“I like going to church. Why should you mind? It isn’t hurting you...”

“Dinner was always late when you went, when your father was alive,” the brunette said angrily. “I had to take care of him. So messy.” She made a face. In fact, Roberta had never done a thing for her husband. She left it all to Michelle. “And I had to try to cook. I hate cooking. I’m not doing it. That’s your job. So you’ll make dinner before you go to church and you can eat when you get home, but I’m not waiting an extra hour to sit down to a meal!”

“I’ll do it,” Michelle said, averting her eyes.

“See that you do! And the house had better be spotless, or I won’t let you go!”

She was bluffing. Michelle knew it. She was unsettled by the Reverend Blair. That amused Michelle, but she didn’t dare let it show.

“Can I go to my room now?” she asked quietly.

Roberta made a face. “Do what you please.” She primped at the hall mirror. “I’m going out. Bert’s taking me to dinner up in San Antonio. I’ll be very late,” she added. She gave Michelle a worldly, patronizing laugh. “You wouldn’t know what to do with a man, you little prude.”

Michelle stiffened. It was the same old song and dance. Roberta thought Michelle was backward and stupid.

“Oh, go on to your room,” she muttered. That wide-eyed, resigned look was irritating.

Michelle went without another word.

She sat up late, studying. She had to make the best grades she could, so that she could get a scholarship. Her father had left her a little money, but her stepmother had control of it until she was of legal age. Probably by then there wouldn’t be a penny left.

Her father hadn’t been lucid at the end because of the massive doses of painkillers he had to take for his condition. Roberta had influenced the way he set up his will, and it had been her own personal attorney who’d drawn it up for her father’s signature. Michelle was certain that he hadn’t meant to leave her so little. But she couldn’t contest it. She wasn’t even out of high school.

It was hard, she thought, to be under someone’s thumb and unable to do anything you wanted to do. Roberta was always after her about something. She made fun of her, ridiculed her conservative clothes, made her life a daily misery. But the reverend was right. One day, she’d be out of this. She’d have her own place, and she wouldn’t have to ask Roberta even for lunch money, which was demeaning enough.