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Gator didn’t even wag his tail. The AKC website
listed aloofness as a tendency in the breed. I felt lineage did not
make personality, circumstances did. The dog was ecstatic around
me, he just didn’t give a damn about anyone else.
    I lifted the urn holding my mother’s
remains, thought about the funeral.
    I hadn’t had to make any of the
arrangements. My mom had pre-arranged. She had told Tanner she was
so he would be able to guide me. Catatonically I had gone through
the day. Only Tanner and I saw her deteriorated shell before the
funeral. She hadn’t wanted anyone to see her in that state and had
arranged closed casket with a cremation later. The cremation may
have been to save money. Urns are cheaper than cemetery plots.
    Friends and family paid their respects and
offered me their condolences. People from school I had never spoken
to showed up at my mom’s funeral in droves. I hugged bodies I
didn’t even realize were in my classes. I wanted solitude. Instead,
people descended upon me like a swarm of locusts, leaving behind
devastation in the form of lunchmeat, cheese trays, and casseroles
in coolers on my doorstep, and unwanted advice in my head.
    Tanner was like my shadow accepting
classmate’s sympathy cards, flowers, and deflecting e-mails. He was
the perfect boyfriend.
    Whenever I saw or heard my dad he was a
giant echo, repeating that exhausting idiom, “It was for the
best.”
    Agonizing hours further in the day, I was
coming out of the bathroom when I overheard a whispered
conversation between my father, stepmother and some relative. In
life, everything is about timing. Their timing was wrong. My dad
was telling this blood related stranger that he had kept up with
the premiums on a life insurance policy for my mom. When I heard he
had provided money to gamble on the length of her time remaining on
earth knowing that he had dropped my mom from his healthcare policy
so she had to go on Medicaid because she had quit her own position
to get better I felt whatever composure I had crumble.
    My dad said my mom poisoned my mind against
him. His actions were the real arsenic.

Chapter 4
     
     
    Hanna
    Tanner just stared at me stunned. There were
a multitude of hurts coursing through my nerves, but any pain he
inflicted upon me just didn’t register. For some reason he never
saw that.
    “Why did you take the fall for me?” Tanner
feebly asked.
    “Because I was the one who reaped the
profits from the pills. In addition, I have nothing to lose. You
do.”
    “I convinced you to do it.”
    I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter.”
    “How can you say that?”
    I ignored his question. “You know what the
irony of it is? I used the money you made off those pills to pay
for school. How stupid was that? Tuition should have been the first
bill I stopped paying.”
    “The first bill?” He gulped.
    He had no clue what it had taken me to
survive this long. “Besides the cash from dog walking there was no
other money coming in Tanner. Mom’s savings was depleted. What
little money I had saved was used up fast. Dad didn’t provide a
penny. Since she died, I’ve written cold checks and lived off a
dead woman’s credit cards. I’m just happy I’m not going to jail.
The least of my concerns is that some uptight school administrator
thinks I was pushing.”
    He gestured. “What about all this?”
    I shrugged. “You mean the house? I haven’t
paid the mortgage in months. Plus, as of today the utilities have
been cut off.” I sighed. “I guess it was for the best.”
    He shook his head vehemently. “No it
wasn’t.” He grasped at solutions. “You can move in with me. We’ve
got room. I don’t want you to go.”
    “It’s only twenty miles. I’ll still be doing
the dog business. You’ll still see me.”
    “Not if your car is repossessed.”
    “Maybe… but with the money I make from dog
walking and all other financial obligations removed I might be able
to keep it. I’m going to call the bank holding the