Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 78696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
But when he came back from his last deployment, he was different.
Harder.
More…something.
Crazy was definitely part of that something.
It didn’t all happen at once.
It slowly built and built until there was literally no other recourse for my mother and I had to put some distance in between us.
He had good days when he could hold a conversation with you and no one would be the wiser that he was troubled. It was the bad days, though, that had increased in frequency that were the problem. The days where he perceived everything and everyone as a threat to his family.
And that meant the maid. My mother’s brother, who was also a military man.
The family dog.
The family dog had been the last straw.
The proverbial one that broke the camel’s back.
My father shot our family dog, Sparkle – right in front of me – for barking at me because he wanted to be fed.
My mother had then taken me and stayed at a hotel while my father was taken away by my uncle, and had been gone ever since.
My father knew right from wrong.
He just had a problem with impulse control.
When he was in the midst of one of his episodes, he would drift to a place where he couldn’t control his actions and couldn’t decipher right from wrong. He’d always snap out of it, and when he came back to himself, he always knew that he’d done something bad.
So he didn’t fight my mom.
He knew he was having trouble adjusting to civilian life.
He knew he needed help that we couldn’t give him.
I still went to see him, but only after I made sure that he was okay first.
Starting up the bike, I rode the rest of the way up the driveway and shut it off beside my mom’s small SUV.
“Where’s your head at?” Lenore asked softly.
I blinked, turning to face her.
“Sorry. I was thinking about my dad,” I said softly.
“Your dad? I didn’t realize your mother was married.”
I nodded. “They’re married. But they’re just not…together.”
“What my son is too polite to say,” my mother’s laughter filled voice said from above us, “is that my husband is not well. He suffers from mood swings. He’s unpredictable, and he is dangerous to be around when he’s having an episode, which made it unsafe for us to live with him. I had no choice but to separate from him. He isn’t allowed to come here without our prior knowledge.”
I turned to find my mother smiling at me and Lenore, and I let Lenore go to walk up the steep steps towards her.
Once I reached the second step up, I opened my arms just in time for my mother to launch herself into them.
I smiled as I smelled my mother’s unique scent--roses and mint—as well as the scent of bread wafting out the open door to her house.
Being in her arms always felt right, and the familiar smells made my breathing come more evenly in my chest.
My mom always made it better, and it was good to be home.
“You’re being so rude,” I teased my mother as I set her down on her feet.
My mother gasped, as any good Southern lady would do, and moved around my body to skip down the steps.
“I’m so sorry. When he told me y’all were coming, I got so excited to see him again that I forgot you were here!” My mother cried. “My name is…”
“Oh, I know who you are,” Lenore smiled. “If I’d have known I was coming here ahead of time, I would’ve brought my mother’s cook books for you to sign, Mrs. Deen.”
“My name’s Rayleigh, please use it. Or you can call me mom,” my mother smiled fondly.
Lenore’s face blushed as she surreptitiously looked over at me. “Sounds good, Mrs...Rayleigh.”
“Oh, I’m so excited. I have some cook books you can have. My office is filled with them,” my mother laughed, pulling Lenore by the hand into the house.
Lenore didn’t even spare me a glance as she hurried behind my mother.
I followed closely behind, closing the door that they’d left open behind me.
My mother’s house hadn’t changed since I’d last been there six months before. After Tanner’s funeral.
She had someone come in once a week to clean, I was sure, but besides that, she hadn’t changed it.
Which was weird for my mother who was notorious for moving her couches around once a week.
“Ma!” I called as I walked into the kitchen. “What’s up with your…”
I trailed off as I saw both Casten and Ridley in the middle of my mother’s kitchen.
Two men that I’d left three days ago to keep an eye on a man whose days were numbered.
Both had their hands full.
Casten was rolling out what looked to be dough.
He had a red apron on that dubbed him as the ‘butter baby.’
Ridley had on a black apron that was blank, but it was so covered in what looked to be flour. So much so that it might as well have been white.
The funniest thing, though, was the apron Lenore was pulling on over her head.
On it said, ‘I’m the butter queen.’
I laughed.
Lenore narrowed her eyes as she looked down at what had caught my attention, then sighed.
“Really, Rayleigh? You couldn’t have found me anything other than one that says ‘queen’ on it?” Lenore asked laughingly.
My mother looked at her with confusion. “What’s the problem?”
Lenore smiled fondly. “Nothing. Griffin calls me ‘queenie’ and ‘queen’ because all of my things have tiaras on them. Like my purse…and my…shoes.”
She placed her hands down on the flour covered counter as she spoke.
I snorted. “No, it’s because all of her underwear have ‘queen’ and tiaras on them. She does have the bag, but that doesn’t have anything to do with why I call her…”
I was shut up by Lenore’s flour covered hand coming down flat on my chest. “That’s quite enough.”
I winked at her.
“Ma, why’d you let these two jokers in?” I asked.
I should’ve known they’d come.
They were all worried about me.
I wondered if Peek had put them up to it or if they’d come on their own.