The Ties that Bind (Kingdom) Read Free

don’t I?”
    “Of course you do. This is your home.”
    Reaching the door, Hope turned around and looked back at her parents. “A home… I’ve never had a home in my life. How can any place with you two in it be called a home?”
    Walking through the door, Hope closed it with an almost soundless click. The finality of the sound sent reverberations of change throughout the now quiet room.
    “Do you see what you’ve done?” Mason asked his wife through bared teeth.
    “What have I done, Mason?” Taryn asked, uncaring of his answer, in that moment not caring about him.
    “Our daughter came home because she needed us, and your drunken display has turned her away from us!”
    “Us? Don’t you mean you, Mason? Well for the first time in years I see you, Mason. I see you clearly. I know what you’ve been doing, and tonight it stops. No more drink, no more pills! Now what are you going to do? I take back my power… so what are you going to do now, Mason, hmm?” Taryn mocked.
    “Stop repeating my name in that ridiculous fashion!”
    “I take back my power, Mason, and I’m taking back my child!”
    “Good luck with that. But to my way of thinking, I’d say you were about twenty-four years too late!”
     

Chapter 2
    Hope laid in bed, her mind running the gamut of her emotions, chopping and changing to all that had taken place over the last two days. How she had so quickly gone from having it all, the perfect life; to having nothing but a drunken mother and a controlling, manipulative father.
    The scene that had played out on her arrival home was nothing new. She had been through it a thousand times. Her mother being sorry, professing she was done with alcohol and the pills. Hope clinging to her father, knowing that they were deliberately shutting her mother out of their closeness, just to hurt her. Hope knew that their behavior pushed her mother further into her addictions, she knew it, and somehow she took a perverse pleasure in it.
    Tonight though, tonight something had been different. Her mother had acted as though she were actually sober. For the first time in decades, Taryn had appeared sober. Her eyes were clear, her speech lucid, and Hope was unsure how to deal with this new Taryn. The woman who had stood before her an hour ago was the polar opposite of the woman she had known throughout most of her life.
    Hope’s introspections shifted, listening intently to the noise that had disturbed her thoughts. It had sounded as though it was coming from the direction of her mother’s room and she froze. She had heard the sound many times before but had pretended otherwise. Gripping the bedding tightly around her shaking body, Hope gasped for breath. She wanted to block out the sounds, but instead, and almost against her will her mind honed in, strained to hear what was taking place.
    In the past she had prided herself on her ability to remain untouched, uncaring of what was being played out in her mother’s bedroom. But something had shifted, her feelings of inertia were gone. She needed to know what was taking place in her mother’s room. No more burying of her head under the covers. Too much had already taken place in her life while she cowered behind a closed door.
    Rising from the bed, Hope padded on silent feet to her bedroom door and pressed her ear against the wooden paneling. The sounds were still muffled, only now she could hear her mother crying and the deep drone of her father’s voice.
    Turning the handle, Hope made her way down the hallway and stopped a few steps away from her mother’s door. In her indecisiveness, fear gripped her in earnest, her breathing increased, afraid at what she was about to encounter.
    Turning the handle of the door, Hope paused when it was just wide enough for her to see the scene unfolding before her. Her mother was sitting in a chair crying. Her father beside her, one of her hands grasped in his. He was on his knees, also crying and pleading with her mother.
    “Why