Page 124 of Bobby Green

There was a noise at the front door, and V stuck her head out just as the two of them flew apart, grabbing their shovels and standing up to work some more.

But inside, Bobby was rejoicing, hoping, praying.

Something had happened to Reg that he hadn’t expected—something good. Something he’d earned. He was growing.

Veronica asked nightly when she could go back to the other hospital, the one with her boyfriend in it, until Reg had started to ask if they could bring her in to visit. So far the answer had been no—Kevin hadn’t been doing so well since V left—but that knowledge, that the worst things that could happen—V being in the hospital, Reg being out of porn—could also be the good things that could happen, was starting to build inside him.

Bobby started to wonder what it would be like to move all his stuff into this house, to rip out the cabinets, replace the kitchen floor.

He liked living in the apartment with his mom fine—in a way, it was like living in Dogpatch, except he and his mom talked openly now, even when she was trying to talk him out of Johnnies. She didn’t yell at him, she didn’t suspect him of things—they just talked.

But he didn’t feel like it was home.

Reg’s house felt like home now, but it was one he wasn’t welcome in. They all knew that.

V stood on the porch now, practically vibrating. “It’s time for my pills!”

“No, it’s not,” Bobby said calmly. He pulled out his phone. “See? Pills in an hour.”

“It’s wrong,” she snarled. “I feel like shit. Get your lazy ass in here and make my lunch!”

Bobby and Reg met eyes, and he could tell the good feeling brought on by Reg’s sudden change in fortune had just dissipated like cloud vapor in the ninety-degree heat.

“V, that’s not nice,” Reg said, trying to be conciliatory.

“Fuck you both,” she sneered. “Faggots.”

And she turned into the house and slammed the door.

“Oh fuck,” Bobby muttered.

“It’s gotta be this last week,” Reg said, both of them analyzing every exchange with her. Yeah. The last week, their quiet evenings had turned into the news station blaring again. This was the first time she’d been overtly hostile, but her body language had become more aggressive.

When she’d first come back, she’d smiled sometimes, saidpleaseandthank you. But she didn’t now.

Bobby took a deep breath. “I’m going to go put the shovels in the back of my truck,” he said thoughtfully. “I think you and I need to spend the rest of the day cleaning the house.”

Because they needed to find her stash of pills, and count them, and make sure she got what she needed today.

Because theybothknew where this was heading if they didn’t.

THEY HUNTED.

They searched her room, her closet, under her bed. Bobby felt like a total asshole when he opened her box of feminine protection—but then he found the little repository of pills. He thanked his lucky stars it was in the box and not with the used product in the trash.

“Nine doses,” he counted grimly. “Reg, call the hospital and tell them she’s missed nine doses.” He glared at V, who was sitting unrepentantly at the table and chewing her dose for the day without water. The pills in the box had been spat out into the glass—and then fished out after she finished the water.

“That’s just what I saved,” she snarled.

“Whydoyou save them?” Bobby asked, curious. “I mean, if you flushed them, we wouldn’t have any evidence at all.”

Her eyes flickered. “Well, last time it was so Reg’d forget the doctor’s appointment and wouldn’t figure out I wasn’t taking them.”

Bobby had figured that out in the hospital. “But now?”

She picked a cuticle. “’Cause I do okay without ’em. But if I stop doing okay, I want them there to take.”

Bobby stared at her and tried to process that. “You think this is doing okay?” he asked, making sure. “You’re not nice without your medication, V. You scream shit at your brother. You’re mean to people. You deliberately hurt their feelings. He can’t sleep when you don’t take your medication—he’s afraid you’re going to hurt him. You understand that, right?”