Free Still Missing by Chevy Stevens Page B

and got me, and that's when I found out my home no longer existed.
    "Perhaps, but it couldn't have been easy moving when so much had already changed. And into such a small house?"
    "It was just the two of us. We didn't need a lot of space."
    We moved to a cramped two-bedroom rental in the worst part of Clayton Falls, with a view of the pulp mill. The pill bottles had been replaced with vodka bottles. Mom's pink silk robes were now nylon and her Estee Lauder White Linen perfume was a knockoff version. We may have been tight on money, but she still managed to scrape up enough for her French cigarettes--Mom thinks anything French is elegant--and her not-so-elegant vodka. Popov isn't Smirnoff.
    Not only had she sold our house, she'd also sold all Dad's things. Of course she kept Daisy's trophies and her costumes, which hung in Mom's closet.
    "But it wasn't just the two of you for very long, was it?"
    "She was going through a lot of stuff. It's hard for a single mother. There weren't a lot of options back then."
    "So she thought she'd found a real man to take care of her this time around." He smiled.
    I stared at him for a second. "She worked...after the accident."
    As a secretary with a small construction firm, but mostly she just worked hard at looking good. She never left the house without a fully made-up face, and she was usually half cut when she was applying the stuff, so it wasn't uncommon to see her eyes smudged or her cheeks too bright. Somehow it worked for her, in a broken-down-doll sort of way, and men looked at her like they wanted to rescue her from the big bad world. Her recently widowed status didn't stop her from smiling back.
    Four months later I had my new stepdad, Mr. Big Shot Wannabe. The sales guy for the firm, he drove a Caddy, smoked cigars, even wore cowboy boots--which might make sense if he was from Texas, or even Alberta, but I don't think he's ever left the island. I suppose he's rough-around-the-edges handsome in an aging Tom Selleck way. Mom quit her job right after they got married. Guess she thought he was a sure thing.
    "What did you think of your new father?"
    "He's okay. He seems to really love her."
    "So your mother had a new life, but where did you fit in?"
    "Wayne tried."
    I wanted at least some of the closeness with him I'd had with my father, but Wayne and I didn't have anything to talk about. The only things he read were girlie magazines or flyers for get-rich-quick schemes. Then I learned I could make him laugh. As soon as I realized he thought I was funny, I turned into a total goof around him, doing anything I could to crack him up. But if he did, Mom would get pissed off and say something like, "Stop it, Wayne, you're just encouraging her." So he stopped. Hurt, I'd make fun of him whenever I could, just being an all-around smart-ass. Eventually we just ignored each other.
    The Freak was staring at me intently, and I realized that my attempts at learning more about him had served only to further his knowledge of me. Time to get things back on track.
    "What about your father?" I said. "You haven't mentioned him."
    "Father? That man was never a father to me. And he wasn't good enough for her either, but she didn't want to see it." His voice rose. "He was a traveling salesman , for God's sake, a fat hairy salesman, who..."
    He swallowed a couple of times, then said, "I had to set her free."
    It wasn't just his words that sent the shiver up my spine, it was the flatness of his voice when he said them. I wanted to know more, but my instincts told me to back away. It didn't matter. Whatever storm was stirring in him had passed.
    He leapt out of bed with a smile, stretched, and after a sigh of contentment said, "Enough talk. We should be celebrating the beginnings of our own family." He stared hard at me, then nodded. "Stay there." He threw on his clothes and coat and disappeared outside. When he opened the door, the smell of rotting leaves and wet dirt drifted over to the bed--the scent of a