Read Online All the Roads That Lead From Home by Anne Leigh Parrish - Free Book Online Page B

good leather
boots and put them in a green garbage bag. She put his books on the sidewalk in
front of the house with a note, written on an old grocery sack, Free. His toothbrush she threw away. The toothpaste he’d used was hers. She wasn’t
surprised by the wetness of her eyes, or the tightness in her throat. Ramon had
made her feel more at home than Kevin ever had.
    Her
neighbor, Joey, was sound asleep on a thrown-out sofa two doors down. He wasn’t
homeless, but seemed to have trouble staying in his apartment at night. Angie
nudged him with her foot and he opened his gummy red eyes.
    “You want
to make twenty bucks?” she asked.
    He sat up,
spat on the sidewalk, and scratched his head. His fingernails were filthy. “For
what?”
    “Helping
me roll a piano down the block.”
    “You
nuts?”
    “You want
the money, or not?”
    Joey was
several inches shorter than Angie, but strong. He had no trouble keeping the
piano under control as it rolled back down the ramp. She took the other end and
kept it from veering off.
    The day
was overcast, the air calm. They pushed past parked cars, one with someone
asleep in the back seat, another with a broken out windshield, and another up
on blocks.
    Every few
minutes Joey stopped to clear his throat. When they reached the church Angie
gave him his twenty.
    “How come
we brought it here?” he asked.
    “That’s my
business. Now go on.”
    The front
door of the church was locked, and a side door, which gave on the alley between
the church and the grocery store next to it, was locked, too. There was a light
on the second floor, and Angie threw a pebble at the window there, then
another. The window lifted, and Father Mulvaney’s head appeared in the open
space.
    “Who’s
making that racket?” he called down.
    “It’s
here.”
    “What is?”
    Angie
pointed to the piano, which was being closely examined by an old man pushing an
empty shopping cart.
    “So it
is,” said the Father.
    “It’s
yours. Free.”
    “That’s
most generous of you.” The Father’s face took on a look of worry as he watched
her from above.
    “Better
get it inside before the weather changes,” she said.
    “Miss—”
But Angie had gone around the corner by then, back to her apartment. She needed
to give Marta another walk after breakfast, get the bag of Kevin’s stuff to the
thrift shop and take whatever they’d give her in return, then gather up her own
things.
    Then she’d
find a pay phone. The call she gave the police would bring him in. He’d know it
was her and one day, if he stopped hating her guts, he might realize that being
taken wasn’t the same as being bought.

 
     

    Pinny
and the Fat Girl
     
     
    She was a sullen child, a
little slow to catch on, and thus easy to make fun of— Pinny said two
and two is five! And that Miami’s the capital of Maine— the nickname
a clever blend of “pinhead” and her real name, Penny. She was tall for her age
with light hair some called ash or “dirty” blonde, gray eyes that were green in
brighter light, and a clumsy gait because her feet turned in, giving her at
times another name—“Pinny pigeon-toes.”
    She was
also an only child. Her mother stayed home and her father sold cars with a
flair that should have put him on the stage. Loud suits, loud voice, dropping
down to a whisper carefully breathed in the neat pink ear of a lovely young
woman needing a car for her new job, or for her life as a new mother, or
because she’d finally escaped her wretched marriage and was all on her own.
    The
flirtation took its toll. Pinny’s mother—a snob who always said she’d married
down—accused and swore, and then one day announced that she’d had enough, she
was not put on this earth to tolerate the disgusting appetites of a fat,
balding husband or the glum stupidity of her only child, and off she went,
suitcase in hand, leaving Pinny and her father still at the dinner table, their
meatloaf greasy and cold.
    After
that, meals were from a