Free Never Wake by Gabrielle Goldsby Page B

sit on the curb for three days and then not let them in?” Troy asked, the smile still playing at her lips.
    Emma almost told the truth—that aside from her parents, she’d never had visitors in the condo. “I’m sorry,” she said instead. Her eyes went back to Troy’s chest. And then to the small necklace she wore around her neck.
    Troy shifted from one foot to the other. She didn’t say anything, just stood there. Emma looked down. What now? She couldn’t tell Troy she had made a mistake by letting her up, but she couldn’t just—let her in. Could she? But what if she doesn’t come back? What if she—
    Once again Troy’s emotions were so clear to Emma that she thought they were her own. Utter loneliness, fear, desperation, desolation. She backed away from the open door. Troy didn’t move right away. It was as if she was giving Emma the chance to change her mind before she stepped into the room and shut the door behind her.

Chapter Six

    When Abe broke into sixty-three-year-old Desdemona Bernard’s home, he hadn’t expected that he would be spending two nights in the tiny cottage amusing himself by going through her correspondence and personal items.
    He now knew that Desdemona stretched her paltry social security checks by organizing monthly bus trips across the Canadian border to buy prescription drugs. She had two daughters. One was in love with her jailbird husband and the other was contemplating whether or not she should have an HIV/AIDS test because of an unfaithful partner. Desdemona also had thirteen cans of cat food, but no cat hairs, cat toys, or cat smells present in her home. Abe hoped she had been unable to bring herself to throw away the food because the cat had recently passed away, but he had a feeling Desdemona was forced to stretch her food budget in other unsavory ways.
    Abe was sitting at her desk because the only other seating with a view of the window was occupied by Desdemona’s sleeping form. Her luxuriant gray hair spilled over the arm of her sofa. Abe thought she looked as if she was napping. Desdemona may have been a beauty at one time, but, Abe guessed, a harsh life and the birth of her children had sapped all but the last residue of that away.
    Although the desk chair offered no lumbar support, he had the perfect view of Southwest Bonita Lane. On either side of the street were cottages identical to Mrs. Bernard’s. Abe guessed they had been built forty years ago as low-income housing and were still being used as such. In Abe’s opinion, no matter what race of people lived there, poor neighborhoods always had one thing in common—they always lacked space. Although it looked cared for, this neighborhood was no different.
    All the cottages on Southwest Bonita Lane crowded the curb, leaving a strip of sidewalk that would be too small for a grown man to walk on. They were grouped in sets of three, with the unfortunate soul in the middle having only views of their neighbors’ buildings out their bedroom windows. Both Mrs. Bernard and Troy Nanson had middle units. Abe would bet money those were the least expensive. The advantage was that both had large windows bracketing either side of their front doors, whereas, the other cottages only had one small one. Someone had helped Mrs. Bernard push a large ancient desk up to one of her front windows. He wondered if it had been Troy.
    He could picture Desdemona sitting at the desk and writing her letters while watching the comings and goings of her neighbors. He wondered what she’d thought of Troy Nanson. Since they lived across the street from each other, they had to have interacted. Did Desdemona bake her cookies? Or did she call the police if Troy so much as glanced toward her mailbox? Maybe they just waved to each other in the same “I don’t want to get involved” way he and Teresa did with their neighbors.
    Abe stood up, and his hand went to his lower back where he kneaded the tense muscles there. His stomach complained as it