Page 6 of Haunted

Pretentious asshole.

I’d dealt with guys like him before. Men who thought the number of zeros in their bank account gave them the green light to act however they wanted and to destroy lives when they didn’t get their way. It was utter bullshit. They weren’t above the law, yet in a way…they were. Money could grease a lot of pockets. I’d found out the hard way.

“Now that your blood glucose levels have stabilized, you’ll be discharged posthaste.”

Posthaste? See? Asshole!

“A social worker will be in shortly to give you a list of free clinics in the area and someone from the accounting department will stop by to discuss a payment plan. Do you have any questions?”

Only one. Does the stick up your ass stay there all the time or does some lucky person get to reinsert it on a daily basis?

Biting my tongue to keep from saying something I’d regret; I shook my head. When he spun on his fine Italian leather heels to leave the room, I lost the self-control battle I’d been waging; both my middle fingers flying into the air to wave at his back. Childish? Yes, but it felt damn good.

Three hours later, wearing a pale blue scrub top Lucy had been kind enough to find for me since my shirt had been ruined, and the same pair of jeans I wore to work the day before, I walked out of the hospital doors, dreading the long trek up Hal Greer Boulevard to where it intersected with 3rd Avenue beyond the train tracks. There were several townhouse and apartment communities nestled along the Ohio River, which had open parking for their residents. Thankfully, no one seemed to bat an eyelash at a girl sleeping in her car. Nevertheless, I alternated between a few of them for the last six weeks, only staying a couple of days before moving on to the next.

Life was a never-ending series of ups and downs, from as far back as I could remember. Mom and I changed addresses more than some people changed the sheets on their beds, which was ironic since she ended up selling her body on that very bed to put food on our table. I didn’t begrudge her for the choices she had to make in order to provide for us, just the opposite in fact.

My mom came from a wealthy family who didn’t appreciate it when their nineteen year old daughter returned home on winter break from college three months pregnant. When they found out the pregnancy had been the result of a drunken night at a frat party, they tried to force her to have an abortion. She refused, so they had the housekeeper pack up her belongings, wrote a check for twenty-thousand dollars––the going rate to make your child disappear––and told her not to contact them again unless she got rid of me.

Needless to say, I never met my grandparents.

It was unseasonably warm and after three blocks in the blaring sun, rivulets of sweat began dripping down my back, so I decided to splurge on a bus ticket rather than tempt fate with another trip to the emergency room. Since I couldn’t actually afford the payment plan I’d agreed upon with the elderly gentleman from the billing department, the idea of a second sent a shiver down my spine.

Spying a covered bus stop ahead, I veered to the right, taking a seat on the bench without bothering to check the posted schedule. I didn’t mind waiting. It’s not like I had to rush to get to class or anything. Not anymore.

Those thoughts caused equal amounts of grief and anger to surge within me. I’d been so close, so goddamn close to making my dreams come true, only to have them ripped out from under me. All because I said no—repeatedly—to a date with Chase McArthur. I had no proof,unfortunately, only his threats of “you’ll regret this” afterthatnight. Well, and the fact his last name was plastered across the front of my dormitory in big bold letters.McArthur Hall.

I didn’t have the time, nor the inclination, to date anyone, let alone someone as pompous ashim. I’d chosen Marshall University for one reason only. It was the same university my mom attended when she got pregnant, and I was determined to finish what she’d sacrificed in order to have me.

Shannon Graves may not have been in the running for any Mother of the Year awards, but she did the best she could with what little resources were available to her. She worked three part-time jobs throughout her pregnancy, earning enough money to rent a tiny studio apartment in downtown Baltimore.

The twenty grand payoff from her parents sat in a savings account, collecting dust, until after I was born. Even being frugal, caring for a child was expensive; a lesson Mom learned pretty quickly. The cost of daycare alone ate up half the money within the first couple of months.

By the time I was seven, we’d been kicked out of four different apartments for not paying rent. The trend continued until we met Miss Rita when I was around ten years old. We’d been in our newest place for less than a week when she knocked on our door; storming her way into our lives, offering to watch me while Mom worked and refusing to take a dime.

She was older—in her sixties—with caramel skin, deep chocolate eyes, and a laugh which shook the walls when she let it fly, which she did often.

Miss Rita, or Nana Rita as I’d come to call her over the years, was a force to be reckoned with. The woman had nofilter. There wasn’t a time I could remember when she didn’t speak her mind, regardless of whether her advice was solicited. I loved her dearly. We both did.

The first time Mom came home from work with a busted lip and a black eye, I had just turned eleven. She brushed off Nana’s barrage of questions, saying it was an accident. Two years and several “accidents” later, we had to pick her up from the hospital and the hot pink cast on her arm couldn’t be explained away as easily.

I was supposed to be getting ready for bed, but I could hear them arguing in the kitchen. Slipping quietly down the hallway, I plastered my back against the wall as I crept closer to their voices.

“What are you doing, Shannon?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Mom replied.

“You can lie to yourself all you want, child, but don’t lie to me. Why are you risking your life by selling that beautiful body?”

The sound of chairs scraping against the floor alerted me that they’d moved to the small table beneath the only window in our apartment. I shifted back a few steps to stay out of view as I continued to eavesdrop.

“Insulin is expensive,” Mom said with a sigh, “and we don’t have insurance.”

Oh man. This was my fault. I ended up in the hospital a few years before and was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. I had to take medicine and sometimes shots a couple of times a day so I didn’t get sick again.

“What about one of those state programs? Surely, you’d qualify for assistance,” Nana Rita questioned.

“They said I made too much money. Can you believe that?” Mom huffed out a laugh, except it sounded more like a cry. “I worked three jobs and could barely afford tokeep the lights on plus put food on the table. Now I have one job, as miserable as it is, but I don’t have to choose which of our bills gets paid each month.”

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