I’d never been so irritated, disgusted and intrigued by someone in all my life—and I’ve met a lot of warped motherfuckers. It was the intrigued part that had me worried the most.
Things would have been so much easier if he’d just shot me.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE FIRST THING I NOTICED when I got home was the junk, a huge pile of debris collected up in the center of the small gravel driveway. My heart fell into my stomach when the realization washed over me that it wasn’t junk. It was our lives.
Mine and Nan’s.
Our clothes, our furniture, all of our pictures and memories had been mangled and thrown into a huge heap. I climbed up the pile and knelt down in the center, running my hands over the matted red hair of Nan's favorite collectable doll she called Daphne. Nan used to tell me the doll reminded her of me. I thought it was just because of the red hair, until one day she told me otherwise.
“It’s because she’s resilient," she had said. "That doll has been through two house fires, one front yard burial by wayward dog, and an accidental toilet bowl drowning.” She leaned across the counter on her elbows and whispered, “She was saved. All Daphne needed was a little sprucing up and a good dose of love. Every single time, she would come out okay, sometimes even better than she was before.” I may have been only thirteen, but I knew she hadn’t been talking about the doll anymore.
In Nan’s own way, she was trying to explain to a thirteen year-old kid that even though life hands you a big pile of shit, you don’t have to roll around in it and make shit angels.
My version of her logic.
I climbed down the mound, still clutching Daphne in my hands. As I approached the front porch, I spotted a very official-looking bright green paper with bold lettering tacked to the screen door. I couldn’t make out the words until I was right on top of it. The paper shouted:
THIS PREMISES HAS BEEN EVICTED BY THE
CALOOSA COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF COURT ORDER IN REGARDS TO THE FORECLOSURE OF
4339 PINEPASS ROAD
Case #4320951212102013
First Bank of Coral Pines vs. Georgianne Margaret Ford
ENTRANCE BY ANYONE WITHOUT EXPRESS PERMISSION FROM
THE CALOOSA COUNTY SHERIFF OR THE OWNERS:
FIRST BANK OF CORAL PINES
WILL BE REMOVED AND PROSECUTED
BY THE PROPER AUTHORITY
SIGNED: SHERIFF COLE FLETCHER
Special Notes: LOCKS HAVE BEEN CHANGED
I ripped the eviction notice from the door and sat down on the rickety wooden steps of the porch. They creaked and groaned under my every move, making me feel as unwelcome as the paper I clutched. I turned it over and over, hoping to see a “gotcha”, or some other punch line—maybe even a loophole that would make it all go away.
There weren’t any.
This one little piece of highlighter green paper just determined everything, and that everything, was that I had nothing.
Why hadn’t Nan told me she was losing her house? I could have helped. I would have quit school and gotten a job.
I’d just answered my own fucking question.
Of course she didn't tell me. She wanted me to graduate. She said it all the time, every day if she could squeeze it in. It was like the woman had a one-track mind. “Do you want pie—graduate from high school.”
“The sun is sure beating down today—graduate from high school.”
“I sure miss your Popop—graduate from high school.”
I think Nan believed that as long as I had a high school diploma my life would somehow end up okay.
With the letter of doom in one hand and the Daphne doll in the other, Nan’s obsession with me graduating from high school was laughable, in a sad, twisted kind of way.
Nan had gotten her wish. I had graduated and received my high school diploma.
I know she couldn’t ever have imagined I wouldn't have anywhere to hang it.
***
I went around back and grabbed a blue tarp from the toolbox on the dock and draped it over the mound on the driveway in case of rain. As I finished covering the contents of mine and Nan’s life together, Sheriff Fletcher pulled up along the road in his police cruiser. He didn't bother getting out. I’d have sworn if someone were murdered, he’d probably have just snapped a picture of the crime scene with his phone without so much as stopping the car on his way to Bubba’s.
Sheriff Fletcher rolled down his window. "Thanks for the heads up," I spat at him. After all, it was his official signature gracing the bottom of the eviction notice.
"Darlin', we don't get no advance notice on these things. They’re sent to us from the state with orders to carry out the eviction on the same day. I didn't know until yesterday morning it was your Nan's house we was guttin’ up.” He paused. “It’s not like I could’ve gotten a hold of you anyway. Seems you up and disappeared on us." Gruff and unapologetic. Same as every other day.
"I assume by that comment that Dan has stopped by to see you?" I asked as I finished tucking the tarp under the bottom of the mound in case the rain decided it wanted to seep through the sides.
"Who?"