Page 102 of Fury

The room tilted, and I gripped my knees to steady myself.

An image of Rose flashed before my eyes. Her squealing laughter, her arm around my shoulders as we got beers at that heavy metal concert in Florida on a winter run.

The reporter talked investigation, bone fragments, a ditch.

Motor’s haunted voice came back to me.“He used her as a chip. He lost her.”

Rose had gotten traded like a baseball card between kids, like a fur pelt between an Indian and a frontiersman. And her boy? Abandoned, given away, name changed. His mother erased.

Erased.

A wail escaped my throat. “Rosie...”

Lost forever.

Her boy would never know her or know of her. And there was no one to tell him either. Rose’s life had been brutally snuffed out for no reason, and her memory forgotten except by me and Motormouth.

And now I’d snuffed him out.

I buried my face in my lap, my hands over the back of my head. “NO!” I yelled.

She was a good friend, a sweet mom, a happy spirit. But that’s not what would remain of Rose. After listening to that news report, people would only think: “She got what she deserved for being so loose, so reckless and irresponsible. What the hell did she expect?”

“...Partly cloudy with a slight possibility of showers late in the afternoon,” blared the television. “That’ll do it for me. Jane, back to you!”

“Thanks, Kevin. Next up, Roger Emery with tonight’s sports scores…”

Yes, forgotten.

Numb, I slid onto the floor.

Thunder. Banging.

“Ash? Ash? Open up, it’s me.”

I popped up from the floor, my neck protesting, my shoulder sore from where I’d fallen asleep on it.

“Ashley!”

I shut off the television. What time was it?

Hard knocking.

My limbs were heavy and not cooperating. I pushed up from the floor, somehow making it to the door. “Tania?”

“Open up already!”

I unlocked the door and swung it open. “What’s going on?”

She wore a baseball cap over her dark hair, men’s pajama pants stuffed in tall rain boots and a University of Chicago hoodie with an oversized Cubs windbreaker. She closed the door behind me. Her face was pale, she was tired. “Did you hear from Finger last night?”

“No, nothing. Why?”

“He called me this morning.”

“What?”

“About half an hour ago. I came right over—”

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