LITMIR.BIZ

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CHAPTER ONE

      BILLY JOEL IS full of crap. Not only the good die young.

      The low gray clouds seemed to settle on Priss’s shoulders as she walked between the graves, zipping her leather jacket against the chill air. Was it a sin to wear jeans to a funeral? Probably. But it was a long way from Boulder to Widow’s Grove, and Mona had overheated in Phoenix. If she’d stopped to change clothes, Priss would have been alone in this graveyard.

      As it was, there were only two other people in the cemetery on the right side of the winter-brown grass. They stood beside the subtly Astroturfed dirt pile.

      She stopped a few feet short of the open grave. Her mother was down there. Shouldn’t she feel something beyond tired? Hearing her heart thud in her ears, she listened for something else. Sadness, maybe, or loss? Regret?

      A little late for that. Old wounds didn’t always heal—the deepest ones festered.

      By the time the hospital had tracked down Priss and called, her mother was gone. Better that way really, for them both.

      “Come, Ignacio. It’s time to go.” A meager woman stood at the foot of the grave, both her face and raincoat set in similar generic authoritarian lines.

      Priss recognized a social worker when she saw one. Given her past, she should.

      A kid stood beside her, head down, face obscured by a black hoodie pulled out of shape by fists crammed into the pocket across the front. Crotch-sagging jeans puddled atop untied tennis shoes that might have, in a former life, been white.

      The woman touched his shoulder. The kid shrugged her off. One hand appeared from his pocket, and Priss got a flash of knuckles lettered with homemade tattoos before it disappeared beneath the hood.

      She heard a muffled snuffle, and the boy swiped the sleeve across his face.

      Priss felt a pinch in her chest, somewhere in the vicinity of her heart.

      Shit.

      The hood flew back and for the first time, she stared into the defiant eyes of her half brother. She stuffed her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. “I’m Priss, your—”

      “I know who you are.” Below the knit stocking cap, his almost delicate eyebrows drew together over narrowed eyes.

      His hostility slapped her hard. She took a step back.

      The matron spoke up. “Well, I don’t know who you are.”

      Priss looked her over. “Who are you?”

      She sniffed and looked Priss over. “I am Ms. Barnes, children’s social worker for Santa Barbara County. And you haven’t answered my question.” Her tone was haughty, but her glare was weak. She should ask the kid for lessons.

      “I’m Priscilla Hart.” She tipped her chin at the grave. “My mother’s the one in the box.”

      The Barnes woman tsk-tsked and her lip curled, as if she’d encountered a turd in a church pew. It was a response Priss was used to. She’d always been what her mother called, “outspoken,” but Priss didn’t know how else to be.

      Her opinions were like a deposit of crude oil, buried shallower than most people’s. Others had regulators to control and filter to a civilized flow; hers were much more likely to spew. She never meant to hurt people’s feelings, but mostly the nuances of refined talk escaped her. Dancing around the facts to be polite made her head hurt.

      She’d take her facts straight up, thank you.

      The social worker reached for the kid’s shoulder again but at his glare, dropped her hand. “Come, Ignacio. We’ll get your things.”

      “My name is Nacho!” His shout rolled away through the empty graveyard.

      The woman pursed her lips and pink spread from her cheeks to the rest of her face. “Well, then...come with me.” She turned, took a few steps and waved her hands to encourage Nacho to follow her.

      But the kid didn’t move, just stood looking at his sister. His defiant eyes had taken on a shiny cast and his bottom lip wobbled. The tough guy morphed into a scared ten-year-old.

      Oh, crap.

      When Priss followed the social worker away from the grave, Nacho was right behind her. “Where are you taking him?”

      “To pick up his clothing at his home.”

      Something old and lumbering stirred deep inside Priss. She was curious to see where her mother had lived. “I’m going with you.” She said it to Nacho, but Ms. Barnes stopped and turned.

      “I’ll need some identification to prove you’re related to...” She shot a glance at Nacho. “Mr. Hart.”

      The kid rolled his eyes.

      Priss restrained herself from doing the same, pulled her wallet from her jacket pocket and handed over her Colorado driver’s license.

      The social worker inspected it like a Stop-n-Go clerk checks a twenty then handed it back. “I suppose you are also next of kin. You can follow me in your car.”

      Deciding the clouds were window dressing for the funeral rather than rainmakers, Priss left Mona’s top down and pulled out behind the county Chevy.

      When they reached the outskirts of town, Priss took in the fussy Victorians perched on manicured lawns, looking down their patrician noses at the traffic in the street.

      She rolled to a four-way stop in the middle of town. A tall flagpole with a limp flag graced the middle of the intersection. Up the cross street, buildings crowded each other for space, cute wooden signs declaring them B & Bs, antique shops, art galleries, coffeehouses.

      Her mother sure hadn’t lived in this part of town.

      Following the county car, Priss took a left. Sure enough, the posh buildings were replaced by ranch houses, and after they crossed over a creek, single-wide trailers and ramshackle cracker-box houses lined the street. The stunted, skeletal trees did nothing to soften the dingy neighborhood.

      After parking behind the Chevy, Priss cut the engine and waited as Mona went through the death throes the ’81 Caddy had been named for. Priss had seen past the scaly black paint and the rust-dotted chrome to the Glory of Detroit in Mona’s lines and under her hood. She’d bought Mona off a university student and since then had put every penny she could spare into restoring her.

      Priss finger-combed her short stand-up black hair in the rearview mirror. The painful squeal of her car door cracked the quiet.

      The squat one-story wooden building was set in a C, creating a courtyard full of weeds and wind-blown trash. It had probably been a Motor Lodge, back in the ’60s. But that heyday was long past. Its boards were warped and wavy, a faded barn-red. The hand-lettered wooden sign out front advertised rooms for rent by the week.

      The familiar weight of poverty and want settled over Priss like a foul-smelling wool blanket. As she stepped out of the car, a shudder of déjà vu ran through her, helping to shake off a taint of despair. It wasn’t hers any longer.

      But it is his.

      Nacho stood on the cracked sidewalk, his face empty of emotion. When Ms. Barnes asked him a question, he dug in his pocket and handed over a key. She led the way to a door at the end of the derelict building.

      Nacho walked in first, and Ms. Barnes followed, flipping on the light. She flinched slightly, but to her credit she didn’t wrinkle her nose.

      Priss stepped in behind them. It wasn’t the bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling that brought it all back, or the tired room it illuminated. It was the smell. The walls exhaled ghosts of damp rot, untold cartons of her mother’s cigarettes and decades of starchy food, into her face.

      Oh, yeah. She knew this place.

      It was her past.

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