“Oh, sweetheart, there’s nothing to say. I’ve already cleared everything with Principal McLean. You know she and I go way back. She’s a very good friend of mine. She said she has a substitute filling in for you through the end of the year, but she’ll go ahead and terminate your contract. She said this isn’t how she normally does things, but she’d make an exception in light of the circumstances. Anyway, you won’t have to worry about going back after Christmas or next year. You can focus solely on Brooks.” Brenda smiles, patting his hand. “He’s going to need you, Demi—your undivided attention.”
Wonderful.
Just wonderful.
“I really love my job, Brenda,” I say. “You didn’t have to do that. I wanted to go back. And we don’t know how long his recovery will take. Don’t you think that was a little premature?”
“Nonsense.” She swats her hand. “You would’ve quit your job anyway after the wedding. Brooks needs a woman of the house, and you’re worth more than that paltry salary anyway. Your place is in the home. Abbott women run households, and the only snotty noses we wipe are those of the children we bear ourselves.”
Brenda’s lips pull into a warm smile to soften her crass words. I can’t help but wonder if she knows exactly what she’s doing—if the sweet space cadet thing is just an act. Maybe she’s one of those people with a personality disorder who manipulate everyone around them without anyone ever noticing.
All her quirks, all her idiosyncrasies . . . I’d always written them off, laughed and joked about them.
But this is where I draw the line.
“Brenda, I really wish you wouldn’t have done that.” My eyes burn. I feel the tears building behind them.
“Sweetheart, why are you so upset? I thought I was doing you a favor. Teachers could lose their licenses for abandoning contracts. This way you won’t have to deal with any negative fallout from not returning to your job,” she says. “I was only trying to help.”
I’m two seconds from telling her about the credit cards he charged up in my name when Derek waltzes in.
“I won’t stay long,” he says. “Just wanted to show my support and check on our guy.”
Brenda rises, arms wide open, and embraces my brother. “I appreciate your coming by, Derek. I’ll be sure to let Brooks know you were here.”
She speaks as if he’s going to wake up any minute and life will return to business as usual.
I hope to God he does wake up any minute.
And I hope he’s coherent, because as soon as he’s able, he’s got a lot of explaining to do.
Plus, I want my job back before it’s too late. I need my job back.
When Derek leaves, Brenda points toward a chair that pulls out into a bed. “Why don’t you get some rest, sweetheart? I’ll wake you if there’s any activity. I know you won’t want to miss anything, and the Rixton Falls Herald will be here in the morning to interview us.”
“Oh. I didn’t know anything about an interview. What if he’s not awake by then?”
“It’s just an update,” she says. “That Afton has taken a very keen interest in Brooks’s story.”
I find that impossible to believe. The girl’s questions were trite and unoriginal, and she looked like she was two seconds from dying of boredom when I saw her.
“Oh, okay.” I unfold the chair and make myself a little bed. Not sure how much sleeping I’ll be doing tonight, but I’m going to try.
Something tells me tomorrow’s going to be a long day.
Twenty-One
Royal
* * *
“Mona, open up.” I pound on the front porch door of my biological mother’s saggy-roofed house. For as long as I can remember, she’s lived in this hellhole, rotting floors and all.
We were extracted from her care when I was in first grade. Misty was still in diapers. And ironically enough, when shit went down seven years ago, Mona was the only one there for me. She came to my trial and visited me in prison.
It’s the only reason I’m standing here, pounding on her door, or giving her the time of day.
“Royal? That you?” The creak of her front door is followed by the stench of cat piss and dirty litter boxes. “Hey, baby, come on in.”
I show myself in. Mona’s in a yellow mu mu with Hawaiian flowers. She waddles to the living room and plops down, all five hundred pounds of her, and lifts her remote to pause her show.
“Ain’t seen you in a good while, Son,” she says. Mona grins with a mouthful of pearly whites. Those are new. Must’ve finally gotten those dentures.
I hate when she calls me Son. Like we’re family. I mean, we are, by blood, but where was she all those years I was shipped around from foster family to foster family? I’m convinced the only reason she reappeared in my life at nineteen was because she’d finally gotten cleaned up and realized she had no one left.
She had no choice but to try to make amends.
Out of everyone, she believed me when I told her I was innocent. Or at least, she said she did.
“Did you tell Misty where I live?” I stand in the middle of her living room. Every time I sit for too long, I leave here smelling like death and can’t get the smell out of my nose for days.
Mona’s moon-shaped face scrunches, and when she shakes her head, her chins flop.
“No, baby,” she says. “Misty knows better than to ask me that.”
“She showed up at my place,” I say. “Wanted me to take her in off the streets.”
Mona rolls her eyes. “What’s she doing on the streets? Rick kick her out?”
“She said Rick died.”
Mona’s small mouth hangs, and she lifts a pudgy couple of fingers to her lips like I’ve just delivered tragic news.
“Your sister is troubled.” Mona states what we both know to be the indisputable truth. She hasn’t had much to do with Misty since everything went down seven years ago, but I think she wishes she could bring us all together again. One little, happy family.
Never going to happen.
“Where’d she go?” Mona asks.
I shrug. “Don’t know, don’t care.”
She clucks her tongue, tilting her head and exhaling. She’s so loud when she breathes. The doctors want her on oxygen, but she’s refusing until it’s absolutely necessary.
“Might be time to start forgiving and forgetting, Royal,” she wheezes. “How long you going to hold onto that night?”
I stare into her beady eyes, my shoulders heaving with each drag of a breath. The fact that she has the audacity to suggest such a thing is infuriating.
“That night,” I say, “cost me everything. I’ll never forget.”
I’m not sticking around.
I move to the door, turn back, and look at Mona one more time.
“I wish I could,” I say.
“Baby, people change all the time. You two are both young. I’m not going to be around forever, and someday when I’m gone, all you’ll have is each other,” she says. “I’m just saying, don’t write your sister off forever because of one little mistake she made at fifteen.”