AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m good, thanks,” I call back. Having to repeat myself when she irritably grabs the remote and points it at the screen, pressing hard on the extra-large buttons to turn it off.
“Look, Nora. I’m sor—”
“Save it!” She cuts me off, crossing her arms over her chest and intimidating me with the harsh eyes hidden behind her wrinkles.
“Five years,” she points out, strumming her fingers against her arm. “I don’t like telling lies and I sure as hell don’t like having to get inventive.”
“Are you kiddin’ me?” I shake my head at her and laugh.
Nora moved here ten years ago after wiping out all the casinos in Vegas, she’s wanted for fraud in three different states. She had connections with our Nevada Charter, which brought her protection from us. Prez put me in charge of checking in with her when she got housed out here and it was while I was doing that, that I noticed the house next door was for sale and bought it for Carly.
“You can laugh at me all you want, Skid, but I don’t con innocent young girls.” She keeps her lips tightly pressed together.
“You weren’t connin’ her, you were watchin’ out for her,” I point out.
“I was lying to her, and I had to start making up my own stories when you disappeared without a fucking trace. She was always worrying that your ‘friend’ would need his house back someday and that she and Charlie would be homeless.”
“I know, and you did good. Real fuckin’ good.”
“Well, it wasn’t easy.” The old woman still looks pissed at me.
“She tells me you’ve been helpin’ her out with the kid too. If I didn't know better I’d say you were goin’ soft in your old age.” I wink.
“Well, you can think on that again. Ain’t no softness in me, boy. I was just doing the decent thing. How else was the girl supposed to work?” The fact she refuses to look me in the eye tells me she’s lying.
“So, what’s going on? Her and the kid haven’t been home for days.” She pulls a cigarette from the kitchen drawer and lights it from the gas stove before she takes a seat.
“The father of her kid showed up and freaked her out. She’s stayin’ with me at the club.”
“You?” Nora laughs.
“I’m glad ya find that amusin’.”
“Skid, I ain’t taking away what you’ve done for that girl, letting her have the house, paying her wages at that place she works just so they keep her on.”
“Wait… I never told you that… How did ya—?”
“I’m not stupid, that vacation park she works at barely gets a hundred visitors a year. The couple who run it may be getting on in age but it ain’t nothing they couldn't handle on their own. One thing I've learned from hustling is that if something is too good to be true, it probably is. Now who do you wanna accuse of going soft?” She widens her eyes at me expectantly, and without any argument, I nod for her to continue.
“Like I was saying, there ain’t no denying that you’ve been good to the girl, but what you did and how you left, I’m surprised she ever wanted to see you again.”
The truth in her words coils around my heart and puts a frustration in me that I can’t be releasin’ here.
“Well, she asked me to head over here and tell ya that she’s okay,” I tell her what I came to say so I can get the hell outta here.
“And I assume you’ve now told her of our association and the fact thatyouare the mysteriousfriendwho owns the house she’s been living in all these years?”
“I ain’t gotten round to that part yet,” I admit, scratching my fingers through my beard.
“Well, I suggest, this time, you don’t break her heart. I get what happened to you was awful, but there's no justice in making sweet girls like her pay for it.” Nora gives it to me straight as she always does.
“I hear ya.” I move forward and kiss her on the cheek.
“Youoweme. I don’t even like kids,” she adds.
“Well that’s a shame, it looks as if kids like you.” I nod my head to the picture she has of her and Charlie together on the refrigerator and she scowls at me when she realizes she’s been caught out.
“Just look after them,” she warns before I say my goodbyes and head back to Addison’s house to join Jessie.
