“We eat enemies for breakfast.”
The sinews of his neck bulged and Shee’s stomach fluttered.
“Enemies for breakfast and hamburgers for lunch?” she asked, trying to keep a poker face.
“Yup.” He leaned back again, a tiger tamed. “You really twenty-one?”
She shook her head. “Eighteen.”
They held each other’s gazes in silence.
She didn’t even mind.
The waitress returned with their food, killing the moment.
They fell to eating and Shee’s mind raced, searching for small talk.
“Your family must be prou—” Her face heated like a stovetop burner.
Stupid.
She’d nearly forgotten how’d they’d met.
“It’s okay,” he said, seeming to sense her horror. “Old man’s still in jail. Momma gave me what I needed to move past what he did.”
Shee perked. “She’s alive?”
He shook his head. “No. He killed her, like you thought.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault.”
“Oh. She gave you her strength first?” she guessed.
Mason nodded his head from side to side, those sapphire eyes twinkling, smiling as if he had a secret.
“What?” she prompted.
He shrugged. “You wanna go to the beach after this? Ah can show you the best spots.”
Shee nodded, smiling behind her hamburger.
Yes, please.
He still had that smirky, faraway look in his eyes.
Ever since I asked him about his mom.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked. “Something about your mom? Something about what she gave you?”
He seemed surprised she’d noticed.
“Kinda.”
“What?”
He shrugged and smiled. “A bag of rocks.”
&&&
Chapter Nineteen
Thirty-four years ago, Charleston, South Carolina
Mason’s Aunt Tildy had three children of her own and little interest in raising a fourth. After his mother’s murder and his father’s incarceration, she took Mason in out of shame, or guilt, or—to be honest, she didn’t know why she’d bothered. On his first night she pointed him in the direction of a threadbare sofa located in his cousin Ely’s room with a vague, mumbled promise of a future, proper bed.
While his aunt made a half-hearted attempt to get him situated, his Cousin Ely glared at him from beneath a lowered brow until Mason thought his skin might catch fire. As a boy in a house full of girls, Ely had been the only child with his own room.
Mason had ruined everything.
Their weekly fist fights started the next day.
He didn’t mind thrashing with his older cousin, though each time meant a good whooping. Ely had two years and fifty pounds on him.
Mason spent as little time as possible at his aunt’s house. First chance he got, he borrowed Ely’s bike and returned to his old home. Without him to mow, the front yard’s weedy grass had grown as tall as his knees.
He pulled his bike around the back of the house, stopping as he rounded the corner.
The back door hung open.
Not just the screen, which had fallen, a victim of its own weight after his father broke the upper hinge the night his mother went missing.
The solid door beyond it also gaped by four inches.
The last time he’d been in the house he was with his aunt and the social services lady, gathering his clothes and personal belongings. They’d entered through the front door.
Mason lay the bike down and crept up the back stairs to push open the solid door.
“Hello?” he called into the house.
He’d heard about ‘hobo houses’ filled with addicts who stole little boys and sold them for drugs and sex-stuff.
But how bad could that be?
He’d started to notice the girls in his school, and being sold to a lady for sex didn’t sound like the worst thing that could happen to him. It would be gross if she was as old as Aunt Tildy, though. She had to be thirty.
He decided to brave the chance of being sold to a thirty-year-old. He had to risk it. Not only did he have a plan for moving out of his aunt’s, he wanted the flowy robe his mother used to wear. It smelled like jasmine, and jasmine smelled like his mother. Though, he’d have to be careful. If Ely found a flowered orange satin robe amongst his belongings, the attacks would be merciless.
“Hello?” He wrinkled his nose at the smell inside the kitchen.
No druggies or child-nappers called back.
Mason stepped inside, the wooden floorboards creaking beneath his second-best pair of sneakers. He made a fist and braced himself. Thanks to the floor, the child-stealing hobos would hear him coming from a mile away. He had to be prepared.
He stopped and surveyed the mess. Someone had been in the kitchen. Every pot and pan had been pulled from the cabinets, every plate jerked to the ground and smashed. Even the refrigerator door hung open, the food inside fuzzy and green. A pile of dried animal droppings sat nearby. Mason guessed the scat belonged to a raccoon. Scat identification and shooting were the two skills his father had taught him during better times.
Mason covered his nose and shut the refrigerator door with the tips of his fingers.
He moved into the living room. It looked as if a knife-wielding tornado had swept through. Deep slashes split the flowered cushions of the couch his mother had so loved. He touched the white stuffing and studied the edges of the cuts. No animal had torn apart the couch. The gashes were deep and clean.
Mason’s anger rose.
Who did this?
And more importantly, were they still in the house?
He called down the hall.
“Hello?”
Moving to his parents’ room, he found their mattress crisscrossed with the same kind of slashes, stuffing strewn everywhere. The pottery lamps once flanking the bed had been smashed. The contents of the closet were piled high on the bed, including his mother’s orange robe. He pulled it from the heap and pressed it to
