who dropped by randomly.
It must be a mistake. Or an encyclopedia salesman. Did they have those anymore?
I ignored it, waiting for whoever it was to go away.
“Hannah Marie Whelan, I know you’re in there. I can see your car in the driveway.”
My stomach dropped.
It was my mother.
I slowly got up and made my way to the front door, wondering why she was here. I hadn’t seen her in over a month. We had never had the sort of relationship that allowed for spontaneous lunches and random girl talk.
When I was growing up, I had wanted more from her. I had made an effort. So had she. But the distance that existed between us was a strange thing. It was as though we were strangers who just happened to be in the same family. It had always been there. The wall. Even as a small child I had gravitated toward my father over my mother.
We had never experienced the mother/daughter bond that came so naturally to her and Charlotte. I had even been envious of it. Once. When I was a different girl with a different life. When I wasn’t a woman who had shut herself off from attachments.
Charlotte had always been my only exception.
After losing Dad, Mom tried harder. With Charlotte hospitalized, we were all each other had. She attempted to cling to this idea of how she thought we should be. She tried calling me. Tried to show an interest in my life.
Yet it didn’t change the truth of who we were to each other.
So here we were, years later, living on the edges of each other’s lives for the sake of a relationship we had never had. For the sake of a girl we both loved.
For Charlotte we tried as much as we were able. Even if deep down we had given up on each other a long time ago.
To feel an emotional alienation from a parent was depressing. Particularly when it wasn’t intentional. Maybe that’s what made it worse.
So hearing her voice on the other side of the door was jarring. She had been to my house only a handful of times since I had moved in three years ago. She lived on the other side of town in the same house I had grown up in.
If I needed to see her, I went there. She didn’t enter my space. It was an unspoken understanding.
Unless the visit was prearranged.
Surprise visits didn’t sit well with me.
Ever.
They weren’t conducive to my secretive second life.
“Mom. What are you doing here?” I asked, blocking the entryway into my house. She pushed past me anyway.
Her face was flushed and her hair was sticking out in all directions, as if she had just stood for a period of time in a wind tunnel. She exuded a frantic energy that put me immediately on edge.
“I’m on my way to see Charlotte. I hoped you’d come with me. It would be nice to see her together, don’t you think?” She dropped her purse on the floor of the living room and immediately started a close inspection of everything.
That was another reason I made sure never to invite her over. The nosiness.
“Why didn’t you call?” I asked. It sounded like an accusation. It was.
I took the throw pillows from my mother’s hands and put them back on the couch. She was touching too many things. It bothered me.
“I tried. You didn’t answer.”
I picked up my phone and saw that she had indeed tried to call me. Four times. I had put the phone on silent last night when I was working on the new SQL coding. Damn it.
“I planned to go see Charlotte this week.” I tried not to scream as she wiped a finger along the edge of the television, inspecting for dust.
“How long have you lived here?” Mom asked, ignoring my statement. She was frowning, chewing on her bottom lip, her eyes troubled.
“Three years. But Mom, you can go on. I’ll see Charlotte later—”
“Three years?” Her eyes widened incredulously.
“Yes, three years.” I followed her as she walked into the kitchen, her hand hovering over my laptop keyboard. I quickly reached around her and slammed the lid.
“It’s time you added a picture or two to the walls, don’t you think? It’s rather dull.” Mom glanced around the room, her mouth pinched in criticism.