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

Holy shit.

Just when I thought I could finally walk away, he had to add one more thing. “If I’d known you were sneaking in for the show, I would have made sure you had a better seat.” He raised his eyebrows suggestively and smiled. I felt the redness creep up from my neck to my cheeks. He started to slide the gate shut. I turned and ran before he had it closed, hiding the evidence of my embarrassment.

I’d never been so irritated, disgusted and intrigued by someone in all my life—and I’ve met a lot of warped motherfuckers. It was the intrigued part that had me worried the most.

Things would have been so much easier if he’d just shot me.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE FIRST THING I NOTICED when I got home was the junk, a huge pile of debris collected up in the center of the small gravel driveway. My heart fell into my stomach when the realization washed over me that it wasn’t junk. It was our lives.

Mine and Nan’s.

Our clothes, our furniture, all of our pictures and memories had been mangled and thrown into a huge heap. I climbed up the pile and knelt down in the center, running my hands over the matted red hair of Nan's favorite collectable doll she called Daphne. Nan used to tell me the doll reminded her of me. I thought it was just because of the red hair, until one day she told me otherwise.

“It’s because she’s resilient," she had said. "That doll has been through two house fires, one front yard burial by wayward dog, and an accidental toilet bowl drowning.” She leaned across the counter on her elbows and whispered, “She was saved. All Daphne needed was a little sprucing up and a good dose of love. Every single time, she would come out okay, sometimes even better than she was before.” I may have been only thirteen, but I knew she hadn’t been talking about the doll anymore.

In Nan’s own way, she was trying to explain to a thirteen year-old kid that even though life hands you a big pile of shit, you don’t have to roll around in it and make shit angels.

My version of her logic.

I climbed down the mound, still clutching Daphne in my hands. As I approached the front porch, I spotted a very official-looking bright green paper with bold lettering tacked to the screen door. I couldn’t make out the words until I was right on top of it. The paper shouted:

THIS PREMISES HAS BEEN EVICTED BY THE

CALOOSA COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF COURT ORDER IN REGARDS TO THE FORECLOSURE OF

4339 PINEPASS ROAD

Case #4320951212102013

First Bank of Coral Pines vs. Georgianne Margaret Ford

ENTRANCE BY ANYONE WITHOUT EXPRESS PERMISSION FROM

THE CALOOSA COUNTY SHERIFF OR THE OWNERS:

FIRST BANK OF CORAL PINES

WILL BE REMOVED AND PROSECUTED

BY THE PROPER AUTHORITY

SIGNED: SHERIFF COLE FLETCHER

Special Notes: LOCKS HAVE BEEN CHANGED

I ripped the eviction notice from the door and sat down on the rickety wooden steps of the porch. They creaked and groaned under my every move, making me feel as unwelcome as the paper I clutched. I turned it over and over, hoping to see a “gotcha”, or some other punch line—maybe even a loophole that would make it all go away.

There weren’t any.

This one little piece of highlighter green paper just determined everything, and that everything, was that I had nothing.

Why hadn’t Nan told me she was losing her house? I could have helped. I would have quit school and gotten a job.

I’d just answered my own fucking question.

Of course she didn't tell me. She wanted me to graduate. She said it all the time, every day if she could squeeze it in. It was like the woman had a one-track mind. “Do you want pie—graduate from high school.”

“The sun is sure beating down today—graduate from high school.”

“I sure miss your Popop—graduate from high school.”

I think Nan believed that as long as I had a high school diploma my life would somehow end up okay.

With the letter of doom in one hand and the Daphne doll in the other, Nan’s obsession with me graduating from high school was laughable, in a sad, twisted kind of way.

Nan had gotten her wish. I had graduated and received my high school diploma.

I know she couldn’t ever have imagined I wouldn't have anywhere to hang it.

***

I went around back and grabbed a blue tarp from the toolbox on the dock and draped it over the mound on the driveway in case of rain. As I finished covering the contents of mine and Nan’s life together, Sheriff Fletcher pulled up along the road in his police cruiser. He didn't bother getting out. I’d have sworn if someone were murdered, he’d probably have just snapped a picture of the crime scene with his phone without so much as stopping the car on his way to Bubba’s.

