Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 71403 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71403 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
And she threw me outside. I slid across the cobblestone pathway leading to the house’s entrance on my knees, skinning them. When I stood, tiny drops of blood stained the blanket of snow. My tears soon joined them.
She let me in after an hour. And I never complained about the firewood again.
Since then, I’ve learned how to walk on eggshells around her. It worked until she started making up offenses as an excuse to wail on me. A slap here, a scratch there. One day she whipped me with my father’s old belt.
My father was kind and sweet. He’d be rolling in his grave if he knew his widow was doing this to me.
One day, as the snow began to finally slow down, Emmy approached me, her eyes cold and gray. “Thea, it’s time you earned your keep on this farm.”
I cocked my head. “I already help out, Emmy. I feed and water the animals, I milk the cows.”
“That’s child’s play. I need real help. And I need it from you.”
I blinked a few times. “Okay. What did you have in mind?”
“Everything, Thea. I need help with everything.” She paced around me. “I’ve already made the arrangements. You’ll stop going to school and work here full time.”
I twisted my face. “But I’ll miss my friends! I want to go to—”
I could no longer speak because Emmy slapped her hand over my mouth and pinched my nose. Within seconds I began to feel lightheaded.
“What will you miss more, child? Your precious friends, or the air you need to breathe?”
I struggled against her. I wanted to answer her, but I couldn’t with my mouth covered.
She brought me over to the counter. “Answer me. One slap for friends, two slaps for air.”
With the last ounce of energy I had in my body, I brought my hand down on the counter twice.
She let go of me, and I collapsed to the floor, gasping.
Little did I know I should have just chosen asphyxiation.
Emmy ended up working me harder than any girl my age should ever be worked. It started out with manageable tasks. I was already helping with the animals, but now I was feeding and watering all the livestock, milking the cows at four in the morning, cleaning the stalls until they sparkled, and weeding every square inch of our ten-acre farm. It wasn’t long before Emmy started assigning me more complex tasks like repairing the fence that ran the property’s perimeter. I scratched myself up doing that, both from the splintered wood and from the rusty nails and screws Emmy gave me to work with.
If I was lucky, I’d receive an hour of homeschooling from her a day. She told me there was nothing she could teach me from a book I couldn’t learn from hard work on the land. We were just starting to learn algebra when I left school. Now I can barely do basic arithmetic without counting on my fingers.
But I’ve learned not to defy Emmy. If she has no misgivings about depriving me of the air I breathe, there are very few things she wouldn’t do to me.
Today is my fifteenth birthday. I walk down the stairs to see Emmy smiling. On my plate, a small stack of buttermilk pancakes with a candle on it.
Nearly two years since Daddy died. My birthday went unacknowledged last year.
Not that Emmy should care at all. So why does she have a sickly-sweet smile on her face? Why did she waste precious resources to make pancakes from scratch?
“Sit down, sweetheart.” She gestures to the chair across from her at the table.
I slowly slink down. “We usually have eggs for breakfast.”
“Today is a special day, Thea.” She leans forward, eyeing me too closely. “Eat.”
My first thought is that the pancakes are poisoned. But that would deprive Emmy of my labor. I take a bite. They’re very tasty.
“Thank you for the pancakes,” I say carefully. “They’re very good.”
She shrugs casually. “Like I said, today is a special day.”
“I guess. I’m fifteen now,” I say.
She narrows her eyes. “Fifteen?”
I nod. “Yeah. My birthday.”
She laughs at that. “Birthdays don’t matter, Thea. So you managed to not die for another three hundred and sixty-five days. Who the hell cares? No, that’s not why today is special.”
My throat catches. Maybe she did poison me.
“What… What do you mean?”
“Today is Tractor Day. The day we plow the land to prepare it for seeding. We need to do much better than we did this time last year or the year before. I want this harvest to be our biggest yet. Better than your father could have ever dreamed.”
“The tractor? But I don’t know how—”
I stop speaking as Emmy glares at me. The same look she gave me that first time she slapped me. The same look she gave me when she threw me out in the snow, nearly smothered me with her hands.