“Take the test if it means so much to you. You’re not going to have time for school. It’s a lot of work. When someone moves out—or gets kicked out—then we got to clean up their mess and get it ready for a new tenant. We have to advertise a vacancy, vet the applicants. Then there’s rent to collect, and that’s a whole other ordeal. You’d think I was running a charity, the excuses I hear.”
My uncle droned on while a memory surfaced. The last time I really talked to my mom, only three days before she died.
“Finish school, Ronan,” she said, handing me a freshly washed dish to dry. “No matter what happens. Don’t be like me. I dropped out and it’s been nothing but doors slamming shut in my face ever since. The end of the road.” Her clear blue eyes turned shadowed, then she beamed at me. “You’re smart. Don’t let anyone tell you different, and don’t let anyone take it away from you.”
“Take what?” I asked, stacking the dish on the counter.
“Your future.”
I turned to Nelson. “I want to finish school.”
“That’s not the deal.”
“What is the deal? You want to put me to work.”
“In exchange for a roof over your dumb head.” He raised his brows at my stony silence. “You got other options? How about that farm, mucking cow shit and sleeping in a barn? If you want to go back, by all means, tell me to stop the car and I’ll let you out right now.”
Like leaving a dog on the side of the road, I thought as every hope I’d had burned up, one after another. I was on my own again. So fucking be it.
“Pull over.”
Nelson frowned. “Huh?”
“You heard me. I said, pull over.”
“Now, hold on—”
“Stop the fucking car.”
Nelson flinched, his hands twisting on the wheel. He slowed and pulled over, trees rising on both sides of the winding road. “This is the middle of nowhere. Look, Ronan, maybe I spoke too soon—”
“Thanks for the ride.” I climbed out and slammed the door behind me.
Nelson rolled down the passenger window and drove the car at a crawl to keep up with me, desperation in his voice. I guessed he needed me more than he let on.
“You going to leave all your shit in my trunk?”
“Yep.”
“Be smart, Ronan. You got nothing here.”
I’ve always had nothing. I kept walking.
He leaned across the passenger seat, his tone softening slightly. “Look. I wouldn’t have been no kind of parent to a little kid. But I’m here now and we’re family. This situation works for both of us. Right?”
Family. That damn word again. I stopped walking.
“There you go,” Nelson said. “Now get in and—”
“She was going to leave him.”
He blinked stupidly. “Huh?”
“You asked what Mom did to set Dad off,” I said, turning my stare—flat and hard—on Nelson. “He came home after a night in jail for roughing her up. Because they never kept him long enough. Never protected her.”
I didn’t protect her…
I cleared the thickness from my throat. “She told him she was taking me and leaving. So he fucking killed her.”
Nelson hunched his shoulders, his eyes anywhere but me. “Yeah, okay, okay.”
“Don’t talk about her ever again. Not her name. Nothing.”
“Whatever you say.”
“And I’m going to finish school.”
Nelson’s eyes widened. “Full of demands, aren’t we? Watch yourself, boy.”
I didn’t move.
He spat another curse. “It won’t work. You’ll see. Hard for you and harder for me with the tenants.”
I started walking.
“Okay, okay, if you insist, Einstein. Now will you get in the damn car?”
I climbed back in, my bag on my lap, and slammed the door.
“Christ,” Nelson muttered under his breath as he pulled the car back onto the road. “When has anything been easy? Never, that’s when.”
At least we agreed on something.
My social worker, Alicia, had told me Santa Cruz was a smallish town, but it seemed huge compared to Manitowoc. Street after street of houses, shops, a huge university, and a Boardwalk with games, rides, and a Ferris wheel that slowly turned in front of the Pacific. Lake Michigan was nothing to the endless blue green of the ocean that stretched along the coast. Turn around, and there were mountains covered in forests of green. Like a mirage after staring at the same hopeless landscape for eighteen years.
I glanced at Nelson, wondering how the hell he ended up here.
“Your grandma left me and Russell everything,” he said, answering my unspoken question. “I got the properties she and Pawpaw invested in a million years ago and your dad got the cash.” He snorted. “Lucky me.”
I nodded grimly, thinking of how Mom struggled to pay bills and keep food on the table with money she earned from two jobs while Russ drank and gambled the inheritance away on fantasy sports leagues and local poker games.
“This is you.”
Nelson pulled the car into a cracked parking lot. It fronted a cement block of an apartment complex in a neighborhood filled with them. Wrought iron bars covered the bottom windows. Peeling paint and exterior cement steps led to the second level.
He pointed at the top corner unit. “That one’s yours for now. Grab your stuff. I’ll show you the place.”
I followed him up the stairs to the corner unit. A gold and black sticker that said OFFICE stuck to the door.
“Typically, managers live on the ground floor,” Nelson said. “But I got a lady in there with her two kids, begging me not to move her upstairs.” He rolled his eyes as he unlocked the door from a ring of keys.
“Why doesn’t she want to move?”
“The ground unit is bigger, of course. I told her it was up to you. If you want to kick the mouthy bitch out, be my guest.”
My shoulders tensed. “I won’t.”
“Take the grand tour and say that again.”
He shoved the door open, and I stepped inside a dark, shabby shoebox. A ratty couch, table, and a single chair were the only furniture in the living room/kitchen area. The bedroom was tiny with a futon and a small window with a view of the street. The bathroom was a shower, toilet, and sink. A few dead bugs in the scratched, yellowing porcelain. I tried to picture a mom with two kids in here and my stomach churned.
“Told ya,” Nelson said, misreading my disgusted look. “The bottom unit’s better.”
“I’m fine here.”
“Don’t be stupid. If I were you—”
“I said, it’s fine.”
He sighed. “Suit yourself. Now let’s get to work.”
Over the next two weeks, Nelson had me meet the tenants of the Cliffside Apartments. The “mouthy bitch” on the ground unit below mine was Maryann Greer—a tired-looking woman in her mid-thirties. She had dark circles under her eyes, but there was a fire in them that hadn’t gone out.
She reminded me of Mom.
Her twin girls, Camille and Lillian, looked to be around six years old. When Nelson introduced me as their new manager, they’d all stared at me with the same suspicion. I told Maryann I wasn’t going to make her move upstairs. Even so, they shut the door on us quick.