Chapter 4
Liv
The tipsof my fingers were numb, and the smell of bleach burned into the bridge of my nose. My eyes watered, but this place still would never be clean enough. I scrubbed harder, faster.
“Liv?”
I hadn’t heard another voice in hours. When I looked up from the floor, the side yard door was open. Just beyond it, the sky was drained of color, not even a hint of stars or clouds to mar the blackness. I blinked back the stinging blur that welled in my eyes. Brooke Fury stood out against the darkness, filling the doorway, a shadow of confusion settled over her face. “Whoa. That’s a lot of bleach you got going on there.”
I sat back on the heels of my shoes and shook my head. “Brooke, this place is so horrible.” A hysterical giggle bubbled up in my chest. “The stains have stains. There’s… There’s DNA on everything,” I said, voice splintering with anger.I just finished scrubbing the bottom of a cabinet full of dead rodents. Over a dozen decayed little corpses, stuck to the warped wood of the cupboard with a fuzzy grey-green fungus growing around them. This was where my mother kept her teas and coffee.
“How is she?” Brooke asked, stepping inside and doing her best to close the busted door behind her.
“Twelve stitches to her head. Cuts and scrapes all over her body. Badly dehydrated.” I laughed again, dryly. “Oh and she’s a raging alcoholic who can’t take care of herself.” That was the understatement of the year.
“Liv…” My childhood friend rushed to me, pulling me up off the floor. My shoulder blades were on fire; my skin felt too tight over my body. My stomach churned with emptiness, and all I wanted to do was fold into a ball and cry.
I dropped the blackened sponge from my grip and let her take me. “Come on, come sit down and talk with me,” she urged, pushing me gently into the living room and onto the couch. “Jesus Liv,” she said, covering her nose with the collar of her shirt. “Did you pour bleach all over the house?”
“Just about, yeah.” I’d been at it for hours after coming back from the hospital. Every pillow, curtain, piece of clothing, or any kind of fabric was either thrown away or shoved into the washing machine. The floors bleached, the refrigerator scrubbed, toilet bleached and scrubbed. “I’ve never seen anything like this before. I…I mean, you only see this stuff in movies or on the news.”
Her eyebrows gave a little raise, and she gave me a forced smile.
“Okay, Brooke. You’re a cop; maybe you see this crap all the time. But I don’t. And this is my mother. I mean, I knew she drank and…but this…her mattress was caked with…I don’t even know what…” My voice lowered to nothing, because there was simply nothing to say. “That woman gives new meaning to rock bottom.”
“Are they keeping her for detox?” she asked.
“Yeah, yeah, they are. At least ten days. Then I need to find a rehab center for her. One that she’ll stay in. One that I could afford,” I said, sighing.
She nodded, “How’d she take that news?”
“She threw something at me. Kept telling me not to touch her stuff,” I replied, having difficulty swallowing the lump in my throat.
“And so you came back here and touched all her stuff?” she asked with a polite smile.
I slumped back into the chair, and breathed in deeply. “Yeah, I did.” If this weren’t my life it would make for a great television series.
“Liv, ever since you were little, you’ve taken care of that woman. You’ve done everything you could, don’t give me that guilty look.” She dragged the coffee table closer and sat on the edge, just as her brother did that morning. “And how areyouholding up?”
“I’m literally running on guilt and anger right now.” I needed to accept the fact that Audrey Rhys was never going to be a mother to me. Ishouldhavenoguilt. I would never know what a family really was.
“I can imagine,” she said, scanning the bare room. “You shouldn’t stay here. Breathing in this bleach is not healthy, and that back door is a security issue.”
“Look at you being all cop-ish,” I smiled, at least I tried to—I’m sure it came out looking sour and bitter. “There’s no way I’m staying here. It still smells like burnt onions and vomit to me. In a few minutes, I’ll GPS the nearest hotel and get a room,” I mumbled, thoughtlessly.
“No way. Stay with me next door. I’ll order a pizza, and we’ll catch up,” she said, enthusiastically.
“You look more exhausted than I do,” I replied, touched that she wanted me to stay with her.
“I was on an arrest. So I just came off an eighteen-hour shift,” she shrugged, smiling. “Just another busy day, is all.” She touched my arm lightly, tugging on my shirt. “Come on, let’s get some air in here.”
Brooke helped me open all the windows, ripped screens flapping in the cold breeze. The shock of the sudden fresh air was dizzying, and my stomach growled loudly.
“Let’s go,” she said, putting her hands on my shoulders and gently shoving me toward the door. “Your stomach is screaming at me. You need food and non-toxic air.”
Outside, I took a few deep breaths, iciness ached in my lungs and a shiver wracked through my torso. I followed her across the lawn and onto her property, neither of us doing anything more than breathing in great big gulps of the clean air.
On her front porch, a place we stayed almost every night of our youth watching the older kids play in the street, Dean sat with two other police officers, each holding a lit cigar. Their words were barely audible, but I could see the tense way they looked at each other that the conversation was anything but approachable. Again though, seeing Dean made my insides twirl and tumble, and I looked away quickly. There was no way I wanted to deal with old, dead feelings I’ve worked so hard to lock away. I was hoping I was just terribly hungry.
