Free The Last Breath by Kimberly Belle

shoots a firestorm of fury through my veins. Instead of leaving yet another voice mail, I settle on a rather snarky group text.
    No worries, I’m not alone. The protesters will be here soon to keep me company. You better not fucking be one of them.
    I hit Send and fling my phone onto the pile of clothes erupting from my open suitcase, flop backward onto the bed and try—and fail—not to feel sorry for myself. In just a few hours, my dying father will walk through that door for the first time in sixteen years, and my siblings aren’t here. Cal isn’t here. My only buffer is a woman wearing too much makeup and scrubs smothered by tiny yellow ducks.
    Something bangs and shakes the walls downstairs, and I picture Fannie heaving the couch onto her shoulders and hauling it clear across the room. The racket reminds me of all the things I should be doing. Helping Fannie rearrange the living room. Showering and unpacking. Hunting down my deadbeat siblings and dragging them back to help. Every single one of those options exhausts me.
    I yank on my comforter, pull it across my shoulders and wrap it around me like a cocoon. A gust of wind whistles at my windowpane, and I burrow deeper into the down. Somewhere outside, a car door slams. By the time I reach the far side of a sigh, I’ve found temporary peace.

7
    A CLOWN.
    That’s my first thought when I open an eye. Why is there a clown standing above me, poking me in the shoulder?
    “Go away.” I pull the comforter tighter and roll toward a window I vaguely recognize as mine, but from a lifetime or two ago.
    The clown gives me a two-handed shove in my back. “Wake up, ’fore I fetch me a bucket of ice water.”
    For a second or two, I get caught up on the way she said that last word— warter. And then it hits me. The thick accent, that frizzy orange hair can only belong to one person. I turn my head, blink up at Fannie. “Oh, sorry. I must’ve drifted off.”
    “Good Lord, child, I’ve been trying to wake you for the past five minutes. It ain’t normal the way you sleep like the dead.”
    I push to a sit, swipe the heel of a hand across each eye. “In my line of work, sleeping is considered a job skill.”
    “What are you, a vampire?”
    I would laugh, but I’m midyawn.
    “Stick your head under a faucet or something, ’cause I just parked one fine hunk of police officer on the couch downstairs. He says you were expecting him at eleven.”
    Her words are like a shot of caffeine to the jugular, and I spring out of bed so fast I see a rain of sparkles around the edges of my vision. “Shit. What time is it?”
    “Sometime after eleven, I reckon.”
    I fall to my knees on the floor and rifle through my suitcase, flinging sweaters and T-shirts and underwear aside until I find my phone, lodged in one of my sneakers. “It’s 11:19. Shit, shit, shit.”
    “How ’bout I fix him a cup of coffee while you get ready, lickety-split like.” She heads for the door, but not before tossing a glance to the contents of my suitcase, now exploded all over the floor. “And, sweetie, if you don’t mind me saying so, you may want to spend a little extra time searching through all that slop for a hairbrush.”
    By the time I make it downstairs seven and a half minutes later, my teeth brushed and my hair gathered into a messy ponytail high on my head, Fannie is holding court on the couch. She’s brewed a fresh pot of coffee and scrounged up a plate of cookies from the stockpile in the kitchen. And she’s seated suspiciously close to the police officer, giggling like a schoolgirl.
    He stands when I come into the room, and with one last bat of her lashes, Fannie heads into the kitchen. Her definition of hunk is light-years away from mine. The policeman looks like an older version of Opie, that kid from The Andy Griffith Show, skinny and ruddy-complexioned. His receding hairline scoops two matching C s high on his forehead. He waits while I take in the patches and pins on his uniform,