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

Then, Nan fed me her homemade fried chicken with mashed potatoes. We had peach cobbler for dessert. She only spoke to ask me if I liked the food. I nodded. In truth, it was the best food I’d ever eaten. After that first meal, Tuesday night became Fried Chicken Night.

Nan didn’t want answers from me. She just wanted her grandchild—her short-tempered, razor-tongued, sometimes violent, grandchild. During my entire life, nobody had wanted me on my very best day on my very best behavior.

Nan wanted me at my worst, and sometimes, that was exactly what she got.

I had come such a long way in my four years with Nan. After just a few short weeks without her, it was like she’d never been in my life at all.

CHAPTER THREE

WHEN THE PERSISTENT SHIT AT THE DOOR kept ringing the bell over and over, I was inclined to get the shotgun from the hall closet, shoot first, and ask questions later.

“Go away!” I shouted into my pillow as I raised the comforter over my head. I didn’t know what time it was, and I didn’t care. All I knew was that it was early, and I wasn’t ready to end my hibernation just yet.

The doorbell shit changed his style from ringing it twice in increments of thirty seconds to pressing it continuously like someone waiting impatiently for an elevator.

That’s it, I thought. I’m getting the gun.

I leapt from my bed, tore open the front door, and almost felt bad for the poor soul on the other side who’d be facing my wrath.

A linebacker of a woman wearing a navy blue suit took up the majority of the doorway. I had to look up to see her face. She looked like Dan Aykroyd in drag. Her hair was thin and black with silver running through it, pulled in a tight bun at the nape of her neck. She held a file and a clipboard in her hand.

“Abby Ford?” she asked without looking at me, her focus solely on her clipboard. Her voice was deep and vibrated through her chest when she spoke.

“Huh?” I asked. I wiped sleep from my eyes, my rage replaced with a tired sense of confusion.

The woman-man sighed. “You are Abby Ford—am I correct?” She tapped the tip of her pen on her board.

“Yeah?” It came out more like a question.

She huffed, and if I could have seen her eyes all the way up there in the sky where her head was, I’m sure I would have seen that she was rolling them. “Let’s try this again. Are you or are you not Abby Ford, the minor child who was in the care of Georgianne Ford before her passing three weeks ago?”

“I’m almost eighteen,” I blurted, “so you can go now.”

I moved to shut the door, but she blocked it with her foot without missing a beat. “Yes, well, you aren’t eighteen yet, and being seventeen makes you a minor. Therefore, you are currently a ward of the state of Florida, and I will be taking you into protective custody today. You’ll be placed in foster care until the day you turn eighteen.” She flipped a page on her clipboard. “Which I can see here isn’t actually for another nine months or so.”

I had known foster care was a possibility. I just hadn’t expected Sheriff Fletcher to actually file the paperwork, and that they would show up so damn quickly. I’d also hoped that with me being so close to eighteen, no one would really give a shit.

“May I come in, Miss Ford?” The woman-man asked.

“No!” I moved in front of her to block the doorway. I was pretty sure I’d left some arrestable offenses on the coffee table she didn’t need to see.

“Excuse me?” she asked, obviously not used to being defied.

“My aunt doesn’t like strangers in the house, and you haven’t even told me your name.” I heard the lie come out of my mouth before I’d even registered what I was saying.

“Miss Thornton,” she replied. “My name is Miss Thornton.” I wanted to take her tapping pen and stab her in the foot—the one that kept the door from closing.

It was the first time she tore her eyes away from her paperwork and actually gave me a once over. I was still wearing my pajamas, which consisted of a long sleeved high neck t-shirt and shorts. I’m sure I had bed head and dark circles under my eyes. With all the nightmares, sleep had been no easy feat. Miss Thornton was probably wondering why I was sleeping at one o’clock on a Monday afternoon. “We have no record of this aunt you speak of, what’s her name?”

I glanced around the living room nervously. My eyes landed on the old quilt my Nan kept draped over the couch. The gaudy patch in the middle depicted Elvis the day he married Priscilla. They were cutting their wedding cake, her black bouffant was almost taller than the cake.

“Priscilla,” I said when I turned back to Miss Thornton. “Priscilla… Perkins.” The double P sound would make it easier for me to remember the lie.

