Hung Out to Die by Sharon Short

Author:Sharon Short
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

11

Mama did not speak to me all the way from the Red Horse Motel to the tiny Paradise jail, where she visited with Daddy and made sure he was okay. Other than being rattled and whiny, he was. I’d taken the opportunity to go out in the hallway and call Cherry and leave a message asking if she could possibly keep an eye on Mama after we were back from Stillwater.

Mama didn’t speak to me all the way up to Stillwater.

In the parking lot, I said, “I have to go to this meeting. You’ll just have to come in with me . . .”

“I don’t want to. Why didn’t you just leave me at your apartment?”

“I told you, I think you’ll be, um, safer if you’re not alone.”

“I’ll wait here.” She crossed her arms.

Right. Like I would leave her alone here at Stillwater, where my cousin Guy and other autistic adults lived. If she got out and wandered into the general meeting room where group activities took place, who knows what she might do? She could upset lots of people . . .

But she looked at me, her eyes wide. “Please, Josie, I’m just really tired. And I need a break from people. I’ll take a nap.”

“It’s starting to snow,” I said impatiently, gesturing at the windshield to the lazily drifting flurries outside. “You’ll be cold. Come on.”

“I have this thick coat,” she said, wrapping her mink more tightly around her. “And there’s a quilt in the backseat, I noticed.” Her eyes got even wider. I felt my heart soften.

“I bet you carry it for emergencies,” she said. It was true. My van was, thankfully, reliable, but before it I had a car that broke down often, so I got in the habit of keeping an old quilt in my vehicle. If my vehicle broke down while it was cold, I’d stay warm. If it was hot, I could sit outside on the grass while waiting for AAA without my thighs getting itchy. “You always were a smart girl, Josie. Very smart,” she said.

I know, I know. And yet, I felt myself falling for it. What kid—even a twenty-nine-year-old kid who was abandoned years ago by both parents—doesn’t love compliments?

She picked up a book from the stack at her feet—returns I meant to take to the bookmobile the next week when Winnie was back and making her appointed stops.

“Oh, look! An Anne George mystery! Ooh, I just love that series, too,” Mama gushed.

Did she? Or had she just read the author’s name off the most recent title I’d checked out—Murder Boogies with Elvis?

But then she said, “I just loved the one where Mouse and Sister went down to the condo in Destin, Florida, didn’t you?” That did it. My resistance was mostly down. Here was my fifty-something mama, looking like a little girl in her fur, having complimented my intelligence, gushing over one of the most beloved aspects of my life—books—practically begging to be tucked in with a quilt so she could read.

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