SUTTON’S HOME – CHAPTER ONE
June 1985
Dawn breaks over the sweeping green pastures as Sutton dreamily stares out her bedroom window. She can see the fresh dew on the blades of grass as her eyes travel across the lush expanse toward the horse barn. The typical red structure has stood solid since her grandfather built it forty-three years ago. Within its walls resides her horse, Lucy with a beautiful sorrel coat and wavy flaxen mane. Lucy was a gift from her father soon after her mother died in a car accident eight years ago. Although a man of little words, Sutton’s father possesses much aggression and often calms the waters with expensive gifts after a horrendous and shameful incident. The horse was meant as an apology for the car crash – Sutton’s father had been driving and was drunk, again.
Sutton stretches and sighs as the sun rises over the horizon. Today is the last day of high school, finally a senior with uncertain plans ahead other than the opportunity to take Lucy for a ride before the evening’s graduation ceremony. She says a silent prayer that her father will stay sober today so she doesn’t have to excuse his often erratic drunken behavior during her special day. With a quick glance back at the barn, she rises from the window seat and ambles toward her bathroom where a hot shower will ease her mind for a moment. As the water cascades over her bruised body she flinches in pain as she rubs the soapy loofah across her back. Her father is not only a drunk, but also a man who beats his daughter for resembling the woman he loved and killed.
She wraps her hair up in the terry cloth towel and pads over to her closet. She reaches for her stone washed mini skirt, a pink lacy off-the-shoulder top, and white denim jacket. Being a warm June day, she decides to slip her bare feet into a pair of white Keds. She sits at her desk and removes the gold framed photo of her mother from the bottom drawer. Her father has erased all memories of her mother from the house including the beautiful pastel landscapes she painted over the years and hung in every room, but Sutton had managed to rescue one small portrait. In the photo, her mom leans against the wooden field fence behind the barn. Her tall frame, something Sutton has always envied, laughing at something in the distance, her eyes full of happiness and her white teeth gleaming in the sunlight. Her curly blond hair tousled in the wind. Sutton examines the picture and traces her mom’s face with a finger. Same hair, same blue eyes. Even the same smattering of faint freckles across the bridge of her nose. But her mom’s face was much thinner compared to Sutton’s perfectly round face with a dimple in her right cheek which her mom had called “endearing”.
Sutton turns the frame over and carefully pulls the taped newspaper article off the back. She unfolds the yellowed paper, the creases swallowing the printed words that described her mother’s death. The headline screams “Lawyer’s Wife Dies in Car Crash”. Sutton remembers her dad had been drinking before picking up her mom from the Art Center. She remembers it had been raining. The article said the car was hit from the side as it hydroplaned through a red light. She remembers her dad doing community service for many weekends after that accident, but never wondered if that was penance for the death he likely caused. She refolds the paper, securing it to the back of the frame, then eases the photo under the papers in her desk drawer and wishes her mom could watch her graduate.
Sutton’s dad had continued his drinking habit after her mom died causing him to go on reckless tirades, using Sutton as his punching bag. Feeling her father’s pain and grief, she always does her best to help him feel happy. She keeps the house clean, follows the rules, and does well in school. She buries all her feelings. She’s been burying those feelings for so long, the only thing she knows how to do is plaster a smile on her face and act as if everything’s okay. Her smile widens to mask the terror she feels every time she senses a shift in her father’s behavior. However, she believes there is good in everyone and she silently forgives her father for his outbursts and beatings knowing he is a good man unable to handle this life.
* * * * *
Hiding her nerves about the future, Sutton skips down the stairs, grabs her car keys from the bowl on the fireplace mantle, and hollers a quick goodbye to her dad.
“Off to school, dad! Gonna stay late to help Jonah and the guys set up chairs for graduation tonight!”
“Yep,” her dad grumbles as Sutton slams the front door and bounds down the front steps.
The last drive to her last day of school, she backs her silver Acura Integra (another gift from dad after a beating that landed Sutton in the hospital with a broken rib and a concussion) down the driveway and onto the dirt road leading her to school. Sutton cranks up the volume of the radio and sings along to Bon Jovi’s “Runaway”.
The dirt road gives way to the paved town boulevard and Sutton turns left as the first notes of Van Halen’s version of “Pretty Woman” blares through the speakers. As she continues the drive to campus, Sutton daydreams about her future. She has no plans to attend college even though most of her friends will. She has a weekend job waiting tables at a popular deli and makes enough in tips for cute clothes and manicures. She doesn’t want to wait tables forever, but doesn’t have any idea what else she might be successful at. Her father has never offered any words of encouragement or support and Sutton isn’t one to venture out and try new things.
However, she does have Lucy. Sutton spends as much time as possible with Lucy riding through the yellow fields and trailed woods just beyond the property lines of her home. On a whim, Sutton thinks about starting some sort of horse business. Maybe teaching children to ride or giving backcountry tours on horseback.
Lost in her thoughts, Sutton blinks and realizes she’s at the school’s entrance. She brakes hard, spins the wheel to the right, and skids into the student lot. She clenches her teeth, tenses her back, and fights to regain control of the car. She cannot afford another beating, especially today. She parks and sighs, thankful she didn’t cause an accident, but also with a pang of loneliness knowing today is her last day of school forever and who knows what will happen when her friends leave for college.
