Page 119 of Rough Hard Fierce (Chicago Underground 1-3)
I looked around the tiny trailer. I saw two doors leading off, though one might have led to a bathroom. There definitely didn’t seem to be enough room for the three siblings.
“Where did all of you stay?” I asked.
“All of us?” she barked. “I only had that one. Oh, they tried pushing the other two brats on me, but I told them, them two’s too messed up in the head after what they’d been through. Ain’t gonna spend my time on that, have them stealing from me. Colin, though, he was young enough, and they didn’t much touch him. So I took him in, like family does.”
I just stared at her, trying to find some hint of recognition, that she knew how heinous what she’d just said was, but found nothing. She’d taken Colin in, like family does, but had rejected the other two because they’d been abused? With family like that, who needed enemies?
And then I applied that story to Colin, and even Philip and Rose, and my heart broke. I couldn’t even think of Philip and Rose, whatever they had been through with their parents, and then having their aunt turn them away. And Colin, trapped here in this pit of a home, without his siblings. How lonely he must have been. How miserable.
I could understand better now why a bachelor like him had such an airy, open house even when he hadn’t needed it. And maybe I also understood what Bailey and I had offered him. Something he hadn’t really had before—a family.
“You say you were with him, huh? What, did he leave you pre
gnant or something?”
“No,” I ground out. “Colin’s not like that.”
She laughed. “I guess not. He wouldn’t leave you high and dry, not my boy. He’d just pay you off probably.”
A shiver took me, even though the room was burning up. That was dangerously close to what had happened. At the time I’d written it off. After all, he’d thought I had betrayed him, making his actions more a kindness than an insult.
“He’s got money, I know that,” she said. “He came here once a few years ago, saying I should leave here, he’d buy me a house. But what do I want a house for? My customers know me here, and I’m comfortable. Getting on in age and don’t want to go nowhere, least not till I meet my Maker. So he sends me money now and again. Thought that might be why you’re here, for the money, if you was pregnant.”
I scowled. “I’m not pregnant.”
“Don’t look it, sure, but you forget I’m a fortune-teller.” She thought that was hilarious.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m not pregnant, but thank you for talking to me.”
“That’ll be ten dollars,” she said.
“What?”
“Hey, I’m sure you don’t want Colin to know you was sneaking around, checking up on him. Call it a keeping-quiet fee. I could probably charge you more, and you’d pay it, but you’re lucky I have morals.”
I pulled a twenty out of my purse and slapped it on the grimy fold-out table between us. Storming out of the little trailer, I heard her say, “Got your change,” before the rickety door slammed shut. I drove out of the trailer park so fast my rear wheels spun on the gravel.
God.
I’d wanted to know more about Colin’s past. I’d wished he would tell me, but it was clear that never would have happened. Bad enough that he was naturally taciturn, but telling something like this, it was impossible. There would be no way to explain the quiet horror of that place, the matter-of-fact evil of that woman, or the brokenness of his family.
But even as I ached for the boy-Colin, I worried over the man-Colin. She’d hit a little too close to home, that woman, with all her talk of paying me off. Not just that he’d done it before, but that he seemed to be doing it now. After all, he’d said I could stay in the house, that he didn’t want me to go.
I’d hoped it was because he’d meant to come back, but he’d offered her a house too. He felt some obligation to her for raising him. That was so like him. Did he also feel an obligation to me? Is that why he wanted me to keep living there?
He would pay the bills or send me money. I would live in his house but never see him. Did he think I would sit meekly in his house, growing old and crazy?
Like hell.
I picked up the phone and dialed. “Rose? It’s Allie. I need your help.”
Chapter Thirteen
I stumbled in my too-high heels as I wove my way to the bar. The thin fabric did little to shield my body from the dancers around me. Plus, it itched. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find I’d broken out in hives from the stretchy synthetic stuff.
I’d even filled out a little, eating real meals instead of Bailey’s leftovers. I’d plumped up too, in places that attracted attention from the men I passed.
The stools were full, so I shuffled to the side to wait for my drink. Too far over and I’d get groped. On the other side the bar was crusted with black stuff I didn’t want to speculate about. It was like one of those medieval torture chambers where the person had to stand in the middle or fall on spikes.
