Page 104 of Cain

I tossed on some jeans and a sweater, grabbed my purse and keys, and made my way out of the common room, surprised to find it empty.

There was some conversation going on out back as I made my way to my new little crossover, but I didn’t want to bother them in case they were discussing their super-secret club stuff.

Anxiety skittered across my skin as I climbed in the car and turned over the engine.

But, I reminded myself, it was the middle of the day. And it was all main streets all the way to my mother’s mobile home park. No one was going to chase me or crash into me.

I took a deep breath, buckled my belt, and pulled out of the gates.

Not much had changed over the years since I’d last visited my childhood home. One of the mobile homes had been replaced with a newer model. Another property that had been full of junk had all been cleaned up, and there were children’s bikes on the front lawn.

As for my mom’s place, it looked rougher than it had the last time I’d seen it. It hadn’t exactly been in the best shape to begin with, but the grass was patchy, the weeds high, and the siding was broken and stained in more places than it was in good condition. Her little front porch, which one of her boyfriends built, was tilted and rotting away.

She’d never had a lot of pride of ownership, and she’d always outsourced outdoor upkeep to whatever man she was seeing at the time. It looked like she hadn’t dated someone in a while.

I made my way up the porch, praying the planks didn’t give way under my feet.

I barely got a chance to knock on the door before it flew open.

And there was my mom.

She looked mostly the same—long blonde hair (kept that way with the same box dye she’d been using since I was in elementary school), a thin face, blue eyes, and skin that was tanned and slightly leathery from too much time on the beach in the summer without proper sunscreen. Or, knowing her, with lots of oil to get herself even darker. The tan would last well into February, when she would start to fade and complain about how pale she was getting.

My mom was a little obsessive about keeping herself thin—a task she accomplished with the aid of cigarettes, coffee, and diet soda.

She had a few new wrinkles, and there was more sun damage to her hands. But aside from that, this was the mom I’d always known. I don’t know why I’d expected anything different.

“Well, look at you. Glad to see you didn’t let yourself go,” she said.

“Nice to see you, too, Mom,” I said, walking into the awkward one-arm hug she offered me.

The house smelled a lot like I remembered it: smoke, strong coffee, and an undercurrent of the lemon disinfectant she sprayed all the fabrics with on nearly a daily basis.

I couldn’t say it was a good scent, but it was familiar. Even if a lot inside the house wasn’t. The carpet and linoleum had been changed out at some point, the cabinets painted black—which was likely in an attempt to mask the yellowing from smoking inside—and the couches in the living room were brown instead of the floral I’d grown up with.

There was still one frame on the wall featuring all my school pictures.

“The place looks good. I like the updates.”

“That was mostly Derrick.”

“Boyfriend.”

“One of them, yeah. He worked at a consignment store. Got me a lot of nice stuff for dirt cheap. Need to find me a man who likes doing outside chores. Coffee?”

“Please.”

“I have half and half and sugar. If you like any of that fancy stuff, you’re on your own.”

“Half and half and sugar sounds good.”

I moved to sit down at the dining table. “So what have you been up to these days?”

“Got a job cutting meat at the food store,” she told me as she poured the coffee and put cream and sugar into the cups without asking how I took it. But she was heavy-handed with the sugar, so I wasn’t complaining. “That minimum wage increase made it easier to find a job I didn’t hate.”

“You like slicing lunch meat?”

“It’s mindless. And the girls behind the counter like to gossip.”