That bruise was 3 days old, but it still throbbed when she breathed. It was the last thing her mother ever gave her. Now, let me tell you how Nola ended up here, because no 16-year-old walks into the mountains alone in October without a reason that cuts deeper than cold. Nola grew up in a rented double wide on the outskirts of Grant’s Pass.
The kind of place where the siding peeled in long strips and the front steps tilted so far sideways. You had to know the trick of stepping on the left edge or you’d go right through. Her biological father left when she was four, not disappeared, left, drove his truck to the end of the gravel road, stopped at the mailbox like he was checking for letters, and just kept going.
Nola watched from the kitchen window, standing on a chair to see over the counter. She remembered the truck was blue. She remembered the left brake light was out. She remembered waiting for it to come back. It didn’t. Her mother, Charlene, married Dale Puit 2 years later. Dale worked seasonal construction when he worked at all and drank with committed discipline the rest of the time.
He was a thick man with small eyes and hands that seemed too large for the rest of him. Hands that were always finding reasons to correct things. The screen door that didn’t shut right. The dog that barked too loud. The girl who existed in his house without contributing to it. The hitting started when Nola was eight.
Not the dramatic made for television kind. The quiet kind. The kind where a hand catches you on the back of the head while you’re washing dishes. hard enough to make your teeth click and nobody says a word about it. The kind where fingers close around your arm and squeeze until you understand that the pain will stop when you stop talking.
The kind that doesn’t leave marks anyone would notice unless they already knew where to look. Charlene knew where to look. She chose not to. By the time Nola was 12, she’d learned the architecture of survival in that house. Stay small, stay quiet, eat fast, and clean your plate because food left behind meant you were ungrateful, and ungrateful meant Dale’s hands again.
