Read The Purity of Blood: Volume I Online
Authors: Jennifer Geoghan
The Purity of Blood: Volume I
The Purity of Blood
Volume I
By
Jennifer Geoghan
For Jim,
For not telling me it
stunk after reading the first draft … when clearly it did.
And for Lauri,
For taking me to
Randall’s house.
Copyright © 2014
Jennifer Geoghan
Cover Art by Jennifer
Geoghan
All rights
reserved.
No part of this book may be
reproduced in any format without permission in writing from the author, except
in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews
Want to know when Jennifer
Geoghan’s
next books are being released?
Some
myths are based on truths, and some things we hold as
truths are based on myths.
How does one distinguish one
from the other?
Do we live our whole lives
behind a veil?
Do we accept the truths we
want to out of convenience and discard the rest to maintain our blissful
ignorance?
What would happen if one day
the veil was torn and you saw truth for truth?
Would you run away or stay?
Courage defines one’s own
personal answer to the question.
Do you have the courage to
accept the world as it truly is, or would you, out of fear, live happily in the
embrace of the lie?
SARA
“It’s
never going to fit,” my
mother said as I trudged into the garage still half asleep.
A faint hint of sunrise was just coming in
the windows reminding me how much I wished I was back in bed.
It was too early in the morning for
this.
“I told you not
to pack so much.
You’re only going to
college, not the moon.”
I really loved
my mother, but the woman could find a thousand ways to say
I told you so
, and at times like this, as much as I loved her, the
moon almost didn’t sound far enough away.
Even though I suspected I was going to miss home terribly, I was glad to
be escaping these four walls … escaping a past that seemed to haunt me here
like a shadow I couldn’t shake.
Last night I’d
left all the things I was planning on taking with me for my first year of
college away from home neatly packed in boxes on the garage floor to arrange
this morning.
My mother, trying to be
overly helpful had attempted to pack my car for me, but wasn’t having much
success getting the last few boxes in.
In all honesty, she’d made a real mess of it.
“Yes, it
will.
You just have to pack it the right
way.”
I must have
involuntarily rolled my eyes because she gave me one of her looks that said I’d
better watch my step.
Her blonde brow
furrowed as her hands came up to rest on her slender hips.
With a wary eye, she silently strode past me
into the house, leaving me to empty the car and start all over again.
An hour later I slammed the rear
door of the old silver hatchback closed, all the boxes neatly packed
inside.
I loved this car.
It had taken me forever to save up the cash
to buy it.
Even though my cousin had
sold it to me at a good price, money was hard to come by when I’d have rather
spent my time studying than holding down a job.
My baby wasn’t much to look at, but I took good care of her and she’d
never let me down.
Hearing a noise,
I turned to see my mother standing on the top landing of the stairs.
She was upset, but I wasn’t exactly sure
why.
With her arms crossed in front of
her, her blue eyes gave me something of a leer.
It seemed like a mixture of frustration that I’d done what she hadn’t been
able to, and perhaps sadness that her baby was leaving home for the first
time.
Shaking my head, I chalked it up
to pre-empty nest syndrome and went back up the stairs into the kitchen for a
quick breakfast before I hit the road.
It really was too early in the morning for this.
Mom followed
behind me and as I opened the fridge, I noticed she’d made my favorite.
On the table sat a plate of steaming cinnamon
French toast with a bottle of the really good maple syrup I loved so much.
After giving her a quick thank you smile, I
poured myself a glass of orange juice and sat down to eat.
I knew it was
tough for her.
We were close and with my
brother long moved out, I’m sure it was going to be pretty quiet around here
after I left.
She didn’t want me to go,
but I also knew she was torn.
She wanted
me to be happy, and as much as I loved my parents, I knew it was time for me to
go regardless of their thoughts on the matter.
Taking a seat
across the counter from me, she started to drink her coffee.
In between sips she went on about being safe
at school and remembering that although New Paltz seemed like a small town like
Wading River, it was full of kids from the big cities.
Apparently you could never be too careful who
you made friends with.
I half listened,
appreciating her sentiment, but it was nothing she hadn’t already said twenty
times before over the course of the summer.
I loved my parents dearly, but they were slightly obsessive about my
safety.
Actually slightly didn’t really
begin to cover it.
“Just remember
everything we’ve taught you and you’ll be fine,” she sighed.
“Also remember that if at any point you
change your mind and want to come home –”
“I won’t, Mom,
but thanks,” I said, cutting her off as I got up to put my dishes in the sink.
When I turned to
go, she opened the back door and yelled “She’s leaving, Carl” loud enough for
all the neighbors to hear.
A minute
later my father appeared in the door just as I disappeared into the
garage.
I put my purse
on the hood of my car, looking through it one last time to make sure I had my
maps and enough toll money for the drive up to New Paltz.
I’d never actually made the drive by myself
before and was a little nervous about it.
Not that I’d admit that to my parents.
They were still debating if letting me go away to college by myself was
a good idea at all.
I didn’t want to
give them even an inkling that as I stood on the cusp of my first real
adventure, I was shaking on the inside.
And I
was
shaking.
I was pretty sure it was with
excitement.
Only minutes from departure,
I didn’t even want to consider there could be any other possible explanations,
like I was glad to get away from loving parents such as my own.
They loved me, I knew they did, but their
love was tempered with strange shades of anxiety about my safety.
I needed to be free of them if only for the
school year, I needed to breathe.
Rifling through
my purse, I felt horribly guilty about my feelings, but I couldn’t change them.
As I finished
recounting my toll money, Dad came up behind me and gave me a kiss on top of my
head.
