“Leave him alone,” I yelled.
“Lorna, go.”
It was the last thing we heard Mason say over Mr. Maples’s rant. I reached for Missy’s hand. Something behind us crashed as Mr. Maples screamed, telling Mom to go to her room. With the dinner on the table and seven places set, the room quickly emptied, except for him and Mason.
At only ten, Mason wasn’t any taller than our mom and much smaller than a grown man.
Missy and I hurried up to the attic. Even from two stories above we heard Mr. Maples as he threw Mason from the house. A few minutes later, our room went dark. At some point, we snuck down to the second floor to use the bathroom. When we went inside and shut the door, our toothbrushes were in the toilet.
After a quiet knock on the door, Anna’s voice called, “Be sure to brush your teeth.”
That was about eight o’clock. I didn’t know what time it was now, but we were still here, in the dark.
“Tell me the story,” Missy said quietly as the noises below us faded.
“A widower with his lovely daughter Ella.” Cinderella had always been my favorite fairy tale. I loved listening to Grandma as she would read. The books were gone, as were most of our possessions from Grandma’s house. Therefore, I recited from memory, “Ella was a beautiful girl. Like you.” I nuzzled my nose against my sister’s hair. It smelled of body oil and smoke. I’d hoped we could take a shower tonight.
That would need to wait until tomorrow.
“No,” Missy replied. “Ella doesn’t look like me or you. She has yellow hair and blue eyes, like flowers.”
Missy had big brown eyes, golden skin, and dark hair. “You’re still beautiful.”
“So are you, sis. I love your red hair and green eyes, like Mason’s eyes.”
It was then we both turned toward the window and my breathing caught.
Tap.
Tap.
“He’s home,” Missy exclaimed.
“Shh.” I hurried toward the window and unlocked the latch. While I pushed from the inside, Mason pulled. Soon we had it open wide enough for him to enter. For only a moment, I leaned over the sill, wondering how Mason was able to make the climb.
Turning, I saw that our brother had two bags in his grasp; however, it was his blackened eye that caught my attention.
I wrapped my arms around him and laid my cheek against his chest. “You’re okay,” I whispered. It wasn’t a question as much as a validation.
Missy was beside us with her arms around both of us. “And you came home.”
“Be quiet,” Mason warned in a hushed voice as he closed the window. “Here.” He handed each of us a bag.
“Where’s yours?” I asked.
“I ate mine. This is for you.”
Trying to keep the bag from crinkling, I peered into the depths. He’d brought us a feast. Each bag contained a sandwich, apple, bag of chips, and plastic bottle of milk, the individual size.
“Did you get this from Mr. Sweeny?”
“Yeah,” Mason replied as he took off his shoes and quietly walked to the other mattress. Similar to the one Missy and I slept on, his was also thin and covered with a sheet and one blanket. “It ain’t warm, but it’s food.”
Missy tore open the chips and started eating.
Even from across the room, I heard Mason’s stomach growl. “Mace, I don’t want all this. Come eat some.”
“I told you. I already ate.” He jutted his chin forward. “That’s yours.”
Quietly, so as not to be heard below, I walked over to Mason’s mattress and sat. Next, I laid out the bag and divided the contents, except the apple, which I put in his pile. Without a word I began to eat my half. After the sandwich was gone, I looked up and gently reached for his cheek. “He did this to you.”
Mason’s green eyes glowed with anger in the moonlight. “Missy’s wrong.”
“About?”
“This ain’t home. It never was and it won’t be. Not with him.”
I sucked in a deep breath of the cool air.
Mason lowered his voice. “I’m talking to Mom. Either she leaves him and we get our own place to live, or the three of us are leaving.”
From her spot, we could hear Missy begin to cry.
Going to her, I wrapped her in a hug. “He’s right, Miss. We can’t stay here. Mr. Maples scares me, too.” It wasn’t only his temper that frightened me. The way he looked at me and Missy sometimes made my stomach twist in a bad way.
“I don’t want to be separated,” she said. “That lady told us—”
“Stop,” Mason interrupted, sitting beside us on our bed and handing Missy the second apple. “Ain’t anyone separating us.”
2
Present Day
“Lorna,” my manager, Anna, said as I clocked into work. “Customer threw up in room 211. Clean it up.”
Pulling my unruly red hair back into a ponytail, I wrinkled my nose and squinted my green eyes. Gross. I secured my apron over my top and jeans. The only dress code for working at the Motel 7 was comfortable shoes.
“Did you hear me?”
“Yes, I heard you. It’s gross. What time did 211 check out?”
“Ten this morning. Hurry, time’s a ticking.”
“Shit, it’s three o’clock,” I said, looking at my watch. “Couldn’t someone else have cleaned up the puke?”
Her lips curled upward in a sinister grin. “Saved it for you, sis.”
I wasn’t Anna Maples’s sister. I never was. Just because my mother made the mistake of living with her father, sentencing me and my siblings to his wrath for about six months before we convinced my mother to leave him, didn’t make us family.
Yet sometimes life had a way of playing cruel jokes. Even though Anna wasn’t my family, she was my manager at this Motel 7.
Cleaning up after other people was a shitty job but a job nonetheless. It provided a steady paycheck, a roof over my head—locks on my doors and control of my own electricity—a car to drive, and food in my belly. I wasn’t living the highlife in south Chicago, but I was living.
Though my brother promised when we were younger that we three siblings would never be separated, life intervened. Missy’s story was one for another day. As for Mason, he did three tours in Iraq—Special Forces. Apparently, along with being an overprotective brother, he was some kind of genius when it came to languages. Now he’s back in the US, almost completed his degree, and working for a rich dude who he met in basic training.
I was proud of all he’d done. And though I wasn’t the college type, we’d never lost contact. Even when he was half a world away, we sent letters. He also sent money. I have it saved away for that rainy day.
I wasn’t exactly sure what that saying meant. After all, there have been many a heavy downpour in my twenty-five years. Nevertheless, despite my brother’s help, I refused to depend upon a man, even him. Instead of believing in Cinderella’s fairy tale, I learned from my mother.
The last time I laid eyes on her, she was climbing into the cab of a large semi-truck with her new soul mate. That was seven years ago, two weeks before my high school graduation. I never knew the man who helped create me, none of us Pierces did. My sister was gone, and my brother was at war. When I walked across that stage and received the diploma, there was no one in the audience clapping, no party, or even a card.