He blew out his cheeks and pushed up his bushy eyebrows. Seth was my mother’s brother, half Cherokee, and his features showed it. His hair was still black as coal and his skin looked like it was crafted out of boot leather. The Navy dermatologist would have had a field day with Uncle Seth. He’d spent every day of his sixty-some years working the land in the hot Texas sun. He used to say that he would have been a rich man if he had a nickel for every time he herded cattle on the back of a horse or walked behind a mule with a plow.

I gave him a genuine smile and patted him on both shoulders. I was rarely happy to see anyone. It was an odd feeling. I asked, “How you been, Uncle Seth?”

“Well, son, I’ve been better,” he said, the smile melting into a sad frown. “What with Irene passing and all. She was asking for you at the end.” He looked at me like he expected me to say that I was sorry that I wasn’t there for my mother’s death. If he was waiting on me to apologize, he was in for a long wait. When it was clear no apology was coming, he fished inside the pocket of his overalls and pulled out a key.

“Here,” he said, holding out the key and nodding at the front door. “Let’s get inside out of this heat.”

I took the key and a deep breath, then stepped across the little porch and pulled open the storm door. I pushed the key into the lock and held my breath. I could feel Uncle Seth behind me, watching, wondering why in hell it was taking me so long to open the door. It was hard to explain, but I was overcome by the same old feelings I used to get when I’d come home knowing that my old man was inside, probably drunk and pissed off, waiting for me to come inside and give him even the flimsiest excuse to beat the shit out of me. Even though I knew he was dead, the feeling was there. I had faced down and beaten men much bigger and stronger and even meaner than he was. Still, I felt like a little kid standing there with one hand on the key and the other on the doorknob.

“You okay, son?” Seth asked, putting a rough hand softly on my back.

I sucked in a quick breath and nodded without looking back at him.

I gave the key a quick twist and pushed the door open.

CHAPTER 9: Shane

I stood in the doorway for a moment as the house belched a cloud of thick, hot dust in my face. It rolled over me on its way out the door like invisible inmates escaping from a prison, like demons fleeing Pandora’s box. I waved it away and stepped inside with Uncle Seth close at my heels.

The house was pretty much just as I remembered it. The front door opened to a small living room that had just enough room for a ratty sofa and my old man’s recliner, which I’d made the mistake of sitting in one time when I was seven or eight years old. As I recall, he grabbed me by the hair of the head and dragged me to the front door and flung me out into the front yard and slammed the door. I never went near that recliner again.

He’d come in most nights, eat his supper, slap the shit out of me, and drink himself into a stupor laying in that chair. He kept an old aluminum TV tray next to the chair for his TV remote and beer cans, which my mother kept supplied until he passed out. She probably thought that if he drank himself to sleep, at least we’d have peace until the next morning when he woke up.

“Place has been closed up for a while,” Seth said, moving to stand next to me. He took off his hat and tugged a blue kerchief from his side pocket and mopped his face with it. “Hot as hell in here. Want me to turn the air conditioning on?”

“Sure,” I said without getting out of his way. It was as if my feet had become glued to the floor and refused to go any further. Seth walked down the short hallway off the living room and fiddled with the thermostat until the air kicked on. It rattled through the vents under the house, sounding like a herd of rats tunneling their way in.

I finally convinced my feet to move. “He’s not here,” the little voice in my head told my body, urging my feet to move and my heartbeat to slow down. “There’s nothing to be afraid of now. The old bastard is dead.”

I walked through the living room and into the kitchen. There was a table in front of the window where we used to eat. There were stacks of papers and envelopes on the table, but the room was otherwise tidy, even though every surface sported a thick layer of dust.

“Me and Wilma cleaned the place when we put your mama in the nursing home a few months ago,” he said, referring to his wife, my Aunt Wilma, who I hadn’t seen in years. I felt bad for not having asked how she was, but I didn’t say anything. Seth went to the door that opened into the back yard and twisted the lock. He had to tug it open because it was warped in the frame. It had always been that way.

He said, “After your daddy died and her health went south, Irene wasn’t much of a housekeeper. We threw out all the food. Most of her clothes and all your daddy’s things are still here. I can help you move them out if you want. Or maybe have a yard sale. Wilma’s an expert on yard sales. Might make you a few hundred bucks.”

“Do you want anything that’s here?” I asked.

Deep lines ran across his forehead. His eyes narrowed to slits when he frowned at me. “What do you mean?”

“Do you want anything that’s here?” I repeated, holding out my hands like a game show model. “Clothes? Furniture? Appliances? The car? The truck? The house?”

Seth shook his head like he thought he wasn’t hearing correctly. “Don’t you want them? Ain’t you gonna need them?”

I shook my head and gave the room a look of disgust. “If it was up to me, Uncle Seth, I’d pour gasoline all over everything and set it on fire. Since the Gulf Breeze fire department and the neighbors would probably object, I just want everything gone so I could put the house on the market and get the fuck out of town.”

“You’re not staying?”

I snorted at him. “Why the fuck would I do that?”

“Because this is your home, Shane,” he said. “This is where your family is. Your roots.”

I gave him a sad smile and shook my head slowly. “You’re the only family I have left, Uncle Seth, and honestly, that’s not enough to keep me here. I plan on cleaning this place out and selling it to the first buyer that wants it. Then I’m gone.”

“You’re gone?”

“Gone.”

Uncle Seth rubbed his chin, which was covered in stubble, and blew out a long breath. It sounded like sandpaper on concrete in a wind storm. “Well, I reckon me and Wilma can haul it all away and do something with it. You sure you don’t want your mama’s car or your daddy’s truck?”

Tags: Mia Ford Romance
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