Page 24 of Now to Forever (Life on the Ledge Duet #2)

Fifteen

“Glory, you in here?” I call, pushing the rickety door of the trailer open with armfuls of groceries. The unfortunate scent of cigarette smoke and too-strong air freshener assaults me the second I step inside and set the bags on the floor.

“Where else would I be?” she snaps, making her way down the short hall, muttering a swear under her breath as she eyes me before dropping into the worn recliner.

Her jeans and shirt are both a size too big for her skinny frame.

“Dressin’ up like that make you feel better about where you came from, Scotty Ann? ”

I roll my neck, tugging at the lapel of my navy blazer as I force a sweet smile. “Now why would I ever need to recover from this cozy corner of Satan’s crotch, Glory?”

She scoffs. “You look ridiculous in that jacket and those shoes. Polyester tryin’ to be silk.”

I sort through the groceries. “Noted. ”

She rolls her eyes, taps a cigarette out of a box and brings it up to her mouth, lighting it with her bony fingers as I take the groceries to the kitchen and start putting them away.

Despite the dilapidated appearance of the exterior and the overall depressing tone of the trailer park itself, the inside is tidy.

Dated, worn, and certainly dreary, but it’s clean enough.

Everything is original from when we moved into it when I was a kid, and even then, it belonged to the people who lived here before us.

“You bring beer this time?” she barks.

Out of her line of sight in the kitchen, I raise both my fists, middle fingers flying as I pantomime a scream.

It’s only once a month, but every second in these nicotine-soaked, wood-paneled walls pushes me one step closer to the nervous breakdown she’s gunning for me to have.

In the couple hours I’m here, I check my best interest at the door in order to make sure she’s alive, has food in the fridge, and the place hasn’t completely fallen apart.

June has told me I’m insane for continuing to show up here.

Maybe I am. Part of me wonders if I’m simply delusional enough to still have hope we can have a normal relationship while another part of me thinks it’s simply knowing I didn’t do enough to help Zeb, and now I’m all she has.

Either way, I show up fully prepared to scrape every bit of shit she spews off myself when I leave.

Instead of telling her to go buy her own beer and fuck off, I say nothing, putting milk, eggs, and orange juice into the fridge and twenty frozen dinners with broccoli and grilled chicken in the freezer.

She may have left me out to dry my entire life, but I refuse to do the same.

Refuse to be her. Plus, I’m leaving. I can endure this for a few more months.

I check the calendar on my phone; it’s September second.

Thanksgiving is less than three months away.

Even if I list December first and it sells right away, it dawns on me that there will still be thirty more days of closing procedures.

I can’t leave until January. Four months .

I take a steadying breath. I’ve dealt with her a lifetime; I can handle four more months.

After that, she’s on her own.

“Saw you out there with a girl the other day. She yours?”

I walk to the doorway and glare at her but don’t dare tell her it’s Ford’s kid. That will prompt her mouth to start a downpour not an umbrella in the world could protect me from.

She scoffs and takes a drag of her cigarette, tapping it on the edge of the ashtray next to her.

“You’ve been spreading your legs for a long time, how am I supposed to know?

It’s not like you tell me what’s going on in your life.

You could have a whole family out there I don’t know about because you’re too ashamed for people to know who I am. ”

I look at her, unamused. “I’ve been meaning to tell you, it was a relief you didn’t show up to my high school graduation—which I invited you to repeatedly—because I didn’t want anyone to know who I really was. Happy now?”

Her cheeks hollow out with her next deep drag of her cigarette and her hazel eyes, cloudy from age and a life filled with complete disregard for real food and clean air, hold mine in an icy stare.

When she exhales, she picks up the remote and mutters, “Thought so.” With a click of the button, The Price is Right fills the TV screen.

Four more months.

I buzz around, putting the groceries away and starting a load of laundry.

Back in the living room, she stubs out her smoke, watching me as I collect a few bags of trash from wastebaskets, tying them up and setting them at the front door to take when I leave.

“All my friends have grandkids.”

Here we go.

“What friends do you have, Glory?”

She snorts. “I’m not an invalid, I have friends.

And why do you have to keep calling me Glory?

I’m your mother. I gave you life! You’re disrespectful—always have been.

It’s no wonder I didn’t show up at your graduation when you treat me like this.

Like I’m some kind of-of second-class citizen.

” Her puckered lips make her skinny face look like a beak. Ford could name the bird.

I clench my teeth, going to the bathroom to collect the last of the trash and stopping as I tie the bag in the hall and study the collage-style picture frame that hangs.

There are a couple school photos of Zeb and I from elementary years with wild hair and missing teeth, a few photos of my dad’s rotten parents and his brother, and one of Glory, my dad, and me and Zeb on the beach, thirty some years ago.

