Witness To Kill (Change Of Life Book 1) by Kent Keefer

Author:Kent Keefer
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
Published: 2015-04-04T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5

“Knights Inn”

Led by high-tech stocks continuing their six-month plunge over continuing jitters over the progress of the war in Iraq, the Dow dipped below ten thousand for the third consecutive . . . Her mind blotted out of the rest of the Headline News as if she possessed a built-in metabolic remote control. Without trying to, Mary found herself following world events better than she ever had, but she mostly used the sound rattling out of the TV for insentient company when Brian was away at school. A spoon handle stuck out of the milk remains in his Barney-decorated cereal bowl on the night stand bolted to the wall between the twin beds. Meant for highway transients, one of the room’s many faults to Mary was a shifting, undefined odor; sometimes damp and musty, sometimes dry and dusty. Sometimes it smelled like other people; then there was the one that lingered like the memory of a hospital visit for a time after the maid left, a chemical antiseptance that sometimes gave her a headache. She had not, as Sherry had initially optimistically predicted, gotten usta it. The room’s decorating scheme seemed to have been dreamed up by a committee resistant to taking a firm position on the issue of color, the fiddle-leafed ficus in its orange pot being the only source of it apart from the cathode haze bluing out of the tube. Behind the TV, a long mirror hung over the credenza in what appeared to be an attempt at making the cramped room feel larger. Other than the credenza and beds, the pieces were a small round table and two chairs that looked like refugees from an elementary classroom. She used both chairs this morning, slouching in one, her legs stretched to the other between the beds, sipping coffee and staring lazily at the strands of a cobweb across one corner of the ceiling, the news loop chanting like a 21st century mantra in the gloomy background.

A pleasant pool of heat spread into her thighs from the ceramic cup they cradled. Despite its bold grade-school cursive proclamation, she didn’t feel like the World’s Best Mom. Her eyes fell to the other bed. With his legs crossed at the knees in blue jeans and high-tops, Brian lay on his back playing his Play-Station. The machine beeped erratically, the modulated sound sometimes joined by his feral bark of triumph or frustration. A milk-box size refrigerator and microwave just as small joined a DVD blinking an unchanging 12:00 and Mary’s answering machine to supplement the room’s standard inventory. Mary gazed at the dark message light and thought of home. Home. Invisible from the busy suburban street that ran in front, the steel door of her new home opened onto the rear parking lot filled with a melange of vehicles that traded out nightly. Home, she thought again, nestling the warmth between her legs, furrowing her brow—

“Mom!” His loud voice aimed at the ceiling startled her. “Workin’ tonight?” Before answering, she took advantage of his fixation and studied him for a moment without his noticing.

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