Page 23 of Housesitter

“Not on purpose.” She rested her temple on her hand, fingers threaded through her hair, and looked up at Kel. “Are you going to tell the cops?”

“That get me my money?” he asked.

“Probably not,” Sandra said. She took another puff and exhaled. The smoke hung in the air around her mouth, threads of it stuck to her lips. “I wanted my dad to love me. I’d have accepted he hated me, but I don’t think he thought about me at all.”

…

No. That wasn’t what she’d said. Kel had heard what she’d said, something about medical debt and lending practices. He didn’t know where he’d gotten the sentimental twaddle about Milligan from.

“Um…yeah…,” he fumbled as he tried to focus through the hot compress of smoke that pressed against the inside of his skull. “He was sick for a while, wasn’t he?”

Sandra shrugged and said something about kidneys and bones and… even if Kel had been on his game, he’d have tuned it out. He’d never really been sick—not SICK sick—and the thought of it made him queasy. The thing about his health insurance being shit had been a joke, but…it hadn’t been a lie.

Besides, it was hard to take his attention off the smoky mask of her lips as it mouthed its own version of their conversation.

Why would he tell me? I wouldn’t have come. He should have wanted me to, though. Why didn’t he want me to?

Kel stuck his finger in his ear and wiggled it around. It didn’t help. The words were nudged up against the other side of his eardrum, the wisps of smoke from Sandra’s lips dissolving in secrets as he inhaled them.

If this was what Sandra thought was skunk, Kel didn’t think he could handle what was considered good weed in… He hesitated a beat as he racked his brain for decades-old gossip about where Milligan’s wife had run off to…Portland.

Or somewhere like that.

Bad or not, the weed did its job of sinking into his bones and taking the bite out of the pain in his knees. Like he could have a little bit of cartilage, as a treat. Kel leaned against the porch railing and looked down at Sandra. He was still restructuring the grift in his head when he realized he was already talking.

“It was a bad way to go, I guess,” he acknowledged. It was his voice, at least. More or less. Maybe a bit smoother, a bit deeper, but recognisably his. So who else would be using it? “But at least he finally got what he wanted.”

Sandra let smoke slip between her lips as she squinted up at him.

Most of the time, in most of her life, people probably described Sandra Milligan as pretty or attractive. She’d spent enough money on her hair and her skin and her clothes to earn that. Grief and frustration had worn the patina off, though, and revealed her father’s farmer daughter under the put-together mask. She had his jaw, something about him around the eyes and forehead. The sort of face that you could imagine weather-beaten and with sun-baked wrinkles.

“What do you mean by that?” Sandra asked. This time there was no murmured, smoky counterpoint.

“Just…you know,” Kel said, shrugging casually. “And with the state he left his affairs in, it’s not like you’ll be able to leave any time soon. That’s what he always wanted, right? You back in Marble Falls, being the good daughter.”

Kel didn’t think it was his strongest pitch. It still worked, though. He could feel the hook snag as Sandra turned her lips down in a scowl.

“So what?” she said as she rolled her eyes. “You think my dad up and died just to get me to do what he wanted?”

Kel took the unattended joint from her hand for another drag. The smoke was almost mellow this time, the prickle of it like cinnamon on the back of his tongue.

“You knew him better than me,” he said. “Would you put it past him?”

From the look on Sandra’s face, she was regretting not putting a hole in Kel earlier. She stood up and brushed the dirt off the back of her jeans.

It sounds like him, the dregs of smoke on her lip whispered to Kel as Sandra snapped something about her dad having wasted his time if that was his plan. But what else can I do? I don’t want everyone to know I’m a bad daughter, or that he was a bad father. People aren’t meant to know that.

“...I just need to get things squared with the bank, and I’ll sell the farm,” Sandra finished as she took the joint out of Kel’s hand. She tossed it down on the porch and ground the stub out under the toe of her boot. “Then I’m on the first plane home.”

Kel let the warm smoke trickle from between his lips.

“Who to?” he asked curiously. When she blinked at him, he elaborated. “Who are you going to sell it to?”

For a second, Sandra visibly drew a blank at being put on the spot. Then she huffed and waved a dismissive hand at him.

“Dad was always talking about turning down offers to buy land,” she said. “I’m sure they’re still interested. Jake Belzer offered good money a few years ago. I’m sure he’s still interested.”

“Maybe,” Kel allowed. “Of course, his pockets aren’t as deep these days since he lost the farm. Last I heard, though, he was working as a barn manager for that big horse breeder over in Starling. You could see.”