Tin Lily Read Online Free

not afraid of Hank coming for me. I’m not anything. Emptied out. Gone. My own version of a dried-up potato bug.
    There’s lint on Margie’s shoulder—blue, a little white mixed in.
    My focus: Margie’s blue and white lint.

 
     
Six
     
    They let Margie take me after a social worker says it’s okay. We go straight to a downtown hotel where she wants to stay. We share a room because Margie doesn’t want me out of her sight. She slides a plastic card into the key slot, opens the door and waits until I’m inside with my blue hospital bag full of too-small clothes from Offer Archie gathering them up at the dog food house. Too-small clothes that won’t do me any good in Seattle. I need Mom’s things—the sweater she knitted me, the rug, her pictures. Mostly I need Margie to answer a question.
    “Why?”
    Margie stops digging in her purse where she’s standing at a little desk crammed in a corner of the room. She turns slowly toward me. I see by her face this one word is enough. She understands.
    “Did you know Grandpa Henry died Sunday morning?”
    Sunday. The day Hank came with his gun.
    “Hank said Grandpa Henry was dead.”
    “When?”
    I tell her with my eyes not to make me say.
    “I see. Did he say anything about Grandpa’s will?”
    “Only that there was nothing left.”
    Margie paces the room, holding a tiny metal box in her hands and muttering to herself. She turns the box over and over like Hank did with the cat at the dog food house. I think she’s working out what to say or what not to say when she stops in front of me with her hands cupped around the box. I see flashes of silver between her fingers. “Your dad expected an inheritance from Grandpa Henry.”
    “I know.”
    I know because Hank went to work for Grandpa Henry’s company even though Mom said don’t, even though Grandpa Henry disowned Hank a long time ago because he wanted to paint and not install rain gutters. Even though Grandpa Henry was poison.
    “Pure poison, Hank. Don ’ t do it. We ’ ll survive. We don ’ t need his money.”
    Dad ’ s face is buried in his open hands, his shoulders slumped. “You think I want to, Rachel? He ’ s sick. He needs me.” Dad drops his hands and looks up at Mom. With his own deep pools, he begs her to understand. “One year. I bet he won ’ t even last that long. One year.”
    “ You can ’ t predict that, Hank. The meanest cling to life and there ’ s no one meaner than your father. Don ’ t do this. He ’ll poison you. He’ ll poison us.”
    Dad shakes his head. “ I won ’ t let him near you two. He ’ ll never come here.”
    Mom turns away and now her shoulders are slumped. “He won ’ t need to. Have you forgotten how he treated you? And Margie? Your mother? He leaves no one untouched. Don ’ t do this.”
    Dad gets up from his recliner and crosses to Mom. “ I won ’ t let him affect us. I promise. You know how much we need this. If I get back in his good graces, he ’ ll reverse the disownment and leave me the company. It ’ s worth a year, don ’ t you think?”
    Mom leans into Dad, resting the back of her head against his shoulder. “No, it ’ s not worth it, but I think you ’ ve already made up your mind. One year. But if…” She turns and looks over Dad ’ s shoulder at me. I pretend to read, to not listen. “One year,” she says.
    But it only took Grandpa Henry six months to wreck Hank and six months after that for Mom to say we were leaving and another year after that before Grandpa Henry finally died. One year into two, two years into nothing.
    Margie’s mouth is moving. I hear bits and pieces as I try to catch up. “…inheritance from my parent’s estate… huge trust… left us out completely.”
    I think about the unfussy house I visited with Hank once without Mom knowing—the front porch creaky, all sagging wood and U-shaped steps from so many years of tromping up and down, paint peeling in strips off the siding, the kitchen so old you