by Sophia Gray
Her cool flat gaze zeroed in on Oliver. Finn was pretty sure the kid winced. He couldn’t blame him.
“I am here because of you,” she said, swinging her purse over her shoulder. “You are going to be staying with me until your trial.”
“I am? Are we going to California?”
“No,” she answered. “We are going to find a place to stay in town. We will stop by the house to let Mom and Dad know what is going on and what the terms of your release are. Then you are going to pack up what you need for the next couple of weeks.”
“Then why is Finn here?”
“That,” she hissed, “is an excellent question.”
She put her hand on Oliver’s shoulder and steered him out of the jailhouse. She didn’t look at Finn; she didn’t even give Oliver a chance to do any more than wave sheepishly before she escorted him to that sleek car. Finn heard the purr of the engine before she screeched out of the parking lot.
Chapter 3
Cora
The trailer was a little older and a little more faded than she remembered it, but everything else was the same. The cheap blue mailbox that had a hole in the top so the mail got wet every time it rained. Ugly garden gnomes that were tucked between old weather-beaten outdoor chairs in the small garden area that was more rock than plant life.
“They didn’t have to call you,” Oliver said with all the sullenness that a teenager could muster.
Cora navigated her BMW into the spot behind a beat-up Ford truck. “No, they didn’t have to call me. They could have just let you sit in jail until you had to go to court. That seems like the best possible scenario for this, doesn’t it?”
“Man, why do you have to be like that?”
“Like what?” She turned the car off and tilted her head to face her little brother. She remembered what it was like to be sixteen, even if the memory was distant. She had been just as difficult, maybe even a little more so.
“Like, you talk to me like you already know what’s best.”
She wanted to argue with that, but she couldn’t. Cora did know what was best for him. Or at least she knew what was better for him than racing bikes and getting caught up with the Violent Spawn like that Finn whatever-his-name-was. She knew exactly what people like that were like. “Oliver, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to come off like that. I just worry about you.”
It was true, she realized. She wasn’t just here to keep her mother from hassling her at work. She wasn’t here out of some familial sense of loyalty. She was here because her brother was going down the same path that she hauled herself back from, and she wanted to help.
He made a derisive snort and shoved his hands into the pouch-pocket at the front of his hoodie. Frustration came off him in waves. “Yeah, sure.”
“What does that mean?”
He gritted his teeth hard enough that she could see the line of his jaw through the softness of his fading baby fat. “It means you’ve been gone for ten years. You turned eighteen and you hightailed it out of here. You left us, you left me, and now what? You wanna come back here and pretend like you know what I’m like and what I’m going through?”
She turned in her seat, thankful for the professional length of her skirt as she put her back against the car door and tucked her foot under one knee. He was angry. No, she mentally amended, he’s not just angry, he is pissed. She remembered that feeling, too. Being pissed off could be a good thing. It could fuel the fire you needed to change, or it could drag you down and burn you up.
“Does Mom still like to make up all the great things she did before she had us?” she asked.
“What?” He gave her a look like she had suddenly grown a second head.
“Like, does she still claim to have been Miss Teen Nevada? Or that she almost went to the Olympics for gymnastics?”
He snorted again, but this time there was as much humor in it as angst. “Yeah. It’s so stupid.”
“And does she claim she could have been amazing if she hadn’t had kids?”
“Oh yeah.” He shook his head. His hair, which was more brown than red, shook with the movement. “All the time. Like, last week, when I tried to show her the little two-stroke engine I was rebuilding? Like, all of a sudden she was talking about some hot millionaire racer dude she could have married.”
“Yeah, she’s like that. Anytime anyone else is getting attention, suddenly she’s got to one-up them so she gets the spotlight back on her. Does Dad still just nod his head and smile at her?”
Oliver’s lips formed into a dark frown. “Okay, I get it.”
“Get what?” she asked, keeping her voice all innocent.
“They haven’t changed; you know what they are like. But that doesn’t mean you know me.”
She nodded. “You are right. I don’t know you. But I know a lot about what you’re going through because, as the cliché goes, I’ve been there. But, if you give me the chance, I’d like to get to know you. We are going to be spending a lot of time together now.”
“Oh, good, I get my own after-school special.” He sounded pretty disgusted, but the effect was kind of ruined by the fact he was smirking.
“On the plus side,” she shot back, “we are a lot prettier than that.”
His lips tugged up in a grin. It wiped away the dark circles that had formed beneath his eyes. How long had it been since he got a decent night’s sleep? “You’re weird.”
She placed a hand over her chest and let her eyes flutter dramatically. “Forgive me. I just can’t help it. It runs in my family.”
