Casket Girls: A New Orleans Mystery Thriller (Herbert and Melancon Book 4) by Seth Pevey

Author:Seth Pevey
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2020-07-18T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

Tina remembered that day with all of the perfect clarity of pain. It was one of those cruel aspects of memory: the way it always made ample room for a trauma. She’d lost every vivid sunset she’d ever experienced. Gone. Forgotten her first kiss. Poof. So vague was the feeling of her daddy hoisting her on his shoulders for a piggyback ride that she wasn’t even sure whether it had happened at all.

But she remembered every detail of that day. Because that was the way the mind worked.

And it was working on her now.

“You want me to get fucking pinched, don’t you! That’s what the fuck you want,” Mama screamed. Pinched. That was the word she always used. It left Tiny Tina to imagine police officers bringing her mother downtown, strapping her to a chair, and using two fingers against her flesh as punishment. That didn’t sound so bad. Not as unbearable as this.

“I’m sorry, Mama,” she blubbered through tears.

Tiny Tina had screwed up again, had thrown an unconvincing fit at a baseball game at Tulane Stadium and nearly made this pinching happen. She still had the sticky Cracker Jacks pressed into her clothes, flattened into unyielding caramel. She had blood on her shins.

The mascot of the local team was a beaver with ridiculously long cardboard teeth. When Tina had started her performance—the thrashing and the foaming and the moaning—Mr. Beaver had come barreling right up the stairs towards her, his teeth bouncing wildly in the wind, billowing back until the teeth lay over his shoulder. Tina couldn’t help it. Seeing Mr. Beaver that way, with his teeth hung over him like a towel, started her to laughing. The people who came rushing saw her laugh and knew right away that it was all a big phony fake-out. Mr. Beaver had seen it too, cocked his big foam head in disappointment, waved a furry paw in dismissal.

They’d escaped, but only just barely. There were no wallets or purses or jewels to show for their escapades either, only the hot memory of the whole stadium’s eyes turning on them as the fat security guard lumbered up the stairs towards Mama, a serious look on his face.

He failed to pinch her, of course. Mama was far too quick. But Tina had tripped on the cement stairs trying to follow, skinning her knees.

Tina knew what was going to happen next. She knew that her mom would get sick, would soon be trembling, near comatose and covered in sweat. But first she’d yell and scream until her strength gave out. And then she’d be on the couch moaning and helpless for three days. Maybe one of Mama’s men friends would come by and take her in the back and make her well.

Or maybe not.

One thing was certain in Tina’s mind: there was going to be a show of guilt, a trial before all of the moaning and sweating.

And she was the one to blame for it all.

“I wish you’d never even been born, Tina.

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