“Good! Did she give you any trouble, Huck?” she asks her brother who’s standing on the porch, a hand on the railing.
He shakes his head but doesn’t say anything. I steal a glance at him, and he does the same with me, then sighs as he walks into the house.
“Bye,” I say softly to the swinging porch door.
I reach down and pick up my duffle bag, following Momma down the stairs, sad, angry, and feeling a little lost. It’s weird to me that we shared the same thing with someone we both love, but I’ll never tell her because I promised Uncle Huck that I would keep his secrets.
As soon as we reach the car, I open the back door and toss my bag in the back. Momma’s leaning over the roof of the car smiling at me.
It’s almost like she’s happy to have me come back home, but it’s a lie. I can see it in her eyes.
I turn and glance at the farmhouse one more time, my shoulders dropping at no sign of Uncle Huck and I slam the door shut. I reach for the passenger side of the car and as soon as I wrap my hands around the handle, the loudestbangI’ve ever heard in my life splits the air.
Momma—or what’s left of her, anyway—falls back onto the ground with a dull thud. My body shakes because I don’t know what the hell happened, but there’s blood on the roof of the car now.
The sound of heavy footsteps crushing the grass greet my ears and I turn slightly to see Uncle Huck walking toward me with a rifle in his hand. He doesn’t say a word until he gets to me.
“Get your bag, Maddi. I’ll get rid of Abigail’s body.”
He … he shot Momma.
He killed her so I could stay here with him.
I let out a sob as I reach up and wrap my arms around his broad shoulders. He holds me tightly against him, kisses the top of my head, then rests his forehead against mine.
I’m not crying ‘cause Momma’s dead. That bitch knew what Daddy did to me and didn’t stop him. But I made sure he had an accident—I cut the lines to his brakes one night when everyone was sleeping, and he ended up driving off a bridge the next day to work. The ferry was coming through and the bridge went up, but he couldn’t stop his car and went plummeting into the bay.
I’m not crying ‘cause I won’t know how to explain to people that Momma left me, because I’m sure Uncle Huck will help me come up with a story.
I’m crying ‘cause I’m not the one that got to pull the trigger. I’m crying ‘cause the only man that honestly gives a shit about me has to bear the weight of another dead body on his conscience.
The tears will go away soon, though, and everything will be okay.
It’ll be me and Uncle Huck on his farm working hard during the day and being together at night.
And if anyone comes to ask us where Momma and Aunt Brianna are, we’ll tell them that they left us.
‘Cause after all, isn’t that what all the bad people do?
Illicit
A. A. Davies
Chapter One
The blanket wrapped around me somehow made me feel safer as I stared at the TV and the latest horror movie I’d rented. I wasn’t the kind of person who did this often, but sometimes I felt the need to just be...scared. I wanted the rush of adrenaline and the spike in my pulse I would get when I was surrounded in the darkness and watching a serial killer chase a girl through the woods.
My fingers tingled from holding the ice-cream tub for so long, enthralled with what was happening on the screen, and just as the background music drummed faster and the serial killer got closer, my cell rang out. I jumped so high the ice-cream tub went flying into the air and all over my blanket.
“Dammit,” I whispered, my hand flying to my chest and covering my heart which was beating like crazy. I frantically searched for the remote then paused the movie and looked down at my cell. My brows lowered into a frown, but my lips pulled up into a smile. I was fully aware I probably looked crazy, but there was a reason.
My sister hadn’t called me for nearly a month now, and although we hadn’t grown up together in the literal sense, she was still my big sister. Her mom and my mom hadn’t gotten along at all, and there was no need for them to. They were the complete opposite. Her mom was scrappy and stuck up for everything she believed in, my mother was meek and a classy high-society lady. And yet, my dad had loved them both equally—that was what he said the day before he died of lung cancer anyway.
That had been the same year I started my senior year in high school, and Mom had moved us out of the area and into another state, the same state she’d grown up in. But my sister and I had managed to stay somewhat close.
My cell stopped ringing just as I picked it up, but it was only a couple of seconds until it started back up again. I didn’t hesitate to answer it this time and bring it to my ear. “Hey, Jenifer,” I greeted, pushing up off the sofa and grabbing my now empty ice-cream tub.
“Skylar,” she rushed out, and the tone of her voice had me halting in the middle of my small living room. “I need your help.”