“Where is this Aunt Priscilla?” She lowered her thick black glasses to the tip of her nose as she looked down at me.

“Um…she’s on her way back from Atlanta. She had to go get the rest of her stuff so she could move in here with me.” I looked past her so we wouldn’t make eye contact. Her eyes were like little lie detectors; I could almost see the needles jumping as my heartbeat sped up and slowed down. “She’s my mother’s sister. I just met her recently actually.”

I really needed to stop blurting shit out.

“Okay. So, when is your mother’s sister expected?” Miss Thornton was almost huffing. She was also sweating and not just a little. The beads that had started on her forehead raced down her face and pooled on top of her too-tight blouse collar. It drew my attention to the little yellow stain along the white fabric that grew larger with each passing moment she stood on the porch.

“Tomorrow afternoon,” I stated with as much confidence as I could. I faked a yawn to appear more nonchalant.

“Does anyone else know this aunt of yours? Anyone I could speak to?” She stuck her finger into her collar and pulled it away from the neck roll that puffed out above it. I swear I saw steam escape. I was sure she had a lot of kids besides me to go kidnap. I didn’t know why she was so worried about me.

“Sure. Everyone knows Aunt Priscilla. You can go ask at the corner store or at the motel up the road. They all know her.”

“Okay, Miss Ford,” Miss Thornton said. “Here’s what’s going to happen: I’m required to make certain you aren’t living alone, so I need to be sure that this ‘Aunt Priscilla’,” and she quoted the air with her fingers, “exists and is capable of caring for you. I intend to speak to the people you claim know her, by sometime this afternoon. If they do indeed know ‘Aunt Priscilla’ and can vouch for her existence, I will be back tomorrow afternoon to interview her regarding the process of becoming your legal custodian. In the meantime, here’s my card.” She handed me a generic white card with the Florida state seal in the corner. “If by chance she arrives earlier, please have her call me.”

I reached out and took her card as she turned and started down the steps.

She turned to me again. “And Miss Ford? If for any reason ‘Aunt Priscilla’ isn’t capable of your care, you will have to come with me.” For the first time since she’d rung the bell, there was something resembling concern in her voice, like maybe she’d cared about her job once, but over time had forgotten how to keep doing so.

The concern went away just as quickly as it had arrived. “Are you certain you don’t want to save me some time and trouble in this heat and just pack a bag now?”

I shook my head.

“Okay, then. I will be back, Miss Ford,” she assured me. She opened the car door and maneuvered herself behind the steering wheel of her much-too-small-for-her-body-mass silver Prius before pulling off down the road, in the direction of the corner store and motel.

I ran back into the house before the dust kicked up by her tires could settle. I opened my closet and pulled clothes from their hangers, opening drawers, and shoving as much stuff as I could into my backpack. It wouldn’t take her long to verify that no one knew this fictional Aunt Priscilla. I had to get the hell out of here before she came back and dragged me to yet another foster home.

Paid childcare, without the care. To me, that was what foster care really was. It funded drug habits and paid rents.

There was no way in hell I was going back in.

My experiences in the system varied between sharing a room with a boy who skinned cats—who I was convinced would suffocate me in my sleep—to listening to Greg, the older boy who slept in the bottom bunk of our four bunk room, angrily masturbating every night and cursing his parents when he came.

Then there was Sophie, the only friend I had ever made in foster care. She was small and quiet with dark hair and large brown eyes. Her skin always looked naturally tanned. She looked like a doll, from what I heard about them, anyway. I’d never actually owned one myself. Sophie shared the same vacant, hopeless look as I had. Her family history and her upbringing weren’t all that different from my own.

I recognized a kindred spirit in her.

One morning I’d found her naked on the couch, her eyes lifeless and unfocused. Bruises marred every inch of her little twelve-year-old body. Her once-olive skin was transparent. I could see all of her blue veins beneath the surface. Her wrists were bound behind her back with a long dirty sock, a needle sat in an ashtray beside her. Blood dripped from the tip and pooled in the bottom of the clear glass. Dick and Denise, our foster parents, used her as their entertainment for the previous evening. They’d doped her with drugs bought with the money given to them by the state for her care before using her as a toy for their sadistic sex games.