Free Sample
Preview from chapter one
There were three ways to enter my mother's house: the back door from the alley, the garage through its sticky keypad, or the formal front, all porch and deadbolt and pointless pretense. I chose the front. I rang the bell once, loud and solid. There was a pause, a shuffle, the scrape of her feet across faux-wood laminate.
She opened the door in a faded gray tee and slim black leggings, holding a phone in one hand and, in the other, a pink glass mug of what she called "detox tea." She was smaller than I remembered. It'd only been a few months, but time had a way of compressing her, shrinking her back into the woman she used to be, the one who cowered and apologized to a drunk husband even years after he was gone.
Her eyes, hazel, shot through with a bloodshot webwork, scanned me up and down. She tried a smile. "Dave? I thought you were—"
"Busy. I know," I said, pushing past her into the foyer. The house had the dead, still smell of lemon cleaner and whatever soap she used to bleach the world into submission. "Put that down. I have something for you."
For a moment, I wondered if she’d just slam the door in my face, lock it, and call the cops for a wellness check. She stood still, balancing all her weight on the balls of her slippered feet, not wanting to commit to either a flight back into the living room or an advance into the foyer where I waited. Her hand held the mug so tight I could see the whiteness of her knuckles through the fine, crepe-y skin; the cup quivered a little, sending faint ripples through the viscous, herbal liquid. I could taste the sourness of her indecision, sharp and teetering between maternal obligation and the dread that came from my unexpected visit.
She parted her lips, jaw working around something—a question, a protest, a memory. Maybe she’d say, "You can’t talk to me like this," or maybe, "You need to leave." Instead, she just inhaled, a thin, juddering breath, and let her eyes fall to the floor in surrender.
I didn’t bother with further pleasantries. I walked into the living room, the cheap carpet swallowing the sound of my steps. I heard her set the mug down with a muted clink, then a nervous shuffle as she tapped at her phone. Maybe she was texting someone, or maybe the phone was just a talisman, something familiar in her clammy palm to keep her tethered to the world outside this house and this moment. I waited, counting backwards from ten, until I heard the soft click as her phone screen darkened. The silence that followed was thick, almost gelatinous.