Page 49 of Long Live the King

“He didn’t say their name, but his phone is in his pocket,” Alannah says, and we move at the same time.

I turn Tommy’s body over and feel for a phone in his pockets. It only takes a second to find it, and to my surprise, it’s not a smart phone. It’s an old school flip phone, the kind you don’t want someone to know you have, otherwise known as a burner. Burners don’t have passwords that keep people from accessing their info.

I flip the phone open and search to find the numbers that have gone out and been received, and when I see the last number dialed, it’s a contact in the phone, so it’s both a number and a name.

I don’t know if my vision is still damaged from the fight with Tommy or not, but I can’t believe my eyes. Alannah gasps as she reads the name, and I feel like all the blood in my body just rushed to my head. I drop the phone in complete shock and have to sit down so I don’t fall down.

“This can’t be right,” I hear Alannah say, although her voice sounds like it’s far away.

“It is,” I reply in a whisper. “It’s right here in front of us.”

I look down at the phone and read the name over and over again, never getting over the feeling of being stunned and betrayed.

The name in the phone is Gloria.

As in Gloria Giaculo.

My mother.