Sheriff Fletcher rolled down his window. "Thanks for the heads up," I spat at him. After all, it was his official signature gracing the bottom of the eviction notice.

"Darlin', we don't get no advance notice on these things. They’re sent to us from the state with orders to carry out the eviction on the same day. I didn't know until yesterday morning it was your Nan's house we was guttin’ up.” He paused. “It’s not like I could’ve gotten a hold of you anyway. Seems you up and disappeared on us." Gruff and unapologetic. Same as every other day.

"I assume by that comment that Dan has stopped by to see you?" I asked as I finished tucking the tarp under the bottom of the mound in case the rain decided it wanted to seep through the sides.

"Who?"

"Miss Thornton," I clarified.

"Oh yeah. Told her the truth, that I didn't know where you was. She'll be back soon, though, so you might want to figure out what your plan is." Sheriff Fletcher offered no assistance, but he also didn’t haul me back to Miss Thornton. For that, I was grateful.

"I'll have Owen help you move some of that shit." He grumbled, waving to the crap in the driveway. He pulled out his cell phone and mumbled into the receiver before clicking it shut. He put the cruiser in drive, but before the car moved three feet he stopped again and leaned out the window. "You got any green on ya?" he asked, not bothering to look around to see who might hear him.

“Sorry, that whole keeping myself fed and sheltered thing has really been a drag these past few weeks.” I may have been grateful, but I sure as shit wasn’t sharing the last of my weed with him.

The sheriff rolled his eyes and waved his hand dismissively. “See you ‘round, kid,” he muttered. Then he was gone.

A half -hour later, I was lying on the small patch of grass you could hardly call a front lawn, my legs crossed at the ankles, dreaming of a time not long ago when Nan had first taken me in. We were sitting in the living room, and she was working on her knitting.

"What are your dreams, Abby?" Nan asked. When she saw how confused I was, she clarified the question. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I’d never been asked that before, so naturally I’d never thought about the answer. I’d thought a lot about running away, but my dreams for my life had never gone beyond getting away from my parents, then from foster care, then from the memories that plagued me. I never dreamed about what I’d do afterward.

Getting away had become my everything.

My dreams were of being left alone.

When I didn't answer Nan, she said, "Any answer is a good answer, Abby."

I told her the first thing that came to my bitter mind. "Dad always said I wasn't good for nothin' so I guess that’s what I’m gonna do: nothin’." Hope had been stripped from me at every minute of every hour of every day for my entire life.

Nan had tried to give it back to me.

She shook her head. "No honey, your Daddy was a sick man. He didn't know what he was sayin’. You’re a beautiful young lady, and you can do whatever you want when you grow up. You can be a singer, a dancer, a doctor, a lawyer—even the president." I thought she was lying to me. I got angry. Why would she tell me I could be anything when we both knew it wasn’t true?

I was so full of rage. I remember sweeping my arm across the kitchen table, sending the glass vase in the center crashing to the floor in one quick motion. It shattered around my legs, the shards cutting into my feet and toes.

"You don't gotta lie to me!" I screamed, and I continued screaming until my throat was raw. Nan tried to wrap me up in a hug, and I just got louder. Her touch burned my skin. But, Nan didn’t know about the burning then.

She didn’t know she was hurting me.

I’d struggled against Nan, but I was so much smaller than she was. She wrestled me to the ground while whispering her brand of loving reassurance in my ear. How much she loved me. How much she believed in me. "You can do anything, baby girl. I promise, I will never lie to you. You are bright and beautiful and resilient. You can do anything." She repeated those words until my muscles relaxed and I fell asleep in her arms on the kitchen floor. The fire in me hadn’t died.

I had just given in to the flames.

It was my first and only hug.

Ever.

It was the first time I’d ever felt loved, or even worthy of love. I was both elated and frightened by the intensity of it all. I had wondered how people with more than one person to love walked around all day without falling over from the weight of their emotions.

That very day I had fallen in love with my grandmother.