Page 8 of Accidentally Mine
How could I have loved someone like him?
He’d served two fucking years.For all of those terrible things he’d been involved in.But I had a feeling they were just the tip of the iceberg.How many other evil things had he done?How much more damage would he do to this city and its people?
I quickly closed out of that news story, my fingers shaking.
I couldn’t stop thinking, too, that my father’s accident hadn’t been just an accident.Maybe Anthony’s father had had him killed, to lure me back.
Or maybe I was just being paranoid.That was kind of far-out.But that’s the way Anthony and his family had me thinking.I’d spent the past two and a half years thinking that even though Anthony had been locked up, his father would come after me.His father, Malcolm, who I’d only met once, had always scared me.And I supposed he was the person who’d molded Anthony into the monster he’d become.
I looked over my shoulder, and Red Sox cap guy was gone.He may have been a creep, but thank god, he wasn’t a persistent creep.
I opened up the file for the next installment in my series and got to work, putting the final touches on it so I could set it up online and start earning money off of it since my bank account was suffering.With my father dying and my returning home to wrap up his loose ends, it’d been a while since I’d put anything up, and my “fans”—a loose term because there were probably twelve of them—would get restless if I didn’t keep churning the stories out.I loaded it online, set the purchase price, and voila!My seventeenth installment ofBlood Run Roadwas available for purchase.
Feeling better since I’d accomplished something, I clicked on the tab to check my sales.Not bad.Not good, but not terrible, either.I was number one in Paid Fiction > Horror > Zombie Apocalypse.Then I checked my reviews.I had a new one:
Blood Run Road is seriously wicked!I have to read every installment as soon as it comes out.I love zombie fiction, and this author is one of my favorites!
Ha.Take that, Anthony.
He’d always said writing fiction was stupid.He’d actually bragged that he hadn’t read a book since high school.
Smiling for the first time in days, I finished my croissant, left as big a tip as I could for my waitress, packed up my laptop, and pulled my fuzzy red cardigan back over my shoulders.Gathering my things, I went down to the Boston Common T station to take the Red Line back to my aunt’s house in South Boston.
My T car was empty, just as I liked it.No suspicious people anywhere.On the way, it stopped at Broadway, and I thought about my dad.This was our stop.I was glad I didn’t have to see his house because I wasn’t sure I could handle it yet.My dad had lived on 8thStreet, in a modest little Cape Cod.I could still picture the old Dodge Dart on cinderblocks outside.He’d bought it because he thought he could fix it up and it would be a good first car for me to drive to high school.That’d been nearly ten years ago.It’d become more of a really large, ugly, rusty planter.
My dad had always sucked at cars.He’d liked to think he was a mechanic, but he couldn’t even really change the oil.
No, the only thing he had been good at was construction.When it came to building, he knew his stuff.He never cut corners, and he always stressed safety at his sites.Plus, he knew his sites better than anyone.That was why I had a really hard time believing that he’d just fall down that elevator shaft.He had to have known it was there.Besides, what was he doing there, after dark?
None of it made sense.
By the time I reached Andrews station, I realized my eyes were wet with tears.I pulled the baseball cap down low and told myself that I’d just have to work a few things out with my dad’s business partner, Steve, and do something about the house, and then I could leave this hornet’s nest once and for all.
Actually, first there was one other obstacle I had to tackle.And it was a big, stubborn one with long silvery gray hair and a penchant for finding a punchline—usually a dirty one—every time I tried to have a serious conversation with her.
My Aunt Marie.
I stepped out of the T and cut across a few backyards, walking the three blocks to the postage-stamp yard of my aunt’s three-story brick Cape on Leeds Street.I always felt safer walking where people couldn’t follow me easily.I ducked under the clothesline and climbed up three steps to the back door and into the kitchen, then stopped.
There weresoundscoming from the living room.
“Mmm, yes, do it to me, baby.Harder.That’s right.Harder.”
I rolled my eyes.Not again.
Throwing my bag down on the kitchen table and shedding the baseball cap, I peeked through the pass-through into the living room.Sure enough, my aunt was sitting in front of the television, slippered feet propped up in a V on the ottoman, watching a woman straddling a man, her breasts bouncing with wild abandon as she approached climax.
“What stirring epic is this?”I muttered, trying not to blush.I was twenty-three, for god’s sake, way beyond blushing age.But Marie was my elderly aunt who’d practically raised me from the time I was a baby, and she should not have been subjecting me to this.Though I supposed I’d always blush watching this kind of thing in front of her, no matter my age.
She sat up.“Oh, hi, Rebecca!”She opened the wrinkled television listings in the newspaper, which she kept folded near her chair, since she never could get the hang of using the on-screen guide.Her thumb ran down the offerings, and she tapped on the listing.“It’s calledBaby You Want Me.It’s pretty good.Got three stars.”
Sure it was.
But I really needed to focus on what was important.
“Call me Roselynn, Auntie Marie.I’m no longer Rebecca, remember?”Sinking onto the ottoman across from her, I deliberately faced away from the couple getting it on.
Her eyes roved over me for a second, confused, before blinking back to the television.“Who?”
