Forbidden Read Free Page B

which couldn’t have been emptied in at least a half carton.
    â€œThat bitch wasn’t my mother,” was all she said.
    Dangerous ground Bryce , she told herself, but asked, “Not the woman in the picture?”
    â€œNo, not her.”
    â€œThen who…”
    â€œLydia was my father’s second wife. We went to her funeral because I wanted to see her dead.”
    â€œJesus Christ, Mom!”
    Michelle turned to meet Bryce’s eyes. “I’m completely serious. The truth hurts sometimes.”
    Don’t I know , Bryce didn’t say, looking back into Michelle’s eyes, resisting the urge to turn her own away. Her mother must have been pretty once. Her irises were an utterly clear ice blue, inhabited by no flecks of other color, no slim spoke lines radiating out from her pupils. And her lashes, the only feature Bryce was certain she had inheirited from her mother, were long and thick and dark. Neglect and hard living had chiseled a path through the rest of her features; though only 39, she appeared far older. “But you’re going. I already told Wilder I would send you.”
    Bryce used both hands to heave herself up. Without replying to the statement she walked back to the kitchen and popped open a beer.
    â€œI’ll leave,” she said into the empty room, loud enough for Michelle to hear. “I will run away before I go to some funeral a millon miles away. I will move in with Wade and his mom and stepdad.”
    Michelle made no reply in the half-hour Bryce waited, drinking. She eventually slipped again onto her chair at the table to dent her beer cans and consider how pathetic this whole situation was: her mother would not manage to rouse even a tiny flicker of sympathy for her dead father, would not make an appearance at the funeral, but would instead choose to send her daughter into a group of complete strangers to do the honors for her. It was totally silent in her mother’s room, and Bryce at last walked back and peered in; for a second her heart pounded very hard against her ribs and bile rose up her throat…but Michelle was only sleeping, lying flat on her back with the ashtray balanced on her belly, snoring lightly.
    Bryce stepped in and silently removed the disgusting adornment from her mother’s sleeping form. Conversation closed. She was fairly certain Michelle wouldn’t remember the details of this exchange anyhow, and Bryce vowed there on the stained blue carpet she would never mention it again.
    4:30 p.m.
    Two hours later, errands complete, Trish pulled up beside the Fremont Motel. She and Bryce looked up at the second-floor room numbered 212, with its battered door thrown wide to the bright afternoon air. Garth Brooks sang from the radio, cranked to full blast, and they could see Amy jumping on the bed. She caught sight of them and yelled, “Come on, you guys, let’s hit the pool!”
    Trish giggled, moving to open the trunk. Together she and Bryce unloaded two cases of beer they’d brought as party favors and Bryce followed her best friend up the rickety cast-iron steps, her fingers curled around the heavy cardboard box. Halfway to the top Trish stopped abrubtly and someone on the landing said, “Hey, let me help you.”
    Just like that, out of nowhere, his voice. It made something shift in the inner space between her belly and breasts, a feeling that caught Bryce so suddenly she struggled to draw a normal breath.
    Trish whispered, “Oh my God,” in a tone Bryce understood, and so when a man came down the steps toward them, she already knew what he would look like.
    Dark eyes, dark hair. Amazing lips. Scruff on his jaw. Black shirt, faded jeans. He towered over them, reaching one arm to take the beer from Trish as though it weighed no more than a baby.
    â€œThanks!” she said and smiled brightly, then slipped around him and up the rest of the steps, leaving Bryce silent in her wake.
    â€œYou,