by Wanda Amard
“Well, you know I like to drive.”
Chapter Three
Kimber
“Hey, Vinn’s home, so I’m gonna go,” I say to Rubi before getting off the phone.
I wait for Vinn on the couch, but he doesn’t come inside the trailer. Enough time passes and I question whether he had pulled into our driveway after all, so I peek out the window. He stands at the back of his tan car, pulling a stack of flattened brown boxes from the trunk. A good wife would go outside to help him, but I’m pregnant and he often tells me I shouldn’t be picking up things. This sounds like one of those times. Plus, it’s cold outside.
I watch from the window as he closes the trunk, and when he reaches our small porch, I open the door so he can chuck the boxes inside the living room. They drop to the floor and fall to the side, dust coming off the edges and spilling on my freshly vacuumed carpet.
“Boxes?” I ask when it seems he won’t explain them.
Vinn grabs me by the shoulders and places a kiss on my lips — a big sloppy one where our lips mush together and then he pulls away dramatically. All we’re lacking is the smacking sound.
“I forgot to give you a birthday present yesterday.”
My eyes fall to the boxes as the dust settles around them. “You got me boxes?”
Vinn beams. “No, I got us the house. Surprise!”
“The house?” It’s not that I don’t believe him per se. It’s that I don’t believe him out right. What house?
“The little one we looked at by the college.”
My face falls and with it my gut. “No, Vinn.” Dread fills my words. Nothing is worth the price of that particular house. I don’t want it and he shouldn’t either.
Vinn senses my hesitation and squeezes my shoulders tightly as he looks me dead in the eyes. “I promise it will be okay, Kimber.”
“What did you pay for the house?” Any debt to Ricky is too much and I worry Vinn didn’t buy it with money but with his life.
Vinn doesn’t hesitate when he answers. “Nothing that wasn’t worth it.”
I brush away his hand and step back, pacing a small circle in the living room. “You think that house is worth a lot more than I do. There are lots of houses in Lansing. This trailer is great. It’s the best house I’ve ever lived in my whole life. Why do we need to move?”
“Well this new house is ours.”
“Maybe you can give it back,” I say, my voice rising with my panic.
Vinn grabs onto my shoulders again, putting a stop to my pacing. “Kimber, I promise, baby. It will be fine. The house is ours.”
His eyes beg mine to listen to what he says, but I’m not sure I can. “It’s ours already?”
One side of his lips tip up and he takes a step closer, squeezing my shoulders. “It’s ours. Free and clear.”
“You promise?” Did Ricky take money for the house?
Vinn nods. “All we have to do is pack up this place and we can move in right away.”
“But what about Ricky?” I don’t want Vinn having to work for him again.
“Ricky will not be a problem. The deed is already in my name.”
“Really?” I ask, still not ready to believe him completely. It’s like that moment when you realize all your dreams are coming true, but you’re so used to life kicking you when you’re down and you can’t help but look for the “what if.” There has to be a catch. I just haven’t found it yet. “It’s ours?”
“The deed has been filed, JB. It’s ours.”
For a moment I allow myself to dream. Picture what the house will look like with a fenced-in backyard and a child running around playing with leaves in the fall. I can see Vinn outside scraping the sidewalk when it snows.
“We have a house?” A small grin grows until it splits my face in happiness. A house. I’ve never had one of those.
Vinn tugs me close and pushes me back as if like he’s shaking me into believing it. “Yes, so pack up those boxes. We’re moving, jailbait.”
He kisses me again, but this time I seek the embrace. His excitement over our future washes through me. I jump up once disconnecting and then pull him down closer, deepening our kiss.
When you grow up in a trailer, you lie in bed many nights and wish you had what all the other kids have — a car, a home to live in, maybe a dog. As I got older, I realized I’d never have those things. They weren’t available to someone like me, but meeting Vinn changed my world. I feel like we can do anything together. Change is in our future. There is nothing but up for us.
