Heated Abscondment

Chapter Three

After sneaking her out of her foster’s family house in the middle of the night they drove their friend to her college. They spent the whole next day together and helping her settle into her room and get ready for the school year. They helped her get her books and supplies. They helped her find and get a refurbished laptop. They even pitched in and helped her get a basic cellphone. Together they prepaid a few months’ worth of her plan. She was a week early on campus, but she planned on working for the professor helping him prepare for class. Then on the last day of the weekend, they made the 3 hour drive back to their homes.

They called and texted through the week.

Their steal away in the night worked.

The Smith’s had no idea where she was and what college she’s going to.

They pestered her friends and families, wanting to know where she went. But her friends had good parents and they turned the Smith’s away.

The judge didn’t need to know why she was in the foster care in the first place. And he definitely didn’t need to know why she hated her father.

That her mom had secretly taken her to a social worker one evening. With the intention of confronting her father, and possibly being killed in the process.

Her father had repeatedly abused her mother. That he had repeatedly left her and came back for her. She had attempted to leave him but it always ended violently. Her mother had attempted finding refuge at crisis centers for women, but either they had little funding and couldn’t foot the support she needed. She needed to be relocated with a new identity, but that required money and labor they didn’t have. She didn’t have any family so she didn’t have anyone to turn to for support.

So he always found her, and always made her pay for trying to leave.

He always seemed to get what he wanted.

That her first name was one of the many things he always got his way on. But she had her mother’s last name when she was born because when she gave birth, it was one of those periods that he wasn’t with her. Her mother wrote that the short window when she was newborn and he wasn’t there was her favorite times.

But he came back.

And like times before, so did his temper.

This time she played the dutiful significant other to protect her daughter.

Times were a little better, but he would still raise his hand at her.

She took it quietly, but when her beautiful baby grew from toddler to little girl, she couldn’t protect her from him completely.

Her mother wrote that she caught him touching his daughter and saying things that she knew were unacceptable.

Her mother wrote that for her daughter’s safety she was going to act when she couldn’t for her own safety. Her mother’s last letter, read just like that, a last letter. Apologizing for her wrongdoings, shortcomings, what her hopes and dreams are for her daughter. And finally, what her plans were that night, and why her mother did what she did.

When she was older, she found the news article of her parents’ death.

It described a pretty grisly scene.

That they had killed each other.

The wife was found with a bloody knife in her hand, minor cuts on her body, several blunt force bruising, and bruising on her neck that led them to believe she had been strangled. There was a blood trail of a bleeding body crawling through the house. They found the husband in the living room. He had been stabbed repeatedly, his wrists and throat sliced.

There was upturned furniture and destroyed items in the house that it only took a novice investigator to deduce a domestic dispute broke out and they had killed each other.

The judge granting her name change didn’t nee to know that.

He just needed to know that she was changing her name due to emotional and sentimental reasons.

She wasn’t running from creditors, she wasn’t running from the police, she wasn’t involved in any criminal activity.

She ran her name change announcement in the local newspaper for the period of time the judge told her to. Which to her was perfect, because she ran it in her college town paper.

No one from her hometown went here, so then very little chance it would travel to her foster family.

She was planning this perfectly. She was on the tail end of her two year period at the junior college. She’s transferring to the state university under her new legal name. She already has talked to advisors and admissions, she’ll get a partial scholarship, she just needs to fill out paperwork with her new legal name.