His Frozen Heart Read Free Page A

be wealthy,
but as she grew older, she didn’t migrate south for the winter with
all the other old people. Maybe she was as broke as the rest of
us.
    I liked my street. It was an old
neighborhood. All the other houses were occupied by empty nesters
whose grown kids would occasionally show up on the weekends. When
my sisters and I were little, I remember watching all the visiting
cars, hoping for grandkids of my neighbors to stop by to visit so I
could play with someone other than Kim and Carly.
    That was the way it was supposed to
work – the natural order of things. Kids grew up, moved away, came
back and visited their parents on the weekends, maybe for Sunday
dinner, birthdays, or anniversaries. Too bad my family didn’t fit
the mold: it had been almost a year since I had seen my
parents.
    Growing up here, my sisters and I had
been the only kids on the whole street. Kim was twenty-four and
Carly was twenty-two: both moved away after high school. Now Kim
was all business. She was a receptionist for some law firm and was
too wrapped up in her own life ever to be bothered with mine. It
had been months since she had even returned a text.
    Carly was different. She was the
middle child. Carly was the social butterfly of the three of us.
She was on a full-ride academic scholarship and had been since she
graduated. Carly was always too busy studying to see me other than
winter and summer break when she was thrown out of the dorms. That
left me, here, surviving.
    Libby’s voice called from the house,
“Damn, Candy, too hot for you in here or what?!”
    When I had sprinted down to the car on
a quest for stale Doritos, I hadn’t bothered to pull the front door
shut behind me. I called up, “Naw, just scavenging for food. Did
you throw a party last night or what?”
    Ignoring my question she yelled,
“You’re going to go into hypothermia. Get in here!”
    Standing in seven inches of snow in a
pair of sweat pants, flops and a t-shirt in the dead of winter was
not the brightest thing I’d done today. Sadly, it wasn’t the
dumbest thing, either. I wasn’t supposed to work at the restaurant
during the week, but I had been so hungry I went in hoping to pick
up a shift. The manager said he didn’t need me as a waitress, but
the janitor had called in sick. I ended up having to scrub the
bathrooms; I had gotten three hours of work on the clock, but no
tips and no food. I chalked my poor wardrobe choice up to being
close to passing out from starvation. When she pointed out that
hypothermia was a possibility, I shoved my car’s heavy metal door
and sprinted back up to the house.
    Our entryway was warm and welcoming
after the arctic temperatures. My eyes darted around looking for
her when I zeroed in on Libby standing in the kitchen. “Where’s all
the food?” I accused. “I don’t get paid for another three
days.”
    Her dismissive answer frustrated me,
“Oh, stop it. You get paid every day.”
    “ Yeah, tips today were a
big fat goose egg. I couldn’t even score six bucks to cover lunch.
I don’t have hours at the restaurant again until
Saturday.”
    Libby stalked over to the cabinet and
started shoving boxes around the same way I had right before I
decided to scavenge for food in my car. She didn’t find anything
either. Still concentrating on the metal cabinet, she asked,
“Where’d the peanut butter go?”
    Further frustration ebbed into my
voice, “Gone last weekend. You were supposed to pick more
up.”
    “ What about the tuna
fish?”
    My nose crinkled, “Ewww . . . gone and
no need to get any more.”
    “ We had some Ramen noodles
in here last night.”
    I walked up behind her, reached around
her into the cabinet, and held up the cellophane that had held the
case of noodles, “Yeah, they’re gone, too.”
    “ All right. Let’s go to the
store.” She walked up to the stove and grabbed the coffee can where
she hid her money. “I’ve got twelve bucks.” Twelve dollars. Was she
kidding? That wouldn’t