Chapter Four
Vinn
The oil change I finished drives off the rack. I tossed in a new air filter for the extra sales on my daily count. Each one gets me a little closer to the contest for add-on purchases we’re having until the end of the month. Usually the company gives away gift cards to fancy restaurants. Olive Garden is Kimber’s favorite, even more so after our wedding. It’s an excuse to take her out and reward her the way she should be. I’ll sell a million air filters to unsuspecting people to get my baby breadsticks.
But at this moment the sales contest isn’t what has me on edge but the countdown to my upcoming payment. I have a work debt to Ricky — the big yellow new house right in the middle of the city — and the first bill is coming due. Three days have passed without news about Ricky. As far as I know, he’s alive and kicking. If that continues, in two more days, I’ll be forced to pick up his latest shipment of coke in Newberry, Michigan — a tiny out of the way town in upper Michigan close to the border. The drive will take days. I’ll need to take time off work and I’ll need one hell of a good excuse for Kimber to explain being gone so long.
I know she won’t believe anything I come up with, regardless of what I say.
I thought for sure my plan would work. I didn’t believe this day would come. Never did I expect to make the run. What will Kimber think of me when she finds out? Do I tell her the truth or risk more of her wrath over a lie? How long will I last in Ricky’s gang before I get picked up again?
When I left this morning, Ricky was still alive and Kimber was putting the packing tape on the bottom of boxes. The last ones we have left. She promised by the time I got home there wouldn’t be any boxes unfilled, and then this weekend we could start moving into our new place — the same weekend I’m scheduled to be in upper Michigan for a job. A bad job. A Ricky Durango job.
I haven’t eaten in a day. She doesn’t realize all I’ve done is push food around my plate and then dump it in the garbage disposal. Food makes me sick. The fact I’m alive and thinking of the ways I’ve lied to Kimber makes me sick.
My phone vibrates and I pull it from my pocket, hoping it will be the news I’ve been waiting to see. It’s only a text.
I’m lost, dreaming of all the horrible things that await me at the end of two days when my name is yelled from somewhere high. I wipe my hands on a cloth and walk up the steps to the main floor of the shop just as they pull in another car for an oil change.
Cousin Jesse stands at the of the top of the stairs waiting. “Vinn, I wasn’t sure if you heard me.”
I smile, pretending everything is fine. As far as he knows, I’m still only a dedicated employee. The cousin he helped to succeed. I so don’t want to let Jesse down. “The way you yell, how could I miss it?”
He laughs, shaking his head, and pats me on the back while leading me into the office. The general manager of the store called in again and Jesse wastes no time sitting on his side of the desk.
“I’ll be honest with you. I’m pissed today.”
Normally those words would be enough to start my heart rocketing in my chest, wondering how I screwed up this time, but I’m too dead inside from the anxiety I’ve suffered waiting for news of Ricky.
“That fucker Nick took a job at the same company as Randall.”
“You’re fucking with me?” He’d been calling in often, but I didn’t expect him to leave.
“Left me a fucking voicemail last night.” Jesse shakes hi
s head, angered. “What I need is someone in his job who I can trust. Someone with damn loyalty.”
I agree, nodding my head.
“Vinn, I want you.”
I stall, playing his words again to understand the meaning. “You want me for what?”
“I want you to run the shop. Be my new GM.”
“Wow,” I say, not agreeing or disagreeing. I’ve been here less than a year and never in my wildest dreams expected Jesse would make me the manager of the shop. I’m still his cousin with a criminal background.
“You’ve done good work, Vinn, and I trust you. I need somebody here who I trust to be here for the long haul. It’s only fifty-five a year but you get raises and different perks, sales bonuses, etc.”
My ears stop listening at the fifty-five thousand a year. It’s more money than anyone in my family has ever made. More money than anyone in my family combined has made — besides cousin Jesse, anyway.
