Amber had hated to do it, but she borrowed a couple grand from Angie. She had to get out of town. Paying off Blake Buchanan wouldn’t solve her problem. It was a pain reliever, not a cure. She needed to go to the source.
It was most likely a lost cause, but she had to try.
“This is it,” she said to the cab driver.
He stopped in front of the cracker box house with chipped gray paint. The lawn was dead, and a chain link fence surrounded the front yard. Trash littered the dead grass. A trike sat on the sidewalk outside the house.
Amber counted out some bills and handed them to the driver. “Thanks,” she said.
“Much obliged.” He got out of the cab and pulled her suitcase out of the trunk. “There you are, miss.”
Amber nodded, took her bag, and walked to the front door. She took a deep breath and knocked.
Knocked again. And a third time.
Finally the door opened. A woman in a housecoat stood before her, cigarette dangling from the fingers of her left hand. Her lips were cracked and painted red, and her light blond hair was in disarray around a face that might have been pretty if it hadn’t been so hard. Heavy-lidded blue eyes gazed at her.
Amber exhaled. “Hello, Mama.”
Chapter Thirteen
“What do you want?”
Amber gritted her teeth. “Nice to see you, too. May I come in?”
“Don’t see anyone stoppin’ you.”
Karen Hedstrom looked old. Old and worn-out and tired of life. In the last six years, she’d aged twenty.
Amber walked through the open door.
“Scat,” Karen said, and a cat jumped off the couch. Karen shoved some newspapers onto the floor. “Sit on down if you want.”
“Thanks.” Amber sat, wondering if she should have brought some penicillin with her. At least a can of Lysol. Amazing her mother hadn’t died in this dump. “How’ve you been, Mama?”
“How’ve I been? You’re gone six years and that’s what you ask? I been here. You wanted to know how I’m doin’, you coulda stopped by before now.”
Seriously? Amber shook her head. “I think you’re forgetting the circumstances. You threw me out, remember?”
“That’s right. I couldn’t afford to keep you any longer. Be glad I didn’t sell you off to one of those white slavers. I coulda gotten good money for a pretty girl like you.”
White slavers? She is crazy. Or… “You’re drunk.”
“Well, now, there’s a fuckin’ surprise, huh? Your old mama’s drunk.”
“Let’s get you sobered up. I need to talk to you. It’s important.”
“I haven’t been sober in years, darlin’.”
“Yeah, I believe that.” Amber rose and went to the small kitchen. The acrid aroma of trash and cat pee met her nose. Her eyes watered. “I need a place to stay for a few days. And a car. You got one?”
“Do I look like I can afford a car? I hardly leave the house.”
“What about work?”
“Got laid off two years ago. Collected unemployment, now I’m on welfare. Can barely pay the rent on this place and keep myself fed.”
“But I see you have money for booze.” She shook her head. “That was always the way, wasn’t it?”