The Dark Light of Day (The Dark Light of Day 1)

I expected nothing, until the night I met a certain redhead with an attitude.

The night I met Abby Ford, my life changed forever.

ABBY

CHAPTER ONE

I KNEW SOMETHING WAS WRONG when I walked across the stage on graduation day and was met with only the unenthusiastic slow claps from the sparse crowd. It’s not like I expected a standing ovation. I haven’t exactly played nice with my fellow classmates. I could’ve counted the number of real friends I had on one hand. Or no hands, actually. It was Nan’s usual whooping and hollering I expected to hear but was nowhere to be found.

Where was she?

An alarm went off in my head when our vice-principal, Miss Morgan, barged into the auditorium, letting the heavy metal doors slam shut behind her. Her heels clacked in quick succession across the shiny yellow floor. With a crook of her finger in my direction, she removed me from my seat. Her gaze was focused on the floor as she led me to the principal’s office in silence.

When I entered the office, Sheriff Fletcher sat behind the cluttered desk instead of the principal himself.

Oh shit.

I took a quick mental inventory of anything I’d done recently that would warrant the honor of his visit. There was a dime bag in the back pocket of my shorts under my gold graduation gown, but since the sheriff’s weed policy was basically if you have it, pass it, I wasn’t overly concerned. Although having it on school property could result in some off-colored double standard policies or laws being applied. There hadn’t been a single marijuana arrest in Coral Pines the entire time I’ve lived here. It would be just my luck to be the very first one thrown behind bars for it. I’d also had an unfortunate incident involving the baseball field fence and a four-wheeler I’d borrowed—without the owner’s knowledge—but I was pretty sure there was no way for the sheriff to know it was me who caused the damage.

“Sheriff?” I tried to act casual, but my one-word greeting sounded like a question. Even with his lax attitude and loose interpretations of the law, I couldn’t stand the man. His family practically owned Coral Pines, so I was pretty sure Sheriff Fletcher had phoned in his police training. The only somewhat-decent member of the Fletcher family was Owen, a nice enough guy, if pretty boy man sluts were your thing.

The sheriff’s shirt was opened three buttons too many, as if to make sure that he wouldn’t be mistaken for a professional man of the law. A mass of curly black chest hair poked out of his collar and brushed the base of his throat. “Have a seat, Miss Ford.” He gestured with a fat, hairy finger to the chairs in front of the desk. Miss Morgan stood at his side with her hands folded in front of her, almost nun-like. Her tall, thin frame and high-wasted pencil skirt made her look like a giraffe next to the sheriff’s squatty physique. Her choppy, uneven bangs hung over her lashes and grazed her milky skin. Being a red-head, I was pretty damn pale; not even the death rays of the southern Florida sun could have changed that. Somehow, she managed to be even paler than me.

I took a seat and hoped that whatever this was would be over soon.

It had only been four years earlier, in another state at another school, in what seemed like another life, when the principal called me from my classroom and into the hallway to deliver the news that my father had overdosed. I’d been in foster care for over two years by then, and I hadn’t seen him in four. But the powers that be had thought his death was important enough to pull me from class, so I felt I owed it to them to fake some of the sadness I knew they were expecting from me.

What I really wanted to do was laugh at the satisfaction, at the justice of it all.

Happy couldn’t even begin to describe how I’d felt when they informed me of his death.

Nan had always said that God created man in his image. Where my father was concerned, God was either a sick, sadistic fuck or one hell of a lie people convinced themselves was the truth.

I kept that thought to myself when I was around Nan.

Dad had been at work when they found him in one of the bathroom stalls, sitting on the toilet with his pants down around his ankles, a syringe still hanging from his pocked-up arm. I was more surprised to hear he’d actually been at work than I was to hear he’d died. At least when it happened, he was with the only thing in his life he’d ever really loved: his needle.

Dad was a real winner.

The sheriff didn’t look me in the eyes. His gaze focused somewhere over my head, prolonging whatever news he’d come to deliver. As time passed, each of his breaths sounded more like strained snores. I grew impatient. “Maybe, you can just tell me why I’m here,” I blurted out.

