Page 55 of The Locksmith's Promise

The absent version was the one I liked the best.

Those nights, the ones he never came home, brought their own mix of relief and anxiety. Because until I turned 18, he was the only thing standing between me and foster care. What would happen to me if I lost him, too?

Looking back, it was crazy that I returned to Moose Lake at all after college. There wasn’t nearly enough work for both my father and me, and absolutely nothing in the diploma I chose with a flip of the coin.

I had my reasons.

Sometimes the familiar feels safer even when it’s not.

I was lonely. Unable to connect to the people in my classes, I missed Miller, John, and Eric. If I’d been able to lower my guard, things might have been different.

And of course, seeing Maggie again redefined what, or rather who, was home. I wasn’t leaving Moose Lake without her, and I had little faith she’d come with me if I decided to go.

People are crazy complicated.

Even now, knowing he was gone, the same old anxiety that kept me out at all hours of the night to avoid him dogged me with every step forward.

When I hit the turn in the drive, I lifted my chin. What I saw stopped me in my tracks. Set in the middle of a large clearing overgrown with weeds sat the house that loomed so large in my memory.

And it was little more than a shack.

No wonder I had no problem breaking in when he locked me out.

It had two bedrooms, one bathroom, an eat-in kitchen, and a miniscule family room.

The siding, dingy and grey, was the perfect counterpart to the rotting window frames. Dirt and grime crusted the glass of the twin front windows so thickly they reflected no light, their life snuffed out.

The front door my mother had once, in a spurt of eternal optimism, painted a cheery blue, was now a mess of peeling paint.

I pulled the key sent to me by Moose Lake’s one and only lawyer out of my pocket. Funny, when Miller told me he passed, I expected to have to break in as usual. This was the first time in my life I held a key to this house in my hand.

And now it was mine.

Drawing in a steadying breath, I rammed it into the rusty lock and turned.

With a little extra encouragement, the door swung open.

I crossed the threshold and landed in hell.

Where the outside of the house seemed to have shrunk over the years, the inside was exactly the same.

The same faded curtains hung limply at the windows.

The same pockmarked linoleum covered the floors.

And the same threadbare couch sagged in the middle of the family room.

Every inch of the place from one corner to the other carried the stale smell of cigar smoke. I would have opened a window, but I didn’t intend on staying there even a moment longer than necessary.

Cold sweat beaded on my forehead and snaked down my back.

I took a tentative step forward.

It was a straight shot from the front door to the short hallway that led to the bedrooms. There were days those ten steps were tantamount to running the gauntlet.

Even now, my heart thudded warily in my chest. But I’d come this far. I could finish it.

I closed the front door and snarled like an animal caught in a trap. “Get this fucking over with and you never have to come back.”

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