Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 89666 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 448(@200wpm)___ 359(@250wpm)___ 299(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89666 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 448(@200wpm)___ 359(@250wpm)___ 299(@300wpm)
“I’m guessing she was swearing loud enough to disturb all the neighbors.”
“Yep. That and she dropped trou and took a shit in the neighbor’s yard.”
I lowered my phone, took two steps, spun, and walked back to where I’d been standing while clenching my fist hard enough to make the protective plastic case creak. Why? Why did she have to make my life a living hell? Why would she do this?
“How much?” I bit out when I could unclench my jaw enough to speak.
The sheriff huffed a breathless laugh. “Well, I talked her neighbors into cutting a deal. They picked up the poop in her yard and she picked up her own poop before I hauled her to jail to sleep it off. She’s been with me for a couple of hours. I need you to come pick her up.”
“Yeah, okay. I’ll be there in about an hour. Maybe sooner.”
No bibimbap for me tonight.
2
BYRON GRAHAM
“Sharon Rogers is a cunt.”
This was one of my mother’s favorite complaints.
Mary Graham hated her neighbors. She’d hated them the day they’d moved in ten years ago, and she’d hated them every day since. I wasn’t even sure of the reason anymore. I thought she didn’t like their dog, who’d passed away more than five years ago. Not her doing. The dog was old, and I’d sent them a condolence fruit basket.
Of course, she’d found out and had hated me for about four months and then forgotten about it. She’d never stopped hating the Rogerses, and that hatred had taken on a new ferocity when Sharon had replaced her old dog with two yappy puppies.
As I drove her home from the jail, she went on rambling, a mostly incoherent tirade about neighbors, police, and ungrateful children who didn’t take proper care of their elders. Most of it went in one ear and out the other. I’d heard all her tirades before—they were part of her coming down from being drunk. She was going through withdrawal and hurting. I tried to have sympathy, but I was sorry to say that a lot of my sympathy had dried up from years of episodes like this. Alcoholism was an ugly disease.
I pulled my beat-up fifteen-year-old Toyota into her driveway and sighed. Everything seemed as it was the last time I’d been here four days ago. The tiny saltbox house with two bedrooms and a single bathroom was built in the fifties, and it didn’t look like much had changed with it since then. Old, dingy white paint was fading and chipping thanks to age and weather. The windows were filthy and perpetually covered with heavy curtains to keep out the sun. A scattering of weeds grew in the yard and poked up between the cracks in the sidewalk.
After I slipped out of the car, I walked to the passenger side to help her. As soon as I got her to her feet, she slapped my hands and pushed me away, claiming she could do it herself. Except she struggled to do it on her own. I walked behind her, my hands extended to catch her if she fell. My mom was fifty-two, but she looked and moved as though she were in her seventies. Life had not been kind to her, and she’d chosen to deal with it the only way she knew how—with booze.
We stepped into the living room, and the smell of alcohol assaulted my nose. How? How did she manage it? I’d been here four days ago, and I’d cleaned out her stash. All the local stores knew they weren’t allowed to sell to her. She’d lost her license and sold her car years ago. How was she getting it?
Forcing my gaze away from the empty bottles of hard liquor and beer on the table, I called out, “Mom, how about I make you something to eat before you lie down? You’ve got to be hungry and tired.”
She grunted as she shuffled to the kitchen. “Ain’t nothing to eat.”
I bit my tongue as I followed her. That couldn’t be right. I’d dropped off more than a week’s worth of food not that long ago. She couldn’t have gone through all of it. But as I pulled open the fridge, I found a bottle of vodka, eggs, and a bag of salad that was at the end of its lifespan. I snagged the bottle of vodka and marched to the sink, where I poured out its contents to the sound of her shouts and calling me every name under the sun.
When she ran out of steam, she stomped off to the bathroom and slammed the door. I used the opportunity to ransack her room, where I found two unopened bottles under the bed and three opened bottles hidden in her closet. By the time she left the bathroom and stomped to her bedroom, where she slammed the door yet again, I was pouring the last of the booze down the sink.