Seeing Trouble Read Free

became a VIN record check showing over a thousand dollars- worth of unpaid parking tickets and fines. To top it off, while I sat at the police station trying to convince them that I had nothing to do with any of this, one of the officers noticed my pretty new necklace and ring and showed me a photo of the very same pieces—reported stolen. Strike three. I went to jail. A half hour later, my mother dragged my sister into the station. She confessed to having reported my parents’ truck stolen seven months ago while she was borrowing it for a few weeks. One of her druggy ex-boyfriends had taken off with the truck for days and racked up all kinds of tickets on it. As for the jewelry, they were hand-me-down gifts from her as a way of apologizing for making me lose my job. She’d scored them from another loser boyfriend who’d ripped off a jewelry store weeks ago and bought her affection with them and other sparkly gifts.
    That had been the last entry I’d made in the diary before I had my twins, the last entry period. That night, I’d gotten into a huge fight with Susan. I told her to never come near me again, and then I spilled the beans about something that still makes shame warm my cheeks.
    With my stress level through the roof, I’d gone into labor—a month early. Hours later, the doctor pulled Addy out first and then Layne minutes later. I could still hear their teeny, tiny screeches.
    Actually, I could hear them now as they fought with each other from opposite sides of the bathroom door.
    “Addy!” I yelled loud enough for the tourists down on Deadwood’s historic Main Street to hear me. “Let him in to brush his teeth, dang it!”
    I looked back at the diary, touching the picture I’d glued onto the page of both of them snuggled together in the little plastic heating bed. I flipped the page and straightened the wrinkled corner of a picture of Natalie—who’d held my hand through it all—snuggling both babies at once, her face split in a huge grin. The next page had a shot of Aunt Zoe leaning over me while I held my babies. She’d stayed with me in the room until I was cleared to go home and promised me that she’d always have room in Deadwood for all of us if we ever wanted to stay with her.
    The poor woman, she probably rued that day now that we’d taken over her home.
    “Mom?” Addy hollered, the sound of her footsteps coming toward my room.
    I closed and locked the book, shoving it under my mattress for safekeeping before she stepped through the doorway.
    “What do you need, Addy?”
    She came in and sat on the bed next to me. “I’ve been wondering something.”
    “What’s that?” I pulled her toward me, tucking her against my side. She smelled like bubble gum flavored toothpaste.
    “How old were you when you wrote in that diary?”
    “In my twenties.”
    “Am I in there?”
    “Yeah, at the end.”
    “How come I can’t read it?”
    I decided to be honest. “Because it takes place during a time in my life when I did something I’m not really proud of.”
    “You mean getting pregnant with me and Layne?”
    “No, Sweetie. It’s not that. I’m very proud of you two.” When she just stared at me with her golden brown eyes, so like her father’s, I explained. “I haven’t always been as nice as I am now.”
    “When are you nice?” I poked her in the ribs, making her giggle. When she sobered, she asked, “Were you mean to someone?”
    “Yes. Your Aunt Susan.”
    “What happened?”
    “I made her cry.”
    “How?”
    By telling her the family secret—that Dad would never love her like he loved me because she wasn’t really his daughter.
    “I said something hurtful to her that I can never take back.”
    “Is that why you two don’t ever talk?”
    It’s part of the reason. “Yes.”
    Addy was quiet for a moment. “Do you think you’ll ever love someone besides my dad?”
    I never loved the jerk, but I didn’t mention that. “I already have—you and your