Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 155798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 779(@200wpm)___ 623(@250wpm)___ 519(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 155798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 779(@200wpm)___ 623(@250wpm)___ 519(@300wpm)
I gave no fucks about breaking in.
Old cigarette stubs were in a can. The toilet hadn’t been flushed and stank up the place. Old needles were discarded on the table. Empty beer cans littered the floor everywhere.
Jesus Christ. This was where my sister lived? The last time I’d been at her place, it wasn’t like this.
I took pictures of everything, along with a video as I walked back through the place, before stepping out and relocking the place. Keeping the extra key, I walked back to my rental when a door opened behind me. “Little Monster? Is that you?”
Jesus. Little Monster. I’d not been called that since I was eleven, when I let the other kids call me that. That got changed to Monster in high school, and then all of it went away when Budd went away.
“Brett?” she asked again, trying to see me. An older lady’s head poked outside her door, her head lowered as if that would help her see who I was in the shadows.
I moved her way. She heard the crunch of my feet over the gravel and sticks. Her thin shoulders tensed, but as soon as I stepped into her own trailer’s light, she relaxed. She cast a hand over her graying hair, but it did little to tame the frizziness of the strands. It was still long, pulled back behind her. A smile spread over her face, moving her wrinkles aside. “It is you. How are you? You’ve gone and made us all so proud, you know. Our own boy, coming from this trailer park, going all the way to the big screen. The Super Bowl. Real proud.”
“Hello, Mrs. Neverroo. I thought you would’ve pulled out and gone to Arizona to live with your kids? You got grandbabies down there, don’t you?” Mabel Neverroo. She’d been one of the kind neighbors. She liked baking cookies, taking care of any kids in the park, in her own way. If we needed a place to crash after school, she’d let us watch her television as she put some popcorn in the microwave. She liked making lemonade too. It was one of her staples.
She laughed, her voice more gravelly than I remembered, and waved a hand toward me, still smiling. “Oh, you know me. I like my drink too much. I put up next to my kids, they’re in my business, telling me what’s healthy or not healthy for me. Love my grandbabies, but I like having my freedom at the same time.”
“You’re not tied down anymore? No more Wallace?”
A slight glimmer of pain showed in her gaze, and she let it shine. A sheen of tears appeared. She only blinked those away, moving so she was standing in the doorway, and hugged her jacket tighter around herself. She was pale. Her skin was usually kept tan from sitting outside in the sun so much, but it’d lost that color. “No. Wallace passed on a year ago. Cancer.” She cursed, her hand flicking away one of her tears. “Damn things. I don’t know why I’m crying. He was an abusive asshole most days. I spent most of my time keeping him out or keeping him away from here. Nothing good, was he.” She drew in a deep breath, shaking her head slightly. “Guess you miss what you know, right? Enough about me.” Her eyes flicked past me. “You won’t find your sister there, if that’s who you’re looking for. Last I saw, she’d been holed up at her boyfriend’s.”
Yes, that guy. “What’s his name?”
Her eyes narrowed a bit. “I was relieved when those kids were taken out of there. Considered reaching out, but you know the situation. Your sister’s gotten worse since this last boyfriend. He ain’t a good one. He was around a while back, then was gone. He’s been back again. I tried convincing Stevie to live here, or sleep here, but she was too worried about the other ones. Then your sister stopped showing up, and around a week later, vehicles pulled up and those kids were taken out of there. I hope everything’s being made correct regarding them.”
“His name?” I repeated.
She was studying me, knowing the situation, which a new surge of fury lit through me. She knew and she hadn’t said anything? Course she wouldn’t reach out, that’d make her a narc.
“I’ve no doubt you’ll find him.” She raised her chin up. “You’ll get his name then.”
She fully knew what I was planning on doing.
God, this life. It had a way of always pulling you back unless you got out and stayed out, and look at where I was. Back here. “I need the boyfriend’s name, Mabel.”
Her gaze continued to hold mine for a good thirty seconds as she was weighing whatever she saw in me, what she heard from me, and maybe what she remembered of me as a kid. I’d been one of those sitting at her table, the sound of popcorn popping in the microwave.