The Perfect Couple (Last Stand #4)(31)
Author: Brenda Novak

"We’ll have to check with the neighbors, see if someone’s collecting it for him," he said.

Clinging to the hope that her fears, at least about her father, were unfounded, Zoe moved through the trailer. She saw what she’d seen on her last visit. Her room hadn’t changed since she’d left home, with her own baby, at seventeen. The white dresser with the missing knobs still hugged the closest wall and even had some of her old jewelry draped over the mirror.

The poster of David Has-selhoff she’d tacked up at thirteen still covered the opposite wall. The stickers she’d affixed to the closet doors hadn’t been removed.

Now that she was an adult, it was difficult to believe she’d gotten pregnant a mere two years after her father bought her the pink "princess bedspread. Two years older than Sam was now.

"You did some fine decorating in here," Jonathan said, his sunglasses now clipped to the neck of his T-shirt.

A faint smile curved her lips. "Thanks."

He touched her elbow. "Are you coping with this?"

"Yeah, I’m fine," she said, but fine was a relative term. She’d definitely been better.

"What are you thinking?" he asked.

She was remembering the day her father had bought her that bedspread. She’d wanted it so badly he’d spent the money even though it meant they’d probably go hungry the next week.

Maybe she’d been too hard on him…. "Nothing that will change the world."

"No one’s all good or all bad, Zoe."

"That’s unfortunate, isn’t it?" She took a deep breath. "It’d make life so much simpler if we could classify everyone into neat categories."

"It’d certainly make police work easier." He crossed the hall to peek into her father’s room, and this time she trailed after him. "Anything strike you as odd?" he asked.

"The beds are made."

"That’s all?"

"It doesn’t smell like pot."

"Your father’s drug of choice?"

"It’s cheaper than the rest, so…out of necessity, I suppose."

"Makes sense." He walked around the bed and stopped to pluck a photograph from the mirror. "This is you?"

Sure enough, it was her second-grade picture, the one in which she was missing her two front teeth. The edges of that photograph were tattered and torn–like almost everything else in the trailer. "Yes."

"Maybe your father’s cleaned up his life," Jonathan said.

Ely swore he had. When they’d been arguing about whether or not Sam could stay with him, he promised Zoe he’d been clean for months and would remain that way. Come on, Zoe. Trust me, just this once. Your old room’s ready. I bought those Pop-Tarts she likes. And I’ve got money. I been workin’.

She’d wanted to say yes, but she couldn’t. Sobriety was one promise he’d never been able to keep.

When Jonathan went back to the living room, she stayed put. She needed a moment alone. Especially when he pressed the button on her father’s answering machine and she heard her own voice echoing through the thin walls. "Dad? Dad, where are you? I need to talk to you. Please call me."

Beep. "Something’s happened, Dad. To Sam. Don’t be angry anymore. Pick up." Beep. "Damn it, if you ever want to see me again, pick up the phone!"

In the next message the anger was gone and there were tears in her voice.

"Dad? Please. I need you."

Zoe rubbed her temples to relieve the tension building into another headache. For the past few days she’d struggled to hold in the tears. Now she wanted to cry and couldn’t. "Where are you?" she muttered to her father’s room at large. "Why can’t you ever be around when I need you?"

A knock at the front door made her breath catch in her throat.

Pivoting, she hurried to see who it was.

Jonathan held up a hand to forestall her as she emerged from the hall, and crossed the living room to answer it himself.

"Who’re you?" a female voice demanded. "Are you the one who called me early this morning?"

Zoe stepped into view and felt her jaw drop. "Sharon?"

"Zoe!" The fifty-something-year-old woman wore a bathrobe despite the midafternoon hour. "You’re lovelier than ever, missy. No wonder your dad’s so damn proud of you. But…what’re you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same thing. Last I heard, you’d moved to Mississippi to live with your oldest son."

Sharon Thornton wasn’t dyeing her hair the same harsh black as before. Today, it was silvery gray. And while the lines in her face had deepened into harsh grooves, she seemed happier somehow. "I was there for eight long years. But the weather sucked–God, it’s humid in Mississippi.

And it was too crowded in that house, if you ask me. The woman Danny married–" she shook her head "–she straightened me out, but I’m tellin’ ya, she was a real bitch."

Zoe silently qualified Sharon’s statement with a "…straightened me out for now," but couldn’t help laughing at the image of tough love her words created. "So you’re living in the park again?"

"Right next door." She motioned to the beat-up red-and-white trailer a stone’s throw away, the one that had belonged to old man Montgomery.

"Sharon used to live in unit 10," Zoe explained to Jon. "She babysat me every now and then."

"When I was less stoned than her daddy was," Sharon added in a rueful voice. "You poor kid. It’s a miracle you survived the two of us."

Although she wasn’t the woman who’d gotten her father started on drugs, she hadn’t helped the problem. She’d used right along with him. But Zoe had always liked her.

"What brought you back to the old neighborhood?" she asked.

Her eyes flicked toward Jonathan and she pulled her robe tighter.

"Your father didn’t tell you?"

"Tell me what?"

"He asked me to come."

"Are you two…seeing each other?"

Sharon blushed furiously. "I think he’d like that. But I won’t marry him until he pulls his life together. Now that I’ve climbed out of that black hole, I can’t let him or anyone else drag me back down."

"Then you should’ve stayed away." Zoe spoke before she could stop herself.

"I didn’t really have a choice. He totaled his truck a few months ago so he couldn’t work. He was hitting rock bottom when he called, and I couldn’t refuse him. At our age, it’s now or never, you know? Where would I be if my son’s bitch of a wife hadn’t slapped me into shape?"

Zoe had never heard bitch said with so much respect. "How long have you been sober?"

"A year and three months."