Raveled Read Free

Kevin getting off the school bus at three, hoping for her sake that she was still in Dementiaville, but no such reprieve today. Clarity had come and she knew full well why he would call at three. It must break her heart, at least what was left of it.
    “I’ve got to go out again, Mom, but Selena’s in the sunroom if you need anything.”
    Selena, a tall, muscular, Guatemalan woman I had hired as my mom’s caretaker, made out like a bandit. Twenty bucks an hour to make sure her charge didn’t wander off or do anything dangerous. Not sure how Selena accomplished these responsibilities while napping on the couch most afternoons , but so far so good. Whenever I walked in on her, she swore she wasn’t asleep, but instead suffered from a bad case of dry eye syndrome and needed to minimize her corneal exposure to air. After explaining this the first time, she’d tried to sell me the Brooklyn Bridge.
    “I’ll be back in time for Kevin’s call ,” I said.
    I could have told my mom where I was headed, but it would have ripped out another piece of her soul and forced it through the shredder. That’s how it had been for me when I got the call from Kevin a few weeks ago. My landline phone, silent for months at a time, had rung early in the morning, throwing me for a dreaded loop. My friends knew I worked until 3:00 a.m. and they were forbidden to call before noon...
     
    *** Twenty Days Earlier***
     
    “Hello?”
    “Allison, it’s Kevin.”
    I breathed a sigh of relief. At least it wasn’t someone calling to report a death or an arrest for murder—distinct and precedented possibilities in the Fennimore family. “Kevin? Thought you could only use the phone—”
    “Look, I don’t have a lot of time,” he said. “Cashing in a favor to call this early.”
    “Cash me in a favor and don’t tell me what you had to do for your favor.”
    “Can you get in here tomorrow?” Kevin asked. “I need you to do something for me. It’s big.”
    I sat upright, not an easy accomplishment on my cheap mattress, the understuffed one that Aunt Jeannine had thrown my way when she moved in with her stepdaughter. It somehow held itself together with no apparent seams.
    “Is it legal?” I asked, realizing too late that eager ears were probably monitoring the call and would perk up at the mention of skirting the law.
    “I want to reopen the case,” Kevin said. “You know, against Dad.”
    I laughed and s lumped back. “Kevin, please. You get a few sober months under your belt and you suddenly have time for deep reflection? Oh, I know what’s going on here. What’s the title?”
    “Of what?” Kevin said, his patience with me often a surprise.
    “The book you’re writing about Dad. Going with Lavitte Lasher ? The Fennimore Fiend ? No, too reticent. I’ve always been partial to Maniac Mechanic myself.”
    “Stop screwing around,” Kevin said. “Although those titles aren’t bad.”
    “What’s this about then? Seeking closure?” My tone mocked him for even considering the concept. Children of convicted murderers, guilty or innocent, had no relationship with such psychological bullshit.
    “This is the longest I’ve been sober, Allie. Give me a chance.”
    “A chance to what? Open old wounds? Make Mom miserable? Step into the insanity of claustrophobic Lavitte? No thanks.”
    “Something’s rolling around in my head ,” he said.
    “Teachers used to call that your brain.”
    “You’re going to Lavitte, anyway, right?”
    “To put Mom’s house on the market. Not to reminisce about Bobby Kettrick.”
    Kevin sighed. I could picture him now. Callused hands, dark chocolate hair, and a scruffy growth on his face that the women loved. At least women who also enjoyed leather jackets, flea-bitten mattresses, and cheap, imported beer. But above the stubble, the same full, crooked lips as mine, the scar on his left cheekbone from the playground seesaw, and the vibrant olive eyes—when his brain wasn’t swimming in