He laughed. Okay, it was more like a chuckle, but Cora would take it. He opened the door and slid out. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”
Cora felt a brief flutter in her heart as she heard those words. It wasn’t a good flutter, like the kind she got when she’d first laid eyes on that Finn guy before she’d seen the leather vest that marked him as a criminal. It was the bad flutter, like the kind you got in the middle of the night when you realized you forgot to pay a bill.
“You can do this,” she said to herself as she took one last glimpse in the mirror. Her lipstick was good, and her hair could use a little styling, but she didn’t really have time for that. She ran her fingers through the locks before stepping out of the car and bumping the door shut.
Oliver was already headed inside.
The living room, much like the outside, was just as she remembered it. Three shelves of cheap dollar-store figurines, most of them with sayings like “Bless This Home” and “God, Keep Our Family Safe.” The television was an upgrade from the one she remembered, but it was still positioned on a cheap entertainment center that sagged in the middle. Her father’s La-Z-Boy was surprisingly unoccupied, but there was a permanent dad-shaped dent in the center of it, and a sweat stain where the back of his head would be.
The kitchen was a mess, days’ worth of dishes piled in both sides of the shallow sink. The dish rack was only a third full. Last night’s dinner was still sitting on the stove. A few fat flies were buzzing around the lid, searching for a way to get to the contents.
And over all of it was the pervasive scent of cheap liquor and cheaper cigarettes.
Someone had clearly tried to clean the living room. Cora guessed it was her dad since her mother just couldn’t be bothered. A trash bag full of old magazines, newspapers, and old paper plates was currently roosting next to the door.
“Home, sweet home,” Cora muttered under her breath.
“Baby!”
Samantha Anderson burst out of her bedroom with fresh makeup on and tears in her eyes. Apparently, it had been more important to put on eye shadow than clean out the sink. A dress, two sizes too small, clung to her very tan, very skinny form.
She surged forward and wrapped her arms around a statue-still Oliver. “Hi, Mom.”
“Don’t you ‘hi’ me,” she said, stepping away from him and gripping his shoulders with skinny clawlike fingers. “You gave me a heart attack.”
He dipped his head. “I
’m sorry. Cora got me out, though. Uh…thanks for calling her.”
Her head whipped in Cora’s direction. The bottle-blonde hair was stiff with too many chemicals. Her mother’s brown eyes weren’t glittering with tears anymore. “Well, I didn’t expect you to step inside.”
“Hello, Mom. How are you?”
“I’m just fine.” Sam Anderson lifted her tan chin and stepped around Oliver. “Look at you in your fancy suit.”
She said it like it was a bad thing, like Cora had come here to rub her money in her mother’s face. “I came here right from work.”
“There’s my girl!” Her father’s voice boomed through whatever Sam was about to say.
Lucas Anderson was a massive man. He stood nearly six foot five in height and at his best—or was that worst—came in at three hundred and eighty pounds. He shuffled awkwardly toward her, with a cane in one hand to steady himself. His bearded face was all smiles as he wrapped an arm around Cora. She was instantly enveloped in the scent of stogies.
Over her father’s massive shoulder, Cora could see her mother’s lips twisted into a sneer. Oh great.
“Put her down, Lucas, and take a seat. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
“I won’t,” Lucas said, but he let go of Cora and waddled over to his seat anyway. He plopped himself down in the worn and cracked leather, pulling a blanket across his legs. “You grew up nice.”
“Well, of course she did,” Samantha said. “She had me.”
Cora didn’t agree with that, but she wasn’t here to fight. Fighting would mean problems and sticking around longer. She had no desire for any of that.
“Yes,” she said, “I did. Um, Oliver, why don’t you go get some of your things together while I talk to Mom and Dad?”
“What?” both parents asked in union. Her father sounded confused, while her mother sounded shocked.
“Yeah, all right.” Oliver dipped his head and took a step toward his bedroom.
“Oliver, don’t you move. You stay right there where I can see you.” Samantha’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean ‘get some things together’? Is he going back to jail?”
Cora shook her head. “No, Mom. I had to work out a deal with the sheriff. Oliver is a multiple offender, and they are afraid he’s just going to disappear rather than go to his court date. They released him into my custody. I have to keep him until everything is decided.”
“What?” Her mother’s voice was as shrill as a dying cat. “What do you mean? You can’t take him. That’s my baby. He’s not yours. Oh, I should have known this would happen. Prissy little Cora thinks she’s so perfect, that she can do a better job being a mother than I can.”
Cora ran her tongue over the inside of her mouth to keep herself from snapping the first thing that came to mind. “Mom, it has nothing to do with me.”
