Read Online The Kill by Allison Brennan - Free Book Online

squirmed. He really didn’t know what his mother thought, what she even looked like as an old woman, or how she was coming along with his dad being dead.
    He was surprised at how much it bothered him.
    “I—Brian, I don’t know what to say.”
    “Say I can come home.”
    “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
    His hand clutched the receiver so tight his knuckles whitened.
Stupid bitch! I told you I didn’t do it
!
    A familiar guilt spread through him and he hated himself for thinking so poorly of his mother. Shit, this was no good. He had to show her.
    “Ma, it’s okay.” He took a deep breath. “The court got me an apartment and is giving me a little money, and because I was wrongfully imprisoned they’re going to give me over a million dollars. So I’ll call you next week, give you some time.”
    “Thank you. Brian, I never stopped praying for you. Not one day. I hope you’ll do something good with your life now that you’re being released from prison.”
    “Yes, Ma.” He hung up, afraid he’d start yelling at her.
Something good with his life
? What’d she think he’d do, murder someone? He didn’t murder that little girl, never would kill a kid. And the guy on the yard, hell, that had been an accident. And the Vietcong had been the enemy. He hadn’t murdered anyone, like in cold blood. It wasn’t fair, it fucking wasn’t fair, that he’d been sent to prison for thirty-four years because the stupid cops screwed up their investigation.
    Fucking
not fair
.
    Brian wiped his brow, sweating, hot wind blowing through the open windows of his pitiful truck. It wasn’t just the weather. It was this odd feeling he’d had ever since he’d walked out of Folsom Prison a free man. He didn’t feel free. He didn’t feel like he was in his body. He was disoriented. He’d been watching television nonstop since he’d been out. He’d taken nearly half the piddling stipend the prison handed him—like $1500 and a free apartment was supposed to last for three months until his million bucks came—and bought a fine 36-inch tube. It wasn’t like he’d been living in a vacuum in prison—he’d watched the news and a few stupid shows and movies and whatnot, but he didn’t realize how much he’d missed.
    His mother lived in Menlo Park, in an older, middle-class neighborhood on the San Francisco peninsula. It was only ten minutes from his shit-ass apartment on the bad side of the tracks in Redwood City, where he was the only white boy in his building. But until he got the money from the government, he couldn’t go anywhere.
    Life sucked.
    By the time he’d turned into his mom’s neighborhood, he was a basket case. First, he hadn’t realized how much the area had grown in the last thirty years. He almost had a heart attack on the freeway surrounded by a gazillion cars and big rigs. Shit, where did all these people live? The peninsula connecting San Francisco to San Jose wasn’t that big.
    A lot of the houses in his mom’s neighborhood were big and opulent, well kept. Classy, he thought. Some were add-ons, little houses turned into big homes. This was not the middle-class neighborhood he’d left when he went to Vietnam. These people had money.
    The trees were bigger—a lot taller. But the streets had a hint of familiarity, and there was the park where he’d played as a boy.
    Tears stung his eyes and he pinched the bridge of his nose. How’d it all get so fucked? He used to walk on this exact road with the guys, Pete and Barry and Tom. Kicking rocks and jabbering. Whittling wood like his daddy had shown him. Where were the guys now? Pete had gone to Vietnam, like him, but Barry and Tom didn’t go, at least not that he knew. Barry had the brains; he’d gone off to some big college. Probably made good money and married and had kids and did all the stuff they hadn’t thought about as kids, but figured they’d get around to sooner or later.
    Tom? Hell, he could have landed himself in prison for all Brian