I wouldn’t have to worry about selling air filters to unsuspecting basics or stressing about taking Kimber out to a moderately priced meal at a chain restaurant. We could have kids. A lot more kids.
“You think you’re up for the challenge?” Cousin Jesse asks.
I smile and stand, shaking his hand across the desk. “Thank you, man. You won’t be disappointed.”
Things are starting to look good. Kimber and I have a new home away from her mother. I’ve been promoted to general manager of our oil change, something that felt so far out of my grasp I couldn’t even dream about it while I was sitting in a prison cell.
I just need the end to come together and release me from all my previous burdens. Ricky always acted as if his allergy to peanuts was life-threatening. One time he fired a man — giving him the ultimate pink slip — because he had the nerve to eat a Snickers bar in his house. Even though I didn’t use the full baggie of ground up peanuts, I put enough in his supply that I thought the next time he snorted his dinner it should’ve been goodbye to all my problems.
But I haven’t gotten a text saying he’s dead. I haven’t gotten anything at all. As far as I know, Ricky is still running his crime empire from his cul-de-sac office. The worst thing would be if it didn’t kill him and he somehow pins it back on me. How will I manage working five years for Ricky and be the general manager of the store? What will Ricky use against me to force me to work for him longer if I survive the five years? Which is a long shot. Will my time on this earth end with another prison sentence or the front end of Ricky’s gun?
Even if we run, he’ll find us. If he kills me, will he leave Kimber alone? Have I set us all, including the baby inside of her, up for a life of fear? What have I done to the woman I promised to love and keep safe? Will she ever forgive me?
Chapter Five
Kimber
My stomach twitches again in a “there is something wrong” way, but I ignore it and pull the last clean plate from the dishwasher, sliding it into its place at the top of the stack in the cupboard. I could call my sudden gut feeling mother’s intuition, but the truth is I’ve always had bad feelings when something horrible was about to happen. I’ve been this way my whole life. The time my dad missed my dance recital, when the cops picked mom up for possession, and when Hunter crashed his bike into the side of a building because he was riding home drunk one night in tenth grade. I’ve ignored it the last few days, but a strong feeling of dread grows so forceful I can’t ignore it any longer.
With my foot, I close the dishwasher door and use the voice activation on my phone to send Vinn in a text.
Kimber: Everything okay?
Surely he would tell me if he was the one causing the bad feelings. I have to trust my husband won’t go back to work for Ricky even though my home is littered with boxes as I pack us to move into a tiny house in the middle of the city. I can’t quite trust him when he says everything will be fine. I have a feeling his idea of fine and mine don’t match.
But Vinn isn’t the only one in the family I worry about, there’s also my brother, mother, and on occasion my father. Any of them could be the cause of my growing pit of despair.
My phone vibrates and I check the messages to see Vinn’s name lighting up the screen.
Vinn: Of course. Are you okay?
I let him know it’s fine on the home front and then slip my feet into my big tall winter snow boots, not bothering to lace them. It’s cold in Michigan for February, but the quick walk to my mother’s home doesn’t require a coat. Especially as it feels as though I’ve become an oven overnight. My skin radiates heat, making sleeping with covers unbearable. Even cuddling is out of the question.
Hunter’s truck is in the driveway and my dad’s car is missing. He’s never been gone this long before, but he’s checked in with my brother and he’s decided to cohabitate with a woman in Kalamazoo. I give it four months.
The door to my parents’ trailer is shut and I knock once, yelling my mother’s name as I twist the handle and let myself in without a key. Like a scene straight out of my nightmare, one I’ve lived over and over, my mother lays stretched out on the couch, her head thrown back on the pillows and her eyes glossy, lost in her own fantasies.
“Mom,” I say getting close to her unmoving body. I hold my breath, checking for her chest to move.
She smiles like a Cheshire cat caught up in her own web. “Kimber, you’re my favorite daughter. We should spend more time together, honey.”