“The hell it doesn’t.” Samantha stormed past Cora and jerked the fridge door open. She pulled out a single-serving bottle of wine and twisted off the top. She threw her head back and took a long swig. “You did this on purpose. You did this to punish me.”
“Mom, this isn’t about you.”
Those were quite possibly her mother’s least favorite words. They turned her dark brown eyes into liquid fire, and her face flushed a dark red. “You are just trying to punish me,” she said, as if repeating it would make it true.
“Now, Sammy,” her father said from his place in the La-Z-Boy. “Just hear her out.”
“I don’t have to hear her out. I know what this is all about. This is typical Cora. You abandoned me and the rest of this family so you could go off and pretend like you were better. But that wasn’t enough, was it? You had to rub it all in our faces, didn’t you? You had to slink up here in your fancy car and your fancy suit and show it all off.”
You invited me here. You asked for me to come and help. This is part of that. Oliver has to stay with me. I’m going to make sure he gets to school, and to his after-school job, and that he does his homework until he has to go to court.”
“Bullshit.” Samantha took another drink.
“Oliver,” Cora said firmly. “Go pack.”
He scurried off.
Sam damn near hissed. “How dare you! You can’t boss around my boy.”
“Actually,” Cora said, meeting her mother’s fire with ice, “according to the state of Nevada, I can.”
“Cora,” her father called from the chair. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I did. The sheriff wasn’t going to let him go unless it was with me. He thinks since I put up the bail I’d have a vested interest in making sure Oliver showed up, and since I don’t feel like being out thousands of dollars, he’s right.”
“So, helping Oliver is all about money for you?” her mother snapped.
If it hadn’t been so damn annoying, Cora might have been fascinated with how quickly her mother could switch topics until she found the one that would win an argument. Cora held up her hands. “Money was why you called me, Mom. You wanted me to wire it, remember? I showed up because my brother is in trouble. I am going to help him. Yes, part of it is because I don’t want to lose money, but let’s be honest: I make enough on my own. Even if I did lose twenty thousand dollars I wouldn’t suffer too much.”
Her mother made a scandalized gasp. “You make all that money, but you never come to see me? Why do you hate me so much?”
Cora rooted around inside of her head for a single reason that she had no desire to spend any time with her mother and came up with ten. None of them would get her out of here any faster. She could see Oliver, hovering down the hall with a backpack in his hand, looking lost and uncertain of himself. “Mom, I don’t hate you, but I have to go. Daddy, I love you.”
“I love you too, little wonder,” her father said.
“Mom, I will see you later.”
Oliver was already making his way out the door when Cora turned on her heel and headed back to her car. She heard a wild female screech followed by the sound of breaking glass. It was just another day in the Anderson household.
Chapter 4
Finn
“You met Cora?” Titan asked. His dark lips formed a smile around very white teeth. “Damn.”
“You know her?” Finn asked.
Titan nodded his head once, making his shoulder-length dreadlocks sway inside the bandanna he wore around the top of his head. He pulled out a glass and poured out a beer, sliding it across the bar toward Finn. “Yeah, man, we went to school together. Well, at least we did right up until the tenth grade.”
“You drop out?” Finn asked, picking up the cold beer and giving it a long sip. The pool hall was nearly empty, just a few familiar faces tucked into booths or bent over the pool tables while bets were passed between hands.
“Naw, man. She did.”
Finn nearly choked on his drink. He couldn’t picture that icy redhead dropping out of anything. “What?”
Titan shrugged. “Okay, I know little Hawk talks about his big sister with all this, I dunno, pride, I guess. He says how smart she is and how she’s got her own business and shit. I’m sure he’s right, but I don’t want to bring up the fact that I knew a totally different girl way back when.”
“She dropped out?”
“She sure did, man. I mean she wasn’t a great student to start with. She liked to run wild, and she only showed up when it suited her, so I can’t say I was really surprised when she just stopped showing up altogether.”
Finn shook his head and took another drink. “You’ve got to be talking about a different girl.”
“Man, there are only, what? Ten thousand people in this entire piece-of-shit town? How many Cora Andersons with a brother named Oliver do you really think there are?”
Titan had a point. Finn pictured that swanky redhead in her million-dollar suit giving him the cold shoulder. He wasn’t sure if it made it better or worse that she had a bad side. Okay, that wasn’t true. It made certain thoughts in his head a whole lot better know
ing that she had a bad side.
“But you don’t gotta ask me,” Titan said. “Speed used to hang with her.”
“Speed? Like…what do you mean ‘hang’? Did they date?”
“Shit man, no. She always had more class than Speed. But they were friends. He used to live in the same trailer park as the rest of her white-trash family so they hung out. Childhood buddies or whatever. You’d be better off asking him.”
