One she found herself looking forward to as the week progressed.
As long as Jagger was correct, and Keith would be absent.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“HE OWES ME eight hundred right now. Rent’s due again in two weeks, son. That’ll bring it up to twelve hundred.”
Keith balled his fist. “Thanks, I can add.” He wasn’t sure which pissed him off more, the news itself or being called son by the meth-mouthed slumlord who managed the trailer park where his father lived, and Keith had grown up. Either way, the man’s voice grated like long, pointed nail on a chalkboard.
He massaged the skin above his eyebrows, which now throbbed with the beginnings of a crippling headache. “Pretty sure this has fuck all to do with me, Harvey. Should probably give the old man a call since it’s his problem and all.”
“Been tryin’. Earl ain’t got a phone no more.” The hocking sound of Harvey spitting made Keith cringe as he imagined a wad of brown saliva and dip leaving his mouth.
Keith stopped walking midway down the hall to his kitchen. It was way too early in the morning for this shit. “So knock on his fucking door. Kick it in for all I care. His late rent has nothing to do with me.”
“Did that. He ain’t got the money. Said you’d be good for it.”
Of course that fucking piece of shit did. Earl had done nothing but abuse Keith and the rest of his siblings until they left—no escaped—the trailer park. Mentally, verbally, or physically they’d all been scarred in some way by the real evil that inhabited their father’s charred soul. To this day, the old man remained the definition of drunken belligerence, and now he expected Keith to pay his trailer’s fucking lot rent?
Hell. No.
“Not gonna happen, Harvey.” Old Harvey had been managing the trailer park since Keith was a kid living with his five siblings and two addict parents in a dilapidated double wide. Man, those had been some dark days.
“Someone’s gotta pay, or he’s out on his junkie ass. You gonna take ’im in instead? Bet he’d snuggle real nice with you at night.”
Keith grunted. The ground wasn’t cold enough yet for Hell to have frozen over. “Gotta go, Harvey. Good luck.”
“Sure, yeah. Just one more thing. Your old man said to tell you your momma would roll over if she knew you were turning away from your blood.”
Keith pinched the bridge of his nose. There it was. The kill shot. His Achilles fucking heel. Goddam that old man.
Please, Keith. Please promise me you’ll help your father. Just don’t let him get hurt.
“Give me a few hours, and I’ll bring you a check.” Resignation set in. At that moment, he hated himself for his weakness. Almost as much as he hated his father. What would his siblings think if they knew how many times he’d bailed the old man out over the years? They’d be disgusted. But then, they were one of the reasons he did this. To keep their father’s poison away from his brothers and sister. They didn’t deserve his cruelty or the burden of cleaning his messes.
No one did.
But then again, neither had their mother, but she’d been helpless to tear herself away from the venom of Earl Benson. By the time she’d turned twenty, she’d depended on her husband for everything. Especially feeding her addiction.
“Excellent!” Harvey said, his voice oozing like slime. “I’ll be wai—”
Keith ended the call. If Ronnie’s bedroom hadn’t been on the other side of the wall, he’d have bashed his forehead against it.
Fuck. There went eight hundred dollars he’d set aside for the vintage Harley he had his eye on.
With a growl of frustration, Keith rounded the corner into the kitchen. He bypassed the refrigerator, an open box of donuts on the counter, and the coffee pot. Even the thought of his vital morning caffeine hit had his stomach turning.
Grabbing his sweatshirt off the back of a kitchen chair, he rounded the corner into the family room only to draw up short at the sight of three of his siblings staring at him from the sectional sofa with serious expressions.
No, wait, make that all his siblings. Ronnie’s computer sat open on the coffee table with Jimmy and Ian’s faces on the split-screen.
“Fuck,” he said as he slowly entered the room. “Who died?” Something had to be seriously wrong. They didn’t sit around and have family chats with the two members of their family in the military. Ian was a Marine, currently deployed to Afghanistan, and Jimmy lived on the Naval base stationed in Okinawa. It had to be the middle of the fucking night in Japan.
His heart started pounding. “Are one of you sick?” he asked, already mentally planning how to rearrange his schedule and help.
“No,” Ronnie said. “None of us are sick, and no one died.” She held a full mug of coffee cradled between her palms. “Sorry, we didn’t mean to scare you, but we wanted to talk to you about something.”