It was the only vacation we ever took. Only time I saw the ocean until I went with June’s family in high school.

We drank Slurpees and ate crabs; my parents never fought once in those three days .

I wonder if life would have been better if we had just stayed there and never came back from that trip.

Lived on that beach or had a house at the lake.

Dad would have fished—maybe would have been happier—and maybe Glory would still be Mama.

Maybe we could have been happy. Normal. Maybe Zeb would still be here.

It was after that trip things took a nosedive.

Like going on vacation showed us a good life we’d never have.

Only weeks later we were at a playground, and I fell and skinned my knee.

“Mama! Mama!” I wailed. She got to me, jerked me up, and said with a frustrated voice, “Stop shoutin’ Mama in front of all these people.

” I looked at her, confused as my knee bled and snot came out of my nose.

“My name is Glory. That’s what you’ll call me. ”

From then on, I did.

“You lost?” Glory barks, shaking me from my trance.

“I said, you and your brother never cared one bit about me. Look what he went and did. Used them drugs until they used him.” I look at her as I tie the last bag, wishing it was her head inside of it instead of empty toilet paper rolls and used Q-tips.

“My family was no good—turned their backs on me when I needed them. Lyle was a worthless husband and daddy.” We agree on at least one thing.

“Now all I’m left with is you treatin’ me like a burden. ”

I drop the bag of trash at the door and give her a deadpan look. “The nerve of Zeb to become an addict and die without considering the fact you’d be stuck with me.”

She drops her head back with an incredulous sound then taps another Lucky out of the box, lighting it with a long drag .

The truth is, in the hardest days when I miss Zeb the most, I’m furious at him, but not for the same reasons as Glory.

I’m pissed he wouldn’t let me help. Pissed he couldn’t see all the people he had who wanted him here.

Who would have done anything so that he’d still be here.

Pissed that as much as Glory’s stuck with me, I’m stuck with her, Zeb nowhere around for me to call and commiserate with when I leave here after every visit.

And at my very lowest moments when his absence is the loudest, I hate him. For all of it.

“What have you been doing?” Smoke leaks out of her mouth with each word. “You have cuts on your hands. That part of your ridiculous job burning all those bodies? You should hear what my friends say about that. They think you’re a freak.”

“Can’t wait to meet them.” I pick up my purse and open the door, tossing the bags of trash onto the porch in hopes she’ll eventually get them to the trailer park dumpster. “I got a house. On the lake.”

“On the lake?” She stills mid-drag. “How’d you afford that?”

“It was given to me.” I roll my shoulders. “By a friend.”

Her eyes narrow.

“Archie Watkins and his wife Lydia,” I explain. “You know them?”

She jolts upright in her recliner and snatches the cigarette from her mouth, glaring.

“Never heard of them.” Her voice has a harder edge than usual.

Okay.

“Well, Archie died, and he wanted me to have it. ”

She says nothing, staring blankly at the TV as she nibbles on her lip, smoke from the ass end of her cigarette swirling into the air.

I don’t know what she’s thinking. I also don’t care.

“Go figure they’d give you a house on the lake while I’m stuck here,” she finally says, resettling into her recliner.

“What you wanna live on that lake for anyway? Mosquitoes are as big as bald eagles.” I roll my eyes.

“Figures you’d live there though. Fancy clothes.

Fancy job. Hoity lake house. It’s like you live your life tryin’ to make me look bad. ”

“Got me,” I say dryly.

“Figured as much.” She looks at me, gently rocking in the oversized recliner as The Price is Right blares a winning bell. “It won’t work, you know.”

I frown from the doorway. “What won’t?”

“A fancy new house. Won’t change where you came from. You could run away as far as your legs could carry you—an island, a desert, a damn igloo on the top of the globe. Can’t outrun where you come from, Scotty Ann. Can’t hide from it neither.”

Her words slam into me like a wrecking ball, but I refuse to argue. Refuse to let her worm her way into my head and bore holes into my plan. I can get away from this place; I will. “Good to know.”

Cigarette wobbling on her lips, she regards me once more. “The Callahan boy is back in town. Got here earlier this year. Maybe if you weren’t such a bitch he’d take you back. You remember him, don’t ya? ”

The urge to laugh in her face then smother her with a pillow is hard to contain.

“Barely.” She opens her mouth to say more, but I’m done. I’ve reached my Glory quota of hearing what a disappointment I am, how hard her life is, and God knows what she wants to say about Ford. “I’ll see you in a few weeks. Call me if you need anything. Get your own beer.”

Before I drive away, I smack the steering wheel and scream until I can’t. When the sound of fast violins fills the air, I match the speed by flooring the gas. The only thing keeping me from having a complete come apart is knowing in four more months, I’ll never have to make this trip again.