Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 67490 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67490 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
But neither one of them had made a move.
And the rest of the night I’d had to deal with two very unhappy people who were so fucking stubborn that it hurt.
“Come get me on the way to the funeral home. I’ll get dressed here,” I ordered.
He looked at the house with a nauseated look on his face. “I’ll be here.”
Then I was shoving out of his car and heading to my sister’s front door.
The last time I was here, it was when Addison was shipping out to Germany.
I still remembered how excited she’d been because she could finally experience snow.
When I reminded her she could do that in the States, she’d playfully punched me in the arm and said, “Oh, Ande Wande. But I wouldn’t experience snow out of the country. I hear they have castles and history… I can’t wait to explore it all.”
Blowing out a breath to keep the tears at bay—I’d managed not to cry yet that day—I used the key on my keyring to open her door.
And was stopped by the massive pile of boxes my parents had brought home from Germany.
With a heavy heart, I carried all of the boxes into the kitchen, and only once they were all there did I start going through them.
Seemed like as good of a place as any, right?
I spent the next thirty minutes going through her clothes, toiletries, and common everyday things.
I’d just gotten to her stack of books—God, could Addison go through some books—when my phone rang.
I picked it up on the fourth ring.
“Hey,” I said. “You made it?”
“I made it,” Keene confirmed. “Just in time to make it to the hearing, too. My lawyer’s a shark. He’s mad as hell right now. Sometime between when Winston contacted him, and I got here, Folsom literally sent him everything that she could find on my mother. There are years and years of recorded drug abuse, checks from my father to help support that drug abuse, and tons of emails sent between her and my father pretty much listing everything she demanded for him to be able to ‘keep me.’ Pretty much, how the emails look, my dad had to pay her once every few months in order to keep me around. Though it would be sweet to know that he actually wanted me, he stated in a few emails how I always was really charismatic and knew how to attract a crowd. Which makes me fucking sick.”
My heart sank.
His father really was a piece of shit.
Unknowingly, Keene had attracted a crowd. And in that crowd, his father would pick out victims.
What a sick world we lived in.
What a sick world he’d grown up in.
“Anyway, I think this is going to be a slam dunk. But I’ll call you when I’m done and get you up to speed.” He paused. “I love you, Ande. Call me if you need me. I’ll find a way to talk to you.”
And despite the shitty experience he was going through, he was still thinking about me.
The tears I’d managed to keep at bay all morning threatened, but then he made me laugh.
“And God help me, but it’s hot as hell here. I’m sweating like a pig, and people are looking at me like I might pass out at any second.” He groaned. “I thought Texas was hot…”
With that, and a promise to call, we hung up.
I got back to work, looking through her books with a fond smile on my face.
When I got to a leather bound one, I frowned.
To Kill a Mockingbird.
“What the hell, Addison,” I grumbled. “Why do you have this?”
I loved To Kill a Mockingbird. Meanwhile, Addison had despised it.
She’d said it was too sad.
And because of that, I’d teasingly given her a copy for our birthday, and she’d taken it to the Goodwill the next morning.
So that was how it went. Every year, I’d give her a new copy, and every year she’d donate it to someone else.
It’d been our thing.
So, for her to have this…
I cracked it open, and my heart stuttered in my chest.
A journal.
And, because it was written in our own secret code—something that we used to do during class as pre-teens and teens—it’d been obvious why it’d been overlooked by my parents. Then again, they might not have even opened it, based solely on the fact that they were too distraught to remember that Addison had hated To Kill a Mockingbird.
Back then, when they’d find a letter from one of us to the other in our codes, they’d left it alone, knowing that was just our thing.
It’d started out as a way to keep our brothers and parents out of our business.
But it’d ended up being something super fun we did for the hell of it.
Sitting down, I began to read.
And wished that I hadn’t.
CHAPTER 23