Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [721]
She pumped her arms, keeping her pace and not letting her anger slow her down. She hated that Jared made her feel like she still owed him. It didn’t help that she wasn’t there for him during the trial.
It was as if nothing had changed in the five years he had been away. And yet everything had changed. She had changed, or at least, she thought she had. Although it couldn’t have been very much. Why else would she be rushing to meet him, rushing once again to do whatever her big brother told her to do? Like cutting short what had become her daily ritual, her daily gospel and the replacement for a quick fix of nicotine and later still, for four cups of hot scorching coffee. The coffee had helped her get through the initial withdrawal from the cigarettes. Now this new addiction, a three-mile morning walk, replaced the caffeine.
She didn’t need Dr. Phil to see she had simply transferred compulsions. She took the same walk every day at the same time. Even walked at the same pace. Only today she had to quicken the pace if she intended to meet Jared. Quicken, she decided, but not cut short. She pushed back her shoulders as if this one defiant thought was the same as standing up to her big brother. Something she had never been able to do in the past. But that was the past. Maybe Jared needed to see that she wasn’t that same little girl he could boss around. She was an adult, a grown woman with her own son. She had been forced to grow up while Jared seemed to live in the past, even moving back in with their mother when he was released from jail.
That was a mistake. Their mother was crazy with all her black magic and superstitions. Certifiably crazy or so she and Jared liked to claim, making up any kind of excuse for why she kept picking loser husbands like both their dads. Saying their mother was crazy seemed better than admitting she was simply stupid. Maybe that was Jared’s problem. Melanie thought about teasing him that maybe he had inherited Mom’s crazy gene, though she knew full well that she would never dare to tease Jared. He would see it as a betrayal, and he would remind her, again, that all they had were each other because of the past they had survived and the secrets they continued to share.
Melanie turned left at Fifty-Second and Nicholas Streets and headed into the Memorial Park neighborhood, a stretch of huge brick homes with carefully manicured lawns. Not a ceramic gnome in sight. That made her smile, thinking of her son, Charlie’s, newest obsession of stealing lawn ornaments, even though it annoyed her as much as it amused her. She couldn’t help thinking that maybe it was another example of like mother, like son. After all, she had taught him well, making a game early on of their escapades. It may have started as a game, but it bugged her that Charlie still treated stealing as a game, completely unaware of the risks and dangers. Yes, she had taught him well, maybe too well.
She’d brought him in when he was only eight. They stole packs of ground beef—quickly graduating to T-bone steaks—from the HyVee on Center Street, stuffing them into his school backpack. Charlie became so good at it she didn’t even notice him steal the Hostess Twinkies and Bazooka bubble gum until they appeared later on their kitchen table, alongside the packs of meat. He was a natural, and now, nine years later, with that baby face and lopsided grin, he could still get away with almost anything.
Their game had started as a matter of survival, a way to supplement Melanie’s string of shitty jobs. So what if Charlie swiped a few silly lawn ornaments as long as he brought home a leather jacket or enough CD players to pay the rent? What did it matter that he still considered hot-wiring Saturns a game? Maybe