Free Sample
Preview from chapter one
I let myself in through the garage, the way I always used to when I was a kid. The code on the keypad was still her wedding anniversary. Stupid bitch. Every year, she swore she’d change it, and every year she forgot. I told her this was a safety issue, but she never listened to warnings, not when I was twelve, not when I was twenty, not now that I was back in the Midwest with a duffel bag full of implements and nothing resembling a real job.
The house smelled exactly the same. Lemon Pledge, cheap candle wax, stale air from a climate system that never switched off. I stood in the mudroom and watched the second hand on my watch, counting out a full minute in silence, just to see if she’d notice. She didn’t. She was humming in the kitchen, a vague, tuneless sound, more like a low electrical hum than a song.
“Greg?” she called, the sound hitting me in the chest like a ricocheted pellet. She always sounded both hopeful and afraid when she used my name. “Is that you? I thought you were…”
“Hi, Mom,” I said, stepping into the kitchen. “You’re home early.”
She spun around so fast she nearly lost her grip on the knife in her hand. For a second, her eyes darted up and down my body, as if searching for something unfamiliar. Maybe it was the beard, or the ten pounds I’d put on, or maybe she could smell the metal and leather sweating inside the duffel. Maybe she was looking for a reason to send me right back out the door, and maybe, just for a second, I gave her one.
“I wasn’t expecting you,” she said, smile twitching at the corners. Her hair had gone silver at the roots, growing in like frost on asphalt. “I’d have made something if you’d called.”
I shrugged and leaned against the refrigerator. “Didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. Last-minute, you know?” I let my eyes drift to the window, counting the seconds before she’d start the small talk script: How’s the job, Greg? When’s the last time you saw your father? Are you still seeing that girl, the one with the tattoos and the face piercings? She always claimed not to be judgmental, but you could measure the contempt in her sentences the way you could taste iron in blood.