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      First Torrey House Press Edition, January 2014

      Copyright © 2014 by Melanie Bishop

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or retransmitted in any form or by any means without the written consent of the publisher.

      This book is a work of fiction. References to real establishments, organizations, locales and television shows are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. Characters, incidents and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination, and are not to be construed as real.

      Published by Torrey House Press, LLC

      P.O. Box 750196

      Torrey, Utah 84775 U.S.A.

       www.torreyhouse.com

      International Standard Book Number:

      978-1-937226-22-0 eBook

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2013952249

      Cover art by Christy Hawkins • christy-hawkins.com

      Cover and book design by Jeff Fuller, Shelfish • Shelfish.weebly.com

      CONTENTS

       Chapter Eight: Past Tense

       Chapter Nine: Maybe

       Chapter Ten: Her Head

       Chapter Eleven: A Nice Mom and Dad

       Chapter Twelve: No Chimpanzees

       Chapter Thirteen: Forgetting

       Chapter Fourteen: Chivalry

       Chapter Fifteen: Who I Am

       Chapter Sixteen: Golden

       Chapter Seventeen: A Girl Like Her, A Girl Like Me

       Chapter Eighteen: When the Weather Is Cold

       Chapter Nineteen: Merry Christmas

       Chapter Twenty: To Be Jolly

       Chapter Twenty-One: Every Unsad Thing

       Chapter Twenty-Two: Like a Small Pregnancy

       Chapter Twenty-Three: Here or Anywhere

       Chapter Twenty-Four: Endangered

       Chapter Twenty-Five: Benevolence

       Chapter Twenty-Six: Nothing But the Truth

       Chapter Twenty-Seven: Yes and No

       Chapter Twenty-Eight: Genuine Love

       Chapter Twenty-Nine: A Place to Start

       Chapter Thirty: Wow

       Chapter Thirty-One: A Cinderella Night

       Chapter Thirty-Two: Fairy Godfather

       Chapter Thirty-Three: Flesh and Blood

       Chapter Thirty-Four: Studying the Ode

       Chapter Thirty-Five: Hate List

       Chapter Thirty-Six: A Thousand Buffalo

       Chapter Thirty-Seven: Momma Bear

       Chapter Thirty-Eight: That School In Arizona

       About Melanie Bishop

       Acknowledgements

       About Torrey House Press

      This book is dedicated to all the young people in my life: nieces, nephews, great-nieces and great-nephews, Godkids, and all my students, current and former.

      MY SO-CALLED RUINED LIFE

       RUIN

      It’s one thing to lose your mom shortly before your sixteenth birthday. It’s another thing to know she was murdered. When they decide it’s your dad who did the murdering, nobody cares that you disagree. He is hauled off; you are farmed out. If you are wondering about now how this could get any worse, try living with this fact: you and your mother had not been getting along—barely speaking—for almost two years.

      Saying it in second person doesn’t make it better. This didn’t happen to you, it happened to me. But some hypothetical you can use the terms “mother” and “mom,” which aren’t words that have come out of my mouth for some time. Since we’d stopped speaking, I’d referred to her as Carla. Like some distant relative, a second cousin twice removed, maybe someone I’d never even met. Therefore, someone I couldn’t possibly miss.

      While I know there’s no way my dad did it, apparently dads far and wide are capable of this. If you watch TV shows like Dateline or 48 Hours, you know how common it is for people to kill their spouses. Mostly it’s men who kill their wives, but it happens the other way too. In fact, the minute someone is murdered, they will look first of all at the spouse. Some don’t even pretend to be grief-stricken. A man on the show calls up 911, says my wife’s dead on the floor, and doesn’t shed a tear.

      I don’t watch these shows because they’re good. They are, in fact, some of the worst journalism you can find. I watch because my father is on trial for the murder of his ex-wife, Carla, and there are reporters in the courtroom. These so-called reporters from 48 Hours and 20/20 and Dateline have tried to talk to me. I watch to prepare myself for when my own family’s tragedy shows up as entertainment on prime-time TV.

      The shows are terrible—even if the topic is riveting. They repeat everything a minimum of five times (I’ve counted), and after each commercial break they review the tale from the beginning, in case someone has decided to tune in mid-show. They flash the same pictures on the screen, over and over—the woman, beautiful and happy, smiling with her children. Family portraits where you’d never dream someone was thinking of killing someone else in the photo. And then there are the graphic crime scene pictures—blood-soaked carpets and mattresses, a body on the laundry room floor. They interview

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