Heartbroke by Chelsea Bieker

Author:Chelsea Bieker
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781646221288
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2022-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

Most of the girls didn’t really interact with Merriam much, just looked at her strangely, but some had warmed up to her. Later that afternoon as Merriam ate two bologna and mayonnaise sandwiches at the table with them, Kat pulled out her suitcase of makeup and began going to town on Merriam. Quizzed her on what she did at her fancy school. I stayed in the hallway. I listened.

“It’s a lot of reading,” Merriam said. “So sometimes I just want to be in the world, you know, experiencing it.”

“Here’s the world,” Kat said, gesturing around the room. She wore what she always wore: an oversized Raiders jersey she claimed was her father’s, but I had my doubts. Most of these girls had never met their daddies.

“I have some novels you might like,” Merriam said.

Kat tapped her nails. She laughed. Said, “When I open one of them, will money fall out?”

Merriam wanted me to go deeper with her, but I couldn’t tell her that a few years ago some men had come knocking, and of course I thought they were coming round for servicing, but no. They had questions about Mama. A young one and an old. Henry and Rivers. They said they might have found the guy who did it. Seemed he’d been on some kind of spree up the I-5, making stops from here on up through Oregon and Washington. Lots of similarities. An obsession with submission and keeping the women in small spaces. They suggested that whoever had done it wasn’t really a murderer, just a hobbyist, and that Mama had died by accident when no one found her in time. She died from starvation to be exact, but not cold-blooded murder. The way they said “accident,” I’ll never forget it. It hit me as a kind of relief.

I said, “Well, that man must be too old to still be at it.”

“Not really,” Rivers said. “If he had been in his twenties when he kidnapped your mam, a strong young man, he would only be in his forties or so now, plenty able.”

“How about a name?” I said to them. “Give me the name of this guy so if he walks in wanting one of my girls I can steer him right out.” They said they couldn’t do that, no, and then Henry, the nicer-looking one with the soft body and wispy hair, looked back and smiled at me in the very way I hate. Pity is unmistakable.

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