Chapter one
Chapter One
Aheavy weight slammed into Matty Crew’s stomach, causing her to jerk up. “Fuck, Hester!”
Her limbs were tangled in the covers as she tried to grab the massive furball that had pounced on her in her sleep. Her sleep-fuzzy mind didn’t help with her coordination, but she finally managed to get her arms free to grab the cat, who looked indifferent to her owner’s struggles.
“You’ve got to stop jumping on me,” she scolded the white and orange tabby. “Maybe I should start cutting your food back. You’re getting too chunky.”
If Hester could raise an eyebrow, Matty was sure she would be doing it. They both knew it was a hollow threat.
She reached for her phone, groping the side table beside her bed to see what time it was. As if on cue, the phone started buzzing the moment her hand found it.
“Really? You couldn’t have held off on assaulting me to let me sleep another few minutes?”
Hester, who was sitting on her chest, headbutted her face in response.The little shit.
The feline was supposed to be named Chester, a kitten she had found in the ductwork of a house at the addiction rehab where she worked. When she took him to the vet to be neutered, the vet found that Chester was a Hester. It didn’t matter, though. She loved Hester, and they had been companions ever since, even when she was being a total ass.
Throwing back the covers, Matty stretched her arms up high, smiling in satisfaction when her stiff joints popped. Sometimes she was sure her body was aging far faster than her thirty-five years. A dull ache in her lower back had been hanging around for weeks now. At some point, IcyHot had become her new best friend.
Her morning routine was almost always the same. Matty found comfort in it. It was something her sponsor had said she needed after leaving rehab. It had worked well for her. With two years, six months, and four days of sobriety under her belt, change made things uncomfortable, and uncomfortable frightened her, as trying to numb her feelings was exactly what had landed her in a spiral of addiction.
It started innocently enough, with her grandmother giving her a Lortab for a migraine as a teenager. It had been Gram’s drug of choice for years until she was eventually prescribed OxyContin. That had really upped the older woman’s habit, though Grammy would never admit to having a problem. A true Southern old lady, she lived happily in denial that she had a pill problem or that she had contributed to Matty having one.
She had raised Matty since she was four years old. Her father was given full custody of Matty after her mother died in a car crash when Matty was four. Matty suspected there had been alcohol involved, but no one would confirm her suspicions. Her father hadn’t been in her life at all up until that point. Matty wished she could have seen his face when he was given a little girl he barely knew. Did he look terrified? Angry? She doubted he looked at her with an adoring gaze. He wasn’t the paternal type.
That was what landed them on Grammy’s doorstep, and Matty stayed. Wayne, her father, didn’t.
Hester’s high-pitched whine brought her up onto her feet. The feline would not hush until she was fed.
She scratched her side as she walked out of her bedroom and across the hall to the bathroom. Hester would have to wait until her bathroom needs were taken care of before she would be fed.
Matty went through the motions of getting ready for work. Her work uniform consisted of Turtle Grove Rehabilitation Center T-shirts and Levi’s jeans, so it didn’t take long to get dressed. She put on a dash of cologne and ran a brush through her hair. She liked its length. When she went to the barber, she showed him a picture of a young K.D. Lang, wispy pieces framing her face and a little length in the back. It suited her oval-shaped face well. At least she thought it did.
An important part of her morning involved sitting at her little kitchen table with a cup of coffee, black, of course, and her daily wellness workbook. She flipped to the current date and read aloud, “What does ‘doing the next right thing’ look like today?”
She paused to look over at the cat.
“What do you think, Hester?”
Hester yawned in response. Her belly was now full. She would be napping soon.
Picking up her pen, she nibbled at the end for a moment, thinking over the prompt. After a moment, she scribbled down her answer.
The right thing right now is to go to work. Focus on things I can control. Continue to remain sober and reach out for help before I hit a wall.
“There, that sounds good. I’m really digging this workbook, Hesty.”
The response back was Hester bumping her head against Matty’s leg as she made her way to the couch for her first nap of the day.
Once her reading for the day was completed, she packed her lunch and filled her thermos with coffee before bidding Hester goodbye.
Cloudy skies greeted her as she stepped out onto her small patio. She double-checked that she’d locked the door before walking a few feet over to the porch that led to the main part of the house.
She had been renting the basement apartment from Kerrie Matthews, who also worked at Turtle Grove as an addiction counselor. Kerrie had decades of sobriety under her belt and was a good friend to have. Thanks to poor choices in the past, she had to ride with Kerrie to work every day. She was putting court fines and rebuilding her life ahead of buying a car just yet.
She wasn’t the least bit surprised when she saw Kenny Matthews’ face poking out from behind the curtains of the back door. She couldn’t stop a large grin from taking over her face.
