Slow Burn (Book 7): City of Stin Read Free

Steph’s hand going limp in mine. Her death still hurt. I tried to change the subject back to the food. “Good thing you paid attention when your mom was in the kitchen.”
    We ate in silence for a few minutes before Murphy said, “Look man, I know you got…” Murphy made a vague gesture at his head. “I don’t know. You like to hold onto your painful shit. You know what I mean?”
    I nodded and shrugged. I knew exactly what he meant. It still didn’t change anything.
    “You’re not like me. I get that.”
    Shaking my head, I said, “Murphy, I know what you’re going to say. We both went through it. We both lost—” It was hard to see the memory in my mind. It was hard to say—physically hard—because I started to choke up over it. “You watched Mandi die.” I took a deep breath. “We both did. And Russell too. Fuck. And everybody.”
    Murphy started to say something, but I raised a hand to keep him quiet. I said, “I lost Steph, as helplessly as you lost Mandi. I don’t know if that helpless part makes a difference. To me, it feels like it does.”
    “Pointless painful shit,” Murphy muttered.
    “I know how much it hurt you, losing Mandi.”
    Murphy nodded.
    “You were angry and bitter about it for a while.” I vaguely pointed across the table at him. “Now, the Murphy Philosophy has won out. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were back to normal. Happy fucking Murphy. Too many smiles. Too many jokes.”
    “I could get on my pulpit and try to sell you again on the Murphy Plan,” he said.
    “I don’t need to be sold,” I told him. “I know sometimes the burden of all the death gets to you. I see you out on the deck occasionally, staring at the water with that lost look in your eyes.”
    Murphy shook his head vigorously. “Just because I—”
    “No,” I cut him off. “I’m not saying I don’t believe your ideas about life aren’t working for you. I know you still feel the pain. That’s normal. I also know by actively choosing not to wallow in it like me, you’re moving on. You’re going to live. Hell, you’re keeping me alive, too. I appreciate it. Hell, I fucking envy it. I want to buy an economy-size box of Murphy Smalls bullshit so I can find a way past my own crap. I… I guess I’m just so hard-wired for my own shit, I don’t know if I can find my way down the Murphy road.”
    “You just gotta keep trying, man.” Murphy smiled. “And quit being a whiny pussy.”
    I looked away from Murphy. I don’t know if I was being a whiny pussy. I don’t know if I was grieving myself into a grave. I was feeling things I couldn’t set aside, couldn’t get past.
    I said, “I loved her.” There it was.

Chapter 2
    Belching and feeling somewhat uncomfortable from all the food stuffed into my belly, I cleaned up the kitchen in the last of the evening light as Murphy pulled all the curtains closed on the back of the house. When everything was clean except for a pile of raw catfish filets laying on a plate beside the stove, I shook my head as I revived our earlier conversation. “It’s a shame all this catfish will go bad.”
    “Yeah,” Murphy agreed as he came back into the kitchen. “Nothing we can do with it, though.”
    “If the house had solar power, we could probably run the fridge and keep it cold, or freeze it.”
    Murphy shrugged. “I think staking your survival plans to solar panels is not a bad idea, but it’s irrelevant. We don’t have any panels. And we don’t know jack shit about running a refrigerator on solar.”
    “Yeah. I guess.” I picked up a piece of fish, looked at it, then dropped it onto the pile with a wet slap. “I’ll bet… I’ll bet we could dry this fish in the barbecue grill. It’s got a propane tank on it.”
    “Fish jerky?” Murphy grimaced.
    I laughed. “We’ve had plenty of days when a piece of fish jerky would have been a dream. I think if you coat it with enough salt and pepper or whatever seasoning we’ve got in the