“Sweetheart?” The word fell out of his mouth like he’d never used it before. “Who’s your next of kin?” The blood drained from my face. I didn’t answer him at first. I couldn’t find the words. My vision spun like I was looking at him through a kaleidoscope.

Next of kin? I thought. My only kin is Nan...

“Abby!” Miss Morgan snapped her fingers in my face. I hadn’t even seen her kneeling in front of me, but there she was. Behind her, the sheriff was sweating profusely and nervously. “Abby,” she repeated, softer now. “Nan was in an accident.” She enunciated each word as if she was teaching an English class.

“How?” I asked. “Her truck doesn’t even run. It’s been sitting in a junkyard and hasn’t been off blocks since September,” I said, as if somehow this fact would change the truth.

“Not a car accident, sweetie.” Miss Morgan looked to be in physical pain. “It was…an explosion.”

She squeezed my hand, but I flinched at her touch and immediately pulled away from her grip. “What the fuck?” I whispered. My heart pounded in my ears. I felt the blood in my veins turn to acid. My skin was about to burn off of my bones.

“That’s enough of that language, young lady.” Sheriff Fletcher had the audacity to scold me. He cleared his throat. “I do realize this is a difficult situation for you, and I’m very sorry.” Yeah, right. It sure sounded like he was. “I have to ask something: did your Nan tell you she needed money for anything, by chance? Do you know if she was having any sort of financial troubles?”

I shook my head. We didn’t live like royalty by any means, but her social security check and the money she made from selling her jams at the Sunday craft market was enough to pay the mortgage and keep me fed and clothed. “No,” I answered. “Not that I know of.”

Sheriff Fletcher groaned. “We have reason to believe your Nan was involved in some activities of a questionable nature.” He scratched at his five o’clock shadow. “She was in a mobile home in the middle of the Preserve when it exploded.”

There was no way this could be happening.

They had to be wrong.

The sheriff started to talk again as Miss. Morgan sat down next to me. She reached out in another attempt to put her hands over mine. I pulled away before she could.

“Sheriff Fletcher thinks the mobile home was involved in cooking drugs.” Her words were as awkward as she was.

“No, that has to be a mistake.” I started to rant like my words were being tossed around in a tornado. “Nan doesn’t have anything to do with drugs. I’ll call her right now... you can see for yourself”

There was no possible way, especially because of my parents’ shitty addictions, that Nan would ever be involved in something like that. She wouldn’t even take cough syrup when she had a cold.

I reached for the phone on the desk, but before I could get to it the sheriff put his sweaty bear paw on the receiver “Unfortunately, it’s no mistake. Your grandmother died this morning in an explosion at a known meth lab.” My mouth fell open as I stared at him. He offered nothing further. Instead, he asked me again, “Who’s your next of kin, Miss Ford? It’s not listed in your file. I know your parents aren’t in the picture, but is there an aunt or uncle we can call?”

“No,” I said quietly. There was no one.

“An older sibling then, or maybe a cousin?”

I shook my head, losing myself in the slow spin of the room around me.

Why the hell would Nan be at a meth lab?

There was no reason, except...

It hit me like an anvil why Nan needed the money: to pay for college. She talked about sending me all the time. I ignored her every time she brought it up. My plans for the future never reached further than the weekend. I mostly just smiled and nodded. Much of the time, I just changed the subject. I wasn’t going to college. End of story.

Apparently, Nan had thought otherwise.

But involving herself in meth just didn’t make sense.

“It’s just me…and her.” My voice cracked. Inside, I was crying, screaming, raging against whatever higher power would be so cruel that it would give me a taste of normalcy then strip it all away. Outside, I was a robot.

“How old are you, Miss Ford?” Sheriff Fletcher asked. He cracked his knuckles impatiently, like he couldn’t wait to get this over with and head to Sally’s all you can eat Saturday fish fry.

“Seventeen,” the robot said.

“When will you turn eighteen, honey?” Miss Morgan cooed, trying to offer me some sort of comfort.

“Not for a while.” Ten months, actually. I had graduated a full year early. When I told Nan I wanted to drop out of high school, she’d given me the only other option she would agree to. “If you want out so bad Abby,” she’d told me, “just hurry up and graduate early.”