Page 4 of Wild Side
TABITHA
TWO YEARS LATER
The yellow doorbefore me is altogether too cheerful for a day like today.
Scuffs near the keyhole tell a story of full hands and rushed attempts to open the door. There’s a pink splatter over the canary gold at the bottom. Likely the only evidence of a grape-juice-box-meets-the-ground type of crime scene.
Milo loves grape juice.
His mom does, too.
Did.
Erika loved—past tense—grape juice.
Heat builds behind my lashes, and I blink away the tears. Crying won’t see me through this job. Since we got the call last night, everyone around me has been crying. I can’t start too.
If I start, I worry I won’t know how to stop. Then shit won’t get done. And that’s my job right now.
Take care of her little boy. Navigate my parents’ grief. Run my restaurant. Get shit done.
Numb is preferable. Especially having just left the morgue.
So I push the urge to cry aside, roll from toe to heel a few times, as though I might be able to rock myself forward, into motion.
Toward my dead sister’s abandoned home to collect her belongings.
I both need to go in there and dread going in there. My lips twist into a sardonic grimace. Erika would have gotten a real kick out of seeing me wringing my hands on her front step. Too chickenshit to even face what she left behind. I suspect she’s somewhere watching me with a grin on her face right now. She’d say something like,You just identified my body. Vampirism would need more than twenty minutes to take effect.
I chuckle at my own made-up joke.
She wasn’t perfect—hell, I’m not either—but her dark sense of humor was spot-on.
“Okay, Erika, I’m going. I’m going,” I mutter in an amused tone, digging out the spare key I’ve been holding on to for two years.
I had it made when I helped her move in here and haven’t needed to use it until now. Mostly because I thought she was doing okay. I’ve always known addiction is a lifelong battle. I just thought she was holding the line.
I thought wrong.
The key clicks when I slide it in, and the door gives way when I grip the handle and press my thumb onto the lever. Sucking in a deep breath, I wait to see if any strong smells register. Nothing comes.
Judgmental little bitch.
I can hear Erika taunting me, clear as day. Somehow, this imaginary interaction brings me a sense of comfort. As a kid, she’d have killed me for going into her room. Borrowing her clothes or makeup always ended in a cat fight.
But we also always made up.
I chuckle darkly and shake my head. “Okay, sissy.” My arm straightens as I push the door open. “I’m here, and I’m going to take your clothes and jewelry, and there’s nothing you can do about it this time.”
Milo will want her things one day. I want him to have memories of her. Good ones.
With that in my head, my foot finally leaves the ground, and I move to step into the house.
But a deep foreboding voice brings me up short, and I freeze. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
My heart rate accelerates as I slowly turn away from the door. And then my eyes land on him.
Rhys.