“Time to go
already?” he sighed.
“Yep.”
In his own quiet
way I knew he really didn’t want me to go.
Not so much because he would worry about my safety, which he would, but
because he was just going to miss having me around.
My old man.
I was going to miss him too.
How
do you tell someone they’ve been your pillar of strength your whole life?
“Well, be safe
and don’t drive over the speed limit.
I’m not paying for any tickets.
So if you get any, plan on getting a job up there to pay for them
yourself.”
I turned to face
him.
He was a big guy with burly
shoulders and a hint of grey in his sandy brown hair, the kind of father that
at first glance would scare the hell out of any prospective suitors.
Fortunately, he’d never had to worry about
that as I’d never brought a guy home before.
If men were interested in me, I’d never noticed.
It’s not that I was ugly or anything, but I
guess my lack of social skills in the world of flirtation limited me, and I’d
never met a guy who interested me enough to make any great effort in that
department.
By my own admission, the
only thing I’d ever flirted with before was disaster.
Looking up at
him, I thought I saw a sparkle in his eye that might have been the formation of
a tear, but if it was, it never materialized.
I’d really miss him.
Not that we
talked much as neither of us were big talkers, but he was always a shoulder to
lean on when you didn’t want to say anything.
Sometimes his ability for comforting silence was my favorite quality
about him.
As I reached for
the door handle, Mom pulled me back into a ferociously protective hug.
“I’m going to miss you so much!” she
said, her face buried in my hair.
Unlike
Dad, she was crying.
“Try to stay safe
and call me every night.”
“Mom!”
“She’s not going
to call you every night, Vivy.
For
crying out loud, she’s old enough to stand on her own two feet now.”
He shot me a side glance insinuating that he
hoped
I was, but wasn’t a hundred
percent sure of it himself.
“Okay, every
other night,” she sniffled.
“And
remember to go to church.”
After hugs, I
got in the car and slowly backed out of the garage.
Turning onto Overlook Drive, I gave them one
last look in the rearview mirror and started towards this new unwritten chapter
in my life.
I was nervous, but also so
excited I could hardly sit still in my seat.
I was pretty sure the seat belt was the only thing holding me down.
New Paltz was a place that seemed to hold …
possibilities.
I only hoped I would find
whatever it was that I was looking for there … whatever I seemed to so
desperately need.
“We love you, Sara!”
Mom called.
My father put his arm around her just as she buried her head deep
in his chest.
Then I rounded the corner
and they were gone.
Mom tended to be
the dramatic one.
At least she seemed
that way to me.
Fiercely overprotective
might be another word for it.
I wasn’t
sure how Dad talked her into letting me make the drive up to New Paltz
University by myself, but I would be eternally grateful to him for it.
From our house in Wading River it was about a
three hour drive through New York City up to New Paltz.
Mom wasn’t crazy about me driving the twenty
minutes over to Port Jefferson for work, let alone leaving Long Island by
myself.
Dad didn’t deny her much, but I
think he understood this was something I really wanted to do by myself.
In many ways he was as overprotective as she
was, but somehow he seemed to understand me more.
As I drove out
of our neighborhood, it was still early in the morning and the first of the
early risers were just emerging from their houses.
How strange it felt.
I wouldn’t be here to see the lights go out
in their windows tonight, or tomorrow night, or next week even.
All of a sudden not in as much of a hurry to
leave, I turned right on North Country Road to take the scenic route out of our
sleepy hamlet.
In the process I drove
past a few landmarks of our small community; the white steeple of the old
Congregational church, the duck ponds and the road down to the town beach.
I would have loved to have taken one last
early morning walk along the beach.
It
would be a long while until I was home again, but there wasn’t enough
time.
I needed to get on the road if I
wanted to avoid the heavier traffic in the city.
Somehow I felt like this time away from home was my chance,
my first real chance to be normal.
Could
I?
I wasn’t sure, but I prayed to God I
could, prayed with all my might that it was even possible at all for someone
like me.
A little less than three hours
later I pulled off the New York State Thruway into the college town of New
Paltz.
An hour or so north of New York
City, New Paltz is a small, somewhat isolated community nestled in a
mountainous area great for hiking.
I’d
chosen New Paltz University for many reasons, only one of which was how the
campus tour guide had mentioned what great trails ran through the surrounding
mountains.
I’d been looking forward to
my first chance to explore the woods and break in my new hiking boots.
They were one of the few new items I’d
splurged on to take away to school with me.
Of course if you asked me in front of my parents, I’d have said I’d
chosen NPU for purely academic reasons.
I pulled into
the parking lot behind my new dorm, Capen Hall and was lucky enough to find a
parking spot close to the back entrance.
I’d been here just a few weeks ago for orientation, and while here had purposefully
spent some time familiarizing myself with the general lay of the land.
Not having gotten lost yet, it looked like
that was already starting to come in handy.
While the
afternoon sun rained down through the cloudless late summer sky, everywhere I
looked the campus buzzed with activity.
The sidewalks were filled with students carrying boxes and miscellaneous
items into the dorms.
Music and voices
drifted out of open windows as I passed them, and the constant sound of
laughter and music seemed everywhere.
I
had to wonder if this enthusiastic mood would continue after the first day of
classes, or would campus eventually settle into a more somber, scholastic mood.
The three story
red brick building that was to be my new home wasn’t new.
If I had to guess, I’d say it was probably
built in the sixties.
Inside its walls
the not unpleasant smell of incense clung to the air as a constant reminder
that we were only about a half an hour from Woodstock.