1 Once Upon a Time...

Gwen Turner ran until her muscles screamed from the strain, but the tail lights continued to grow further and further from her. She'd lost her flip flops yards back, and the bottoms of her bare feet were bleeding on the gravel as she reluctantly slowed. Her vision swam with tears as the dust began to settle around her.

He'd left.

Her father had left them without so much as an explanation. She'd woken up to the sound of her father shouting something, but when she'd gotten to the kitchen, her mother was sitting silent at the table and wouldn't respond to Gwen's questions. That's when Gwen heard the truck engine revving.

She wasn't sure what she'd planned to do if she'd have miraculously been able to catch up with him. What power did a sixteen-year-old girl have over a grown man? Even if she'd been able to think of the right words to say, how long would have they kept him there with them?

Fury flared up inside her, and she scooped up a handful of rocks, tossing them futilely at the tail lights as they turned onto the highway. She screamed curses into the darkness, not caring that there was no one within miles to hear them.

Then, with a sniffle, she turned on her heels and started the long, painful walk back to the little trailer that she and her parents lived in at the end of the long, empty road. When she got inside, she was limping badly, even with her flipflops back on, but her mom didn't notice or even look up from the kitchen table.

"What happened?" Gwen asked as she collapsed into a chair beside her.

Silence.

Raking her messy red hair back with both hands, Gwen groaned. It wasn't the first time her dad had left, but it was the first time he'd had a suitcase with him. There was no sense in sitting there, trying to pry information from her mom.

Helen Turner was a mousey woman, almost afraid of the sound of her own voice. Her husband hated that about her. Some days, Gwen hated that too, but she loved her mom, and so she stood up and kissed Helen on top the head. "Don't worry about it," she said softly. "He'll calm down and come home soon. It'll all be okay."

But it wasn't okay.

A week passed, and then a month. Each day Helen slipped deeper and deeper into depression. She lost her job the third week after her husband left, so Gwen took a job at the grocery store and learned how to take care of the house. She would wake up and cook for her mom, who was usually in bed, then she would go to school, then come back to check on her mom before going to work.

It was the first week of June when she came home from work to find her mom unconscious on the living room floor, empty pill bottles scattered all over the kitchen table. "Mom!" Gwen screamed, falling beside her as she shook her shoulder.

Helen's breathing was shallow. Gwen fumbled with her cell phone but was able to dial 911. She rode in the ambulance to the hospital with her mother, the whole trip praying that her mom would live, but as soon as they got to the hospital, they told her she'd have to go to the waiting room.

"Miss Turner?" a young officer asked as he poked his head into the glass room of ICU less than ten minutes after they finally let Gwen see her mom.

Gwen wiped her eyes and looked up from her mom. The machines that she was hooked to beeped softly. "Yes?"

He coughed apologetically as he sidestepped into the room. "I've got a few questions I've got to ask you. I'm sorry about that."

Although the last thing she wanted to do at that time was to talk, she drew a deep breath through her nostrils and said, "That's fine."

"Okay," he said, looking down at the pad of paper in his hand as if he were reading notes. "First, I'd like you to know you're not in any kind of trouble, but we need to know some things. You reported to the hospital staff that your mom doesn't have a history of mental illness. Is that true?"

"As far as I know."

He nodded, jotting something down. "Was there anything that happened recently that could have led her to consider suicide?"

"My dad left a few months ago." The words felt hollow in Gwen's throat. They reverberated in her soul.

"Do you have any family you could call to come to pick you up?"

Gwen shook her head. Her dad's parents were dead, and as far as she knew her mom didn't have any family. "I'm going to stay with her."

He scrubbed the back of his neck, looking down at the green tiles of the floor. "Well, they don't let people stay overnight in ICU."

"I could sleep in the waiting room." As soon as the words were out of Gwen's mouth, she knew they sounded scared. She couldn't help it; she was afraid. She desperately wanted someone to be there and tell her that everything would be okay.

"I'm sorry, but if you don't have a family member you can call, I'll have to get in touch with Child and Family Services."

The thought of going into foster care chilled her blood, and she began to think frantically of someone she could call. At that moment, though, there was a ruckus from outside the room. The officer turned as Gwen stood up, looking around him at the nurses following a tall woman who walked with the authority of a queen. "I don't care about your blasted protocols!" the woman shouted. "I said I want to see her!"

Without a word to Gwen, the officer stepped out the door, and said, "Excuse me, this is the Intensive Care Unit. You need to be quiet, or I'll have to escort you out."

She glared down at him. "My daughter and granddaughter are in that room," she said in a low voice, "and I will see them."

To Gwen's surprise, the officer stepped aside. The woman who claimed to be her grandmother was almost a foot taller than her, a mass of gun-metal gray hair piled into a bun on top her head like a crown. Her face, though, did not warm any when she saw Gwen. "You look much like your father," she said with a sneer.

"I..." she was about to apologize, but caught herself and glowered back. "And mom looks nothing like you."

At that, she chuckled, but there was little warmth within it. Walking to the bed, the woman said, "I suppose, your mother was so incredibly set on us never meeting, that introductions and explanations are in order. I am her step-mother. Her biological mother died when she was born. I raised her as my own, but she never called me 'mother.' In keeping with what I assume would be her wishes, you may call me Clara if you wish."

"So, how did you even know mom was here?" Gwen asked, taking a step back.

Clara waved her hand with a "tut." "Relax, dear, your grandfather is a powerful man. He's been keeping tabs on her since before you were born." Leaning over Helen's body, she shook her head with a sigh. "She will have the best care. The best. And you, darling, you will come to live with your grandfather and me."

"And if I don't want to?"

The woman turned slowly, her eyebrow arching slightly higher as she asked, "And where else, pray tell, will you go?"

Her words cut into Gwen like a knife. She needed to go somewhere. It was either with this woman, who claimed to be her step-grandmother or into foster care. "Fine," Gwen said, just above a whisper.

And that was how Gwen Turner found herself in the back of a stretch limousine driving towards the town of Sweet Water Creek.