The air leaves me in one solid breath and my shoulders hunch as I stared down at the woman I call Mom, who is high as a kite. Her hand flutters in the air like a bird, and she’s flying in and out of air currents, oblivious to what’s happening around her.
But she’s alive, and that’s better than how I found her the last time I walked into the trailer and caught her on the couch like this. It doesn’t make the situation any better. For so many years I’ve watched my mother do this to herself. I’ve sat by and hoped and prayed she’d get better. Vinn spent a fortune sending her to a rehab program and my brother has stayed in her home doing what he can to monitor her. But it doesn’t matter what we do. It doesn’t matter how hard we try to help her or how much we want her to get better. My mother has made her life choices and until she can see the pattern of her ways, there will be no escape for her or us if we don’t get the hell out.
The best I can hope is to get myself out of the situation once and for all. She doesn’t deserve a place in my life if she can’t make one for herself. Sonya’s kicked the pillow to the floor and I bend down, grabbing it. My fingers play at the tassels, pulling on the threads in anguish. Why couldn’t she have been a normal mother just once?
“Kimber, we should go shopping,” she says and then is swept under again.
Shopping. With my mother. Something I dreamed of doing, but besides a few back-to-school trips when I was younger it never happened. There was never enough money or free time. Never enough love.
“Why, Mom?” I ask getting angrier by the second. My teeth grind together as I imagine all the missed experiences we’ve had in my life. All the times she did drugs rather than spend time with me. Before I realize what is happening, the pillow comes down and I smack her in the face with it, not hard, just enough to wake her.
It doesn’t work. Her eyes still shine at the ceiling, her smile stretched into a stupid grin unaware that she’s been attacked.
I hit her again.
Then again, but nothing works to wake her up, and she doesn’t lift a hand to bat me away, not at all disturbed by my repeated attacks. I keep hitting her, growing angrier. I just want a reaction from my mother. Why won’t she see me?
“Why won’t you learn!” I scream, hitting her with the pillow again. “Why couldn’t you just be a mother?” The pillow thumps against her head and I pull back ready to hit her again, but my arms are stilled in the air.
“Kimber!” Hunter yells, getting between me and our mother. “Stop it. What are you doing?”
He pulls the pillow from my hands. “Look at her, Hunter.
She’s high again!”
Hunter sneaks a peak at her and his eyes find mine full of sorrow. He shakes his head but doesn’t make any other comment. He won’t give me the pillow back even though he probably wants to hit her too. Good little Hunter can’t rock the boat.
Defeated, I step back, giving up on the pillow and the responsibility of this life. “I’m done. I can’t do it anymore.” My hand subconsciously rubs at my stomach, trying to soothe the baby who tosses and turns in my stomach. “I have a family now, Hunter. I can’t do this again.”
He nods his head in agreement but doesn’t speak.
I step back, getting closer to the door. “She’s on her own. I’m moving with Vinn and never coming back.”
Hunter jerks his head in acceptance.
“Save yourself, Hunter.”
He drops the pillow to the floor. “How?” His eyes are dry, but his voice shakes on the single word.
How indeed? My hand rest of the door ready to flee from my family for the last time. “Get the hell of this house. Whatever it takes. Do this for you. You deserve it. We all deserve better.”
Hunter looks back at our mother and I step out, slamming the door behind me and rattling the trailer. This is the last time my mother will steal a moment of happiness in my life. And I mean it.
Chapter Six
Vinn
I slam the car door harder than I intend, but frustration built throughout the day and now I’m helpless to stop it from boiling over into my life. Kimber’s text came to my phone like her own mini reminder that soon if I got caught, I wouldn’t have a phone to read her text messages on any longer. They didn’t allow those in prison and if I end up working for Ricky, that’s where I’ll be, eventually. There’s one day left and then I’ll pack a bag and drive up north. A little over twenty-four hours before my life will change and I’ll lose everything I’ve worked hard for this last year.
