As the afternoon went on, Brenda started having second thoughts. As righteous and good as it had felt to bag up all of Valentine's things and dump her at the bus terminal, and even though she loved the shocked and broken look on her stepdaughter's face—well, perhaps she had overreacted a little.
Grounding the girl and making her go to rehab would be enough for a first offense.
After all, even though the girl was spiritless, too quiet, sulky, and socially inept, she was pretty useful around the house. When Brenda left her with a list of chores, she usually got eight or nine out of ten of them done, and done correctly. She even spent hours playing with the triplets and reading to them.
Then there was also the issue of Michael. He would probably be upset when he learned what happened, and he might even blame his wife rather than his daughter.
Brenda resolved to go back to the bus terminal and pick Valentine up, right after she got the triplets from daycare and dropped them off at home. Brandi should be home by then, and she could watch her little sisters.
Yes, it had been long enough to teach Valentine a lesson. A lesson, that was it! That was all it was. A lesson. She hadn't really thrown Valentine out. Besides, the terminal was in a high crime area. If something happened to Valentine, people would point their fingers at her.
She got the triplets and returned home, where Brandi was leaving the house again, despite still being grounded. "Get back inside," she ordered her eldest daughter. "I have to go back out. Do the laundry, watch the triplets and make them a snack, and get dinner started."
"What? Where's Valentine? That's her job." Brandi asked.
"I have to go pick her up." Brenda said tersely.
"Why? What happened?" Was that a nasty little smirk hanging around her daughter's mouth?
"Just do what I said," Brenda herded Cherie, Kristal and Remy through the door, ignoring the cries of, "No, we don't want Brandi, we want Valentine."
Brenda drove back to the bus terminal, trying not to remember that two teenage girls had disappeared from that part of town over the last few years. She did not notice the bus to Anthracite pulling out of the station, heading west.
Valentine was on the wrong side of the bus to see her stepmother's SUV pull up as her bus pulled out. She looked up at the sky as the bus took a turn. Turbulent, that was the right word for her emotions. One moment, she almost wanted to vomit from fear and then, the next moment, the relief of being away from that house and that family made her want to soar up into the sky…
The bus wound its way through the suburbs, then the farmlands, until it reached the Lenape Mountains region, where trees still grew so close together that driving there was like driving through tunnels with leafy roofs. The area was known as an attractive getaway all year round, with skiing and snowboarding in the winter and hiking the rest of the year.
The town of Anthracite, as its name suggested, was originally a coal mining town, but the coal had been dug out decades ago. However, it was in commuting distance of a major city and near a large campus of the University of Pennsylvania, which was an Ivy League school, so it had thrived where other towns like it had shriveled up and died. A large part of its character and charm came from the downtown area, which had only small local shops and restaurants, no national franchises or chains.
Valentine blinked and rubbed her eyes as she got off the bus. Emotional distress exhausted her to the point where she dozed off during the long ride. Ah, there was her aunt's van, and there were both her aunts. Judy was a slender woman of medium height with greying auburn hair which she wore in a bun, while Alison, who was a chef, was taller and plumper and wore her silver hair in a pixie cut.
When Judy Townsend saw her niece alight from the bus, she immediately spread her arms. "Hug therapy, right here."
Valentine buried herself in the hug. "Oh, Aunt Judy!" She had thought she was done crying, but seeing the women who had been second mothers to her brought tears back to her eyes.
"Hey, second dose of hug therapy right here, " Aunt Ali tapped her shoulder.
"You're still the most marvelous person to hug," Valentine said as she was enveloped in vanilla scented arms.
"Right back at ya, kid. Okay, Judy told me all about what happened. Are the garbage bags in the undercompartments?"
"Yeah , they made me stow them there. I think a lot of my stuff is broken or ruined."
"We'll go through it. Maybe it's not as bad as you fear. That applies to this whole situation, by the way. It may not be as bad as it seems, and we'll go through it. Help me move your stuff to the van."
Soon the three were on their way out of town.
The area around Anthracite had lots of accommodations. There were big resorts with casinos and motels with theme rooms for any taste, and then there was the Rainbow Lodge.
Oddly enough, it had been named that decades before Judy and Ali bought it, but they took the name as a good omen. When they bought it, it had twelve cabins and a small lodge house, but now it had twenty four cabins and the lodge house had a large dining room and a big porch overlooking Laughlin Creek, which flowed through the property to Lake Laughlin, which was originally a very ugly mine hole.
To Valentine, the lodge and its surroundings were and would forever be the place she thought of as her childhood home. The smell of woodsmoke from the fireplace, the taste of good, clean water from the well, the feel of mud between her toes as she wades in the creek, the hooting of owls in the night and cheerful birdsong by day, and the sheer greenness of the woods.
"Here we are," Aunt Ali said as she pulled into the garage. "Now I know you're hungry, Val. I heard your stomach growl just now."
"It did, but I'm not really hungry," Valentine replied. She was aware that her stomach was gnawing on itself because it was so empty, but at the same time, she didn't really feel like eating.
"That's because you're upset. You need to eat. I'll start heating the soup while you two bring in the bags. Don't go upstairs without me, ya hear?" Aunt Ali leveled a finger at them and grinned.
"What's that about?" Valentine asked Aunt Judy as they picked up a couple of the plastic garbage bags.
"You'll see," her aunt replied. She winced as she heard broken things in the bag grind against each other. "Phew! I think a couple of perfume bottles must have been in this one. It reeks!"
"Yeah," Valentine thought of how many of her things must have been ruined.
"Don't worry, what we can't salvage, we can replace. It's only stuff." Judy reassured her.
"I don't even want to look at what's happened to all of it, but there are some things I really need to talk to you and Aunt Ali about."
Aunt Judy blinked. "I don't think that sentence made much sense. Or did it? Don't worry, we'll talk."
By the time all the bags were in the house, Ali had set a place at the family table for Valentine.
"Go ahead, we ate hours ago," she told her niece.
As Aunt Ali was a classically trained chef from a prestigious cooking school, the bowl of smoked trout chowder was guaranteed to be delicious, and the baguette with it was fresh and crunchy. As Valentine ate, she was surprised to find that she actually was hungry.
"So, where do you want to begin?" Aunt Judy took a seat opposite Valentine, while Aunt Ali put a plate with chocolate chip cookies down before taking a seat to the side.
"First of all, thank you for saying I should just come here and making it unconditional," she said. "I mean, I really didn't use drugs—not on purpose. I thought about it a lot on the way. I really feel stupid. Remember three months ago when Dad and Brenda went away, and Brandi immediately threw a party?"
"That's not one any of us will forget," Aunt Ali said. "What was the final amount of damage? Five hundred thousand dollars, what with the thefts, the boat, and the damage to the side of the house next to where the boat was?"
"Closer to six hundred thousand," Valentine said, "because some of the wines and liquor were really expensive. Anyway, I kind of pieced things together. I was the one who called the police."
"I am not surprised," Aunt Judy said.
"Totally unsurprised here as well," Aunt Ali said. "You did the right thing. A lot of those kids at that party drove there, I read. New drivers plus unlimited alcohol equals a car wrapped around a tree."
"I know, but I also knew I'd be in deep trouble if Brandi found out. I'm pretty sure she did…."