My mother left when I was four. Rather, my father drove her away. And I know he secretly wished she'd taken me with her. Nonetheless he raised me on his own.
For awhile, anyway. Until that morning nine years later when I woke up and found him slumped over the kitchen table, a knife in his back.
Everything that happened after that is just a whirlwind of memories. I called the police, who arrived amid a flashing of lights, and was soon carted off to a foster home. Not long after, the questioning began.
"You didn't see anything unusual?"
"No."
"And you didn't hear anything?"
"No."
The questions were always the same, as were my answers. I had seen nothing, I had heard nothing. There was no sign of forced entry. The chances of it having been suicide were pretty slim. And I was asleep the whole night. My father was just...dead.
My life seemed to go downhill after that. Sure I didn't have to deal with my father's drinking habits, but being thirteen meant I was too young to take care of myself, and too old for anyone to be interested in adopting. So I was taken from foster home to foster home, never staying anywhere for too long. And I certainly dealt with things much worse than my drunk father had been.