Punishment with Kisses Read Online Free PDF

people and their servants, and without Ash, it seemed cavernous and empty. I was always tempted to holler yodels down the long halls and time how long it took for the echoes to return, but it would have required a calendar instead of a stopwatch. I think there’s some kind of mathematical equation for determining the expanse of an estate with echo technology, like the way you calculate the distance of lightning from the time between a strike and the sound of thunder.
    I’ll never understand why Father moved us out there in the first place. Maybe it was his way of grieving or a desire to protect us girls after Mother died, that had him relocate us to this huge estate in Lake Oswego, a Portland suburb with neither the color nor the potential dangers of the city. Even when all of us were home, most of the rooms in the palatial house remained empty, save for unused furniture shrouded in those protective sheets that make a place particularly haunted and frightening when you’re a tween.
    I remember Ash not being much help in that department. She thought it was hilarious to torment me, and she’d often disappear for hours at a time and then claim she’d been abducted by the ghosts of former residents who were all killed in a bloodbath murder-suicide perpetrated by an insane patriarch.
    Even now, the rooms we used sporadically or merely passed through, like the sitting room, parlor, and formal dining room, remained untouched for weeks or months at a time—except by the maid staff, who were expected to clean every room at least once a week. My room was the size of a small apartment, and I had my own television set and refrigerator. For lunch all I had to do was call down and ask the cook to whip me up a sandwich. Mandated “family dinners”—how can it be a family dinner when Ash wasn’t joining us?—at Casa Caulfield were quiet affairs.
    Father seemed filled with rage when he was home, angrier than I’d ever seen him. Yet he never went out to the pool house and shut Ash down. I don’t think he even attempted to talk with her once after kicking her out of the house. Ash could be annoying, but I don’t understand why he didn’t put his foot down, stop her debauchery, and bring her back inside. It was like he was waiting for her to change completely before he’d even acknowledge she still existed. They were both stubborn as mules and neither was willing to give an inch until the other gave a mile. I didn’t realize it then, but she was begging for structure, not rebelling against it. I’ll never understand why he didn’t provide it.
    Father was stone silent at meals, occasionally grumbling something under his breath that I couldn’t decipher. But Tabitha seemed to understand because the comments usually sent her bursting into tears. I almost started feeling empathy for her. Here Father was pissed at Ash, and it was Tabitha and I having to bear the brunt of his anger. Behind closed doors, he and the stepmonster were fighting constantly. I guess with Ash out of the house they couldn’t pin their anger on her so they were taking it out on each other.
    That’s why I was so surprised that Tabitha started joining Ash by the pool four weeks after I arrived, sunning and drinking and laughing. I’d never gotten along with Father’s child bride, but she and Ash seemed to have some kind of understanding from the get-go. Being so close in age, I suppose they shared a certain perspective about the world. The age difference between Tabitha and Father had always perturbed me. I assumed Tabitha was a gold digger, in the relationship for Father’s money. I never understood what it was about older men that some women found attractive. It always struck me as oddly incestuous wanting to date someone old enough to be your father.
    I guess Ash saw it the other way around, like she felt it was inappropriate for Father to get involved with someone so young. For Ash, Tabitha’s age seemed to make her a victim, someone too naïve to