All Good Deeds by Stacy Green

Author:Stacy Green [Green, Stacy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9781500953164
Google: ALvEoQEACAAJ
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Published: 2014-09-09T16:00:00+00:00

18

Chris hung back as I worked the lock on Justin’s unit.

“Where’d you learn how to pick a lock?”

“Googled it.”

“Nice.” The lock popped open, and Chris slowly lifted the door, which creaked and squalled as it rolled up. I shined my flashlight around the unit until I found the light switch. The hanging bulb was dim, and my eyes took a moment to adjust. When my vision finally sharpened, my knees turned to jelly. The unit was about the size of my childhood bedroom, and boxes and plastic bins lined the western wall. It was the rest of the room that made me feel woozy.

Justin had decorated the entire back wall with pictures of his mother. A few were snapshots, but most were his own drawings. Every one was done in pencil, and the detail was mesmerizing. Martha Beckett had always intimidated me, and these pictures were so lifelike I felt the same unease creeping over me. A tall woman with broad shoulders, manly hands, and nondescript facial features that made her expression perpetually tight, she resented me on sight. Justin’s father drank too much and let Martha run the house. The woman had been furious that anyone–and I suspected my looks and the way Justin had taken to me also fueled Martha’s ire–would insinuate anything was wrong with her son.

Martha’s haughty eyes followed me as I examined the drawings. One thing quickly became clear: Justin Beckett hated his mother. Every depiction had her in an eerie position of power, as though she were standing over him in the flesh, brutish and domineering.

But the one that really struck me cold was the full body drawing of Martha from the back. Hair gathered at the back of her neck, her clothes were too tight around her thicker frame. Justin had drawn his mother so the right side of her face was partially visible, and again she was drawn from the position of someone looking up at her. The most chilling feature was the way her right eye glared, as though she had turned her back but still watched from the corner of her eye. If there was ever a boogeywoman, this drawing of Martha Beckett was the perfect representation.

I jumped when Chris’s hand touched my shoulder. “Christ! I’d forgotten you were here.”

“I could tell.” He walked over to the cheap computer desk and folding chair set up in the corner. Various art supplies covered half the desk while newspaper clippings were scattered across the other half. “More drawings of the same woman. That his mother?”

“Martha Beckett.”

Chris stared at the pictures taped to the wall. Peering closer, he gazed up at one of the close-up sketches of Martha’s face with a look of intense concentration. He gave himself a shake. “She looks like a peach.”

“She was rude and uncooperative. And when Justin was incarcerated, she spent more time being angry at her son than trying to understand him. From what I’ve been told, he hasn’t seen her in years.”

“Not sure I believe that.”

“Why?”

“Look at the pictures.

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