Page 1 of Can't Get Enough

PROLOGUE

HENDRIX

The front door stands wide open.

That has always meant a warm welcome at the two-story traditional house where I grew up, but now the sight makes me shiver more than the chilly wind of Christmas Eve whistling in my face.

“Is this it?” the Uber driver asks, watching me stand in the driveway with my rolling suitcase.

“Uh, yeah.” Uncertainty colors my voice and probably my expression if the driver’sCan I go now?face is anything to judge by. “This is it. Thanks.”

Butisthis home? The slightly overgrown lawn and uneven hedges would never have been tolerated by my mother in all the forty years of my life. The garage door is up and Mama’s pride and joy, Shortcake, her pearl-colored Lincoln MKC, is parked there. Mama wouldn’t leave her baby exposed like that.

Something’s wrong.

Something’s been wrong for a while. I haven’t exactly ignored it. I’m not one to bury my head in the sand, but I did hope it wasn’t as bad as I’d suspected. There are worse things to be guilty of than hope, but right now I can’t think of them.

As the Uber pulls off and I drag my bag up the driveway to the wide-open front door, the cloud of dread that has gathered in my belly for the last year calcifies and drops like a stone. I cross the threshold and shut the door behind me, surveying the front room Mama always keptimmaculate. It was the first impression of our home, and I’ve never seen it in such disarray. Black dirt from an overturned plant soils the white carpet. A thin layer of dust dulls the end table’s usually shiny surface, and the lampshade is askew. The whole scene is askew, and I’m so disoriented it feels like I’m standing on the ceiling.

“Mama?”

Her name comes out thin and tentative, like when I called her as a child, scared there was a monster hiding under my bed. She always responded right away, coming into my room with a reassuring smile.

There is nothing reassuring about this answering silence.

Beep! Beep! Beep!

The smoke detector blares, breaking the quiet and jarring me from my stupor. White clouds billow into the hall, and I race to the kitchen. Plumes of smoke stream from a hissing pan on the stove. The acrid scent of something burning floods the air and stings my nose.

Shit!

Coughing, I rush past a mound of flour in the center of the kitchen floor, fumbling through the drawers where Mama always keeps dish towels. Wrapping one around the handle, I drag the pan away from the angry red burner. The pan sizzles when it hits the sink, a curtain of steam rising into the air and almost blurring—but not quite—the sight of raw chicken parts, chopped vegetables, half-formed piecrusts, and sloppily sliced fruit littering the counter.

What the…

Lifting the pan lid reveals collard greens, or what’s left of them. All the water boiled out and the charred mass is stuck to the bottom. I wrench open the oven door, and my nose wrinkles at the scorched, withered mess that may have been a ten-pound turkey in its previous life. Grabbing a second dish towel, I pull the smoking mess from the oven and plop it onto the range.

The smoke detector keeps squawking, so I stretch to vigorously wave my hands back and forth in front of the blinking alarm until it quiets. The silence that follows is even worse. With the immediateemergency of burning food addressed, I’m forced to deal with the bigger problem.

Where’s Mama?

“Ms. Catherine,” I say with sudden realization.

How many times has Mama walked over to our next-door neighbor’s house while her food simmered and baked? That has to be where she is. I sprint out the back door to the fence that divides our yards, pushing impatiently at the wobbly gate that is never locked between the two houses. I charge up the cobblestone path Mama’s closest friend laid through her garden, absently noting the frost-covered bushes sure to bloom in spring. I bang on the door.

“Ms. C,” I call, tugging on the metal handle. The door doesn’t budge. I go around front and ring the doorbell, but no one answers. Face pressed to the window, I’m disturbed by the quality of the darkened room I peer into. The stillness is stale like nothing has stirred in a long time inside.

“Hendrix? That you?”

I turn on the porch and frown at Mrs. Mayer, the neighbor from across the street Mama and Ms. Catherine never could tolerate.

“Gossipy, is what she is,” Mama used to say.“Couldn’t keep a secret if it was sewed in her jaws.”

“Mrs. Mayer.” I walk down the steps to meet her at the fence she’s peering over. “Have you seen Mama or Ms. Catherine?”

The papier-mâché of her finely wrinkled skin creases with a series of emotions—surprise, dismay, sadness.

“I saw your mother earlier when I was out walking.”Meaning snooping.“But I haven’t seen her in a few hours. And Catherine, well…”

---