Chapter One

It was a cold November night a little more than a year later and the temperature had dipped into the low thirties. The family was having dinner in the small, dimly lit kitchen. Valerie’s eyes were fixed on her plate as Pepper grumbled about his boss and how much he despised the man. That evening, like most others, his drinking had started before he even got home and only ramped up the moment he walked through the front door.

Emma had just spooned some peas onto Gracie’s plate. The six-year-old reached for her glass of water and accidentally caught her father’s freshly opened can of beer with her small arm. Pepper erupted. His face looked like a twisted mass of bumpy, pulsating flesh as the veins in his temples stood out and he turned bright red. Clenching his fists, he put them up against Gracie’s dainty face and yelled, “You fucking little whore! You spilled my beer! You’re an idiot, just like your sister!”

Without warning, he yanked the terrified child out of her chair and flung her down on the floor. Before she could recover from the shock, he bent down and slapped her in the face, sending her flying across the kitchen floor. Her body seemed weightless, like a rag doll, as she tumbled head over heels and landed on the other side of the room. Pepper trudged over to her, buried his fingers in her hair, and closed his fist over a handful of strands. Then he pulled her upright until she was standing. Gracie’s face twisted with pain as she let out a blood-curdling shriek.

Her father ground his nose against hers. “You fucking maggot!” he yelled. “I never wanted you! You belong to that stupid bitch over there!” He gestured toward Valerie. As Pepper released his daughter’s hair, she fell back to the floor.

Stunned by what had happened, Emma ran to her little sister. She desperately hoped her mother would protect them, even though Valerie had proven time and again that she wouldn’t. She now snapped at her father. “Why don’t you leave her alone? You bully!” she screamed.

Outraged by what he considered to be the ultimate form of disrespect, Pepper snatched a frying pan from the top of the stove and whacked the side of her face with it, knocking her unconscious. When Emma woke up, she found herself lying on the cement steps that led from the back of the house into their small yard. Dressed only in the jeans and sweater she had worn to school that day, she felt the cold seeping into her bones, clearing the cobwebs of confusion that had clouded her mind. Emma picked herself up and knocked softly on the back door.

Pepper, who had been waiting for her to wake up, immediately flung open the door, startling her. “You think you’re smart?” he snapped. “You think you can talk to me like that? Nobody tells me what to do in my house! Tonight, you’ll sleep outside and learn never to talk back to me, girl!”

After he had slammed the door in her face, Emma huddled into herself, trying to keep warm. The wind slashed through her worn clothing, increasing her desperation to find shelter. Afraid to go too far, she decided to seek refuge on their front porch. There, she remembered, was a broken down sofa that had never made its way to the trash.

Mrs. Tisdale, her elderly neighbor who lived across the street, was looking out her window as Emma made her way to the front of their row home. The old woman watched the child move slowly up the front porch, trying to step as lightly as possible so that the creaky boards wouldn’t betray her presence. Then her eyes widened in alarm as the little girl crawled under the worn cushions on the sofa and completely vanished from sight.

Mrs. Tisdale kept her eyes glued to the sofa for more than fifteen minutes before she put on her coat and went across the street to find out what the hell was going on. She approached Emma with great care, so as not to startle her, and gently lifted the cushion covering her face. “Child,” she murmured, “why you out here in the cold? Where’s your mama?”

Her eyes red from crying, Emma replied, “My father is making me sleep outside tonight. He was hitting my little sister and I yelled at him to stop. So he hit me with a pan and put me outside. This is my punishment.”

“Well, I’ll be dipped in shit if a little child like you is gonna sleep out here in the cold!” the elderly neighbor said in a huff. “Come on, baby, you sleepin’ at my house tonight.”

Emma’s body stiffened with resistance. “No, Mrs. Tisdale,” she protested, “I have to stay here so I can get up in the morning and get out back before my father goes to work. If he finds out I didn’t stay on the back steps during the night, I don’t know what he’ll do to me.”

Mrs. Tisdale gave her concern due consideration. “Okay then,” she conceded, “you’ll come sleep at my house and we’ll set an alarm so that you can get up before he does. That way, you can go back on those steps before that bastard goes off to work. okay, baby?”

Comfortable with Mrs. Tisdale’s proposition, Emma dug herself out from beneath the cushions and followed her across the street. Once inside her own house, Mrs. Tisdale wrapped Emma in a warm blanket and made her a steaming cup of cocoa. The chocolaty milk warmed her insides, filling her with a sense of security. Emma was grateful for Mrs. Tisdale’s kindness as she lay, warm and cozy, on her neighbor’s sofa waiting for sleep to provide a temporary release from her life.

This was the first real encounter that Emma had with Mrs. Tisdale. From here on the relationship grew, and over time, the girl came to rely on her for the support she needed to make it through each treacherous day. Mrs. Tisdale was well aware of how Pepper treated his two daughters. As a result, she tried to compensate by showering the children with the love their parents couldn’t seem to find for them. Mrs. Tisdale failed to understand how Valerie could allow her husband to beat their own children. If it were her husband, the old lady told herself, she would surely have set things right. Hell, she thought, I’m gonna try my best to set things right and I ain’t even married to that no-good dirty